Today was a day like any other. I got up early to be at work by seven. I put up the newspapers, cleaned up the entire cashier station area and rang up the occasional customer. It was a bit before my break and I was somewhat bored and restless as usual. I happened to look over at the office area and saw Lana the office manager there. She looked as she did any other day, but I felt the subtle stirring of the spirit moving about in my senses as it often does at various times on a daily basis. And so I looked a bit deeper��beyond the surface at the playing of light, thought, energy, time and space. In her motions and demeanor I began to see the subtle influence of inner traits not always expressed fully. I could see the seeming effects of a good nature, self assurance, annoyance with others and perhaps even a certain sense of aloofness, all wrapped up in a single moment in time.
This sort of experience is common to me. Over the years I have gotten into the habit of looking beyond the obvious and seeing the roots and inner effects of the way things work. Not only people, but just about everything in existence. It allows me to often notice details and has fostered in me a true and lasting appreciation of the wonder and awe inherent in all people, places things and moments. I know it as God�s will manifested and ever present in his very own creations. Seeing his influence in all things has given me a strong sense of joy in my life and the ability to master my own emotions instead of letting them control me. With that there is the assurance that no matter what happens in life it is all a part of the experience of living. Joy, sorrow, love, hate��it is all a part of the grand mystery of life and to all things under heaven there is a time and purpose.
Anyway, getting back to the subject at hand. Seeing these wispy and insubstantial influences in Lana sort of drew me in. Seeing such things always makes me hunger to see more. The ethereal qualities I often see in the world around me are hard to define in words. They are not so much single points of defining characteristics, but rather glimpses of an ebbing and flowing tide of many intertwining influences. Each affecting the other and quite incomplete without viewing them as a whole. So I found myself trying to imagine what Lana may have been like in years gone past. I could see the influences of a lifetime and different facets of her, but could not see any defining moments clearly. I wondered to myself where her inner strength, self definition, the gentleness in her eyes and all the qualities I admire about her came from. I figured that as a younger woman she was either very outgoing and sort of wild or quite reserved and somewhat meek. Of course, only knowing her now I could easier imagine her as strong willed and more assertive in her youth, so I went over and asked her if she had been sort of wild in her youth. She smiled and told me no, that she had been more passive and quiet. Not really a surprise to me, but my more dominant guess was wrong.
What happened a few minutes after I went back to my register will forever stay with me. As I stood there with no customers to help I looked again at Lana and for a brief moment in time an amazing thing happened. It was as if her spirit opened up and an invisible light emanated from her. Bearing similarity to the old saying, �My entire life flashed before my eyes�, I could see all at once the effects of a lifetime of joy, sorrow, triumph and tragedy flooding from her being. A full, rich life, filled with experience, some simple some complex. And with that moment came an overwhelming, extremely intense sense of beauty in it�s purest form. The beauty of God�s creation, manifest in her being for a brief moment in time. So intense to my heart was this visage that I had to turn away at the sight of such beauty as tears of awe and joy welled up in my eyes. It was like looking at the face of God himself. Witnessing it for that single moment was like once again being at the edge of paradise, just as I had been in my one great journey back in the darkest days of my life, when God showed me how my life could be should I choose it and what lies beyond once our time on this world is through. And though I turned away from this overwhelming and unbearable visage of beauty the effect was the same. It will forever be with me as another treasure I have stored up in heaven. It is a common visage which I see all around me every day in so many people and things, but this moment was simply much more intense. It manifested in the one known as Lana.
And this is how I see the world. The constant and ever present motion of God�s spirit in all creation. Always around me, always within me, in everyone and everything in existence. And having been given this revelation and understanding of it, is it any wonder that my life is filled with such consistent joy? Those who see or know me, both friend and stranger alike, see the effects of the spirit at work within me and see his light at work in my life. Many of them think highly of or regard me well as they witness this old polished lamp letting that light shine through. But that same light shines in them. I only wish sometimes that I could somehow help them to see it more clearly, the way I see it in them and all creation. The way I saw it today in Lana.
