Conversation with the Sun Dog
I took this picture one Wednesday morning in February. With the help of Wikipedia, I learned that sundogs form when ice crystals drift through the air at the same level as a newly risen sun.
These crystals act like prisms, bending the light rays that pass through.
The refracted sunlight, shining through the crystals, creates those piercing rainbow colours around the circle - the sun dogs.
Why, on that Wednesday morning, when I saw this in action, did I gasp?
Why did I stop in my tracks, stand in the cold, find my phone and take a picture? Perhaps it was the beauty of it all? That would have been more than enough. But there was more.
On this frigid morning, what I saw outside reflected what I was living on the inside.
Everywhere we went this week, we listened and talked, woke up to and watched the terrifying reality of what was happening across the ocean in Ukraine. Alongside the terror, we witnessed acts of bravery armed with sunflower seeds, the courage of Russian protestors on their own streets, of babies born in bomb shelters. A pierce of light, holding both bravery and horror, shoots through the middle of me.
Alongside the horror across the ocean, I had had a super challenging time at home. The load I choose to carry felt overwhelmingly heavy. Simply put, I didn’t feel like I was enough. The pierce that shoots out on one side of my inner circle holds the overwhelm of my work.
This same month, I witnessed my adult kids organize a kick-ass winter festival on our yard; I saw the strength of my 8-year-old daughter score a ringette goal; I learned from our therapist about the power of brainspotting. I could go on. Simply put, I am surrounded by enough. The pierce that shoots out on the other side of the circle holds the endlessness of my gratitude.
And the only way I live the circle of my life is by allowing all of it, every last one of my ‘ice crystals’, to flow through and simply be: my despair, my gratitude and all that lies in between.
What amazes me, is at the heart’s center, our being knows all of these roads as instinct.
And maybe, somewhere in Russia, on the easterly horizon, a sundog will shine. It will nudge those who are frozen in their hatred and greed. They will turn and see that within, there is also an abundance of ice crystals that can be prisms for the light of our bravery and love, our enough.
In friendship and warmth,
With a broken heart and an abundance of gratitude,
Bonnie
