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A House at Sundown
Damariscotta, ME
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Note: This writing reflects my belief that through contemplating the natural world, we can learn the wisdom to grow in every way: body, mind, soul, spirit. For too long, much Western religions have neglected that wisdom with an over-reliance on words. Be quiet, and you will hear.
In 2017, following my father's passing, I received a plant in his memory. I placed it on the kitchen table next to a window. There it thrived with new growth. Shoots emerged from the dark soil into the surrounding open air. Each sprout and leaf reached toward the light, as though the plant was in love with the light. How is such a possibility for us?
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Plants are made for sunlight; sunlight is made for plants. They arise together, for each other, likewise, with the Light and us.
By the sunlight, leaves produce sugar, which feeds the roots. The process goes on and on in the unobstructed receptivity of the air. There is no gap between air and shoot and leaf and plant. This harmony is a sacred alchemy. We call this photosynthesis.
This creative process is participatory and intimate. If either the light or the plant is absent, or if the spaciousness is not welcoming to both, the process cannot be. If I had put the plant in a closet, it would not have flourished; it would have died. How many are there called humans who live in closets, and walk and talk, though dead?
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Without the plant moving into the openness from the dark soil and receiving from the light, its life would not be possible. Life and light are companions. Plant and light give themselves to each other.
For the plant to flourish, it must receive light. One of the challenges to the self's felt-need to remain in control - which is not control at all - is to welcome its lowering to receive.
As Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism, wrote:
And with love and devotion, living low, ...
we find freedom within.
And the Christian Scripture reads:
Humble yourself...
and God will lift you up.
And each plant, having received, is an embodiment and transporter of the one life, for the life flows. And you are like this, potentially, too.
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Whatever we do to encourage the unfolding of innate grace, we let ourselves be drawn into the open. We progressively yield into the Light. The Love we seek finds us and stills our seeking. Our effort to grow spiritually is not to be overdone, however; too much exertion obstructs the natural flow, and such growth is a natural flow. I have written, therefore, of effortless effort. The plant does not try to grow, it grows. Yet we are not plants; we must do something, or nothing will happen. Still, the ease of the plant in its emergence contains a lesson for us.
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So, spirituality is not a means to hide. A plant hiding dies. The sun does not hide. Even at night, it shines somewhere, and in the nights, the moon reflects its light. Likewise, we stop guarding the heart and let it unfurl, not knowing what will happen. We choose to be like the moon, reflecting the Light. We shine, both day and night.
Yes, the spiritual path we choose may lead us to hide for a time, such as to give time to heal or to learn alignment with Grace. Yet, this natural stage is a prelude to a new coming out, a resurrection, and a sharing of freshness and aliveness we could not before.
Also, we need to hide regularly for short periods of time. We need daily hibernation to be alone with the Alone. Yet, with the Alone, we learn we carry all beings with us into that space. If we do not learn this, our practice is only self-inflation.
We come to know the Light that draws us to itself, not by theory but intimacy. The Light in us draws us to the Light all around us, and we discover, in time, there is no inside and outside. The Light is everywhere, for it is boundless: it shines everywhere, even if often it is like a shrouded candle. We begin to see the Light where others do not, where we could not before. The Light has always been there. That one is blind to the Beloved, does not mean Love is not present.
We are not our Source, even though with the Source. All spirituality is simply a learning to live here, facing the Light, receiving the Light, being transformed by the Light's gaze of love, and sharing the Light in an unselfconscious, spontaneous manner.
We become what we face. If we live facing the Light, we become the Light. If we live turned toward ourselves, that is all we become - more and more of ourselves.
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At some point, we transition from thinking that we are spiritual, doing spiritual practice, or being spiritual. We no longer seek liberation, enlightenment, holiness, or salvation. We are no longer striving for a heaven or Nirvana. We have so imbibed the Light, we emanate a naturalness, and we discover no word needs to be added to say what we have become and are becoming - what we were already. Silence speaks.
Contemplation is a word often used for this, this being beyond the idea of being anything, when being is prayer, not anything needing to be added to being. Life, we could say, becomes a Rite of Grace, all of it, as much the depths of loss as the heights of gain, and we grow in gracefulness. We see being is enough, for in being is all truth and all potential to become and keep becoming, to the Light's glory.
Yet, where can one find separation between the Light's glory and that of our True Nature? We are Light, for the Light is Light. A mystery is that we are here to become what we are.
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We are like the plant on the kitchen table. In that plant and its response to the light is the open secret on how to evolve spiritually, to reconcile within and without, with others and ourselves, and the natural world. Nothing is left out.
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(C) brian wilcox, 2026
*Quote from Guru Nanak. In Guru Nanak. Poems from the Sikh Sacred Tradition. Trans. Nikky-Gunider Kaur Singh.
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