A Sin Against the Light

I just finished watching a British mini-series called "All Passion Spent". It is the story of an elderly woman in the British aristocracy whose husband died. She'd spent her entire life doing what was expected of her. She married well as her parents expected. Her husband was the prime minister of India and she fulfilled her duties as his wife with grace. She had children and raised them, created a home, and endured with love and without bitterness. By outward appearances she had a wonderful life. So what was the problem? She was "meant" to be an artist. She loved beauty and art, but had entirely given up this part of herself as it did not fit in with her expected life.

So now she is 85 and finally asserts her desires on her life. She moves to a small cottage (from the big mansion) away from her children. She has a beautiful garden and makes the home cozy and filled with light as she has always desired, but could never have. She surrounds herself with interesting people (some from the "trades") and meets up with an old gentleman acquaintance from India. Even though she doesn't remember him from 60 years before, he understands her now as he understood her back then. In their conversations about her life and her missing art, he says that her not pursuing her art was a "sin against the light." I really love that phrase although I'm not much into the whole sin thing. It has a double meaning, since light is so important in art. The light being sinned against can be the light we see or the inner light (soul, spirit or the source of all being).

It really describes what I think so many of us do with our lives. We "sin against the light" by not being all we can be. By not doing what we were truly meant to do. That thing we were meant to be and do can be anything. It doesn't have to be something as romantic as being an artist. It can be teaching, or being a mother raising good children, or being a whiz at gardening. The trouble is we often take our role in life and because we're doing a good and important job (such as raising children) and rationalize that this must be what we were supposed to do. All the while ignoring the tightening up of our hearts, the depression, the dis-ease that will come about when we ignore our most inner longings.

So what messages from your heart or soul are you ignoring? Can you explore them? Can you give yourself permission to take a few baby steps toward the light? Toward expressing your being in your own unique way?