In our front lounge, in pride of place, sat a hutch dresser with beveled mirrors on the back board. When the sun shone on just the right angle, spots of colour refracted through the beveled edges onto the carpet. This was the eighties and the carpet was already a riot of colour, but when the fragments of rainbow appeared on the floor or the wall, other colours paled in comparison. I tried to catch the colours, I didn’t succeed. At least I could hold beauty in my hands for a moment.
On reflection, perhaps the colours from the dresser were so intense because they were literally made of light. The colour in the carpet was dyed wool, present but not radiant.
Restaurants are always being innovative with food. You might feel like the classic cheesecake, but what do you get? Deconstructed cheesecake: a dollop of creamy goodness with a flavour-packed fruit coulis drizzled over the plate, alongside crumbs arranged in a fancy pattern. It’s not quite what you had in mind, but it sure piques your interest. You assess all the components and think about cheesecake in a different way. Now instead of automatically scooping all the flavours onto the spoon with one movement, you get to choose which components you want to enjoy together. Perhaps you’re not really into crumbs, or maybe you’d rather not have too much sugar; you get to pick the quantities and the order that you enjoy each part.
It takes a little more brain power to eat deconstructed cheesecake, but it makes the experience of eating out more memorable and fills some of the waiting time between courses.
We radiate light; we talk about someone lighting our fire, someone whose light has dimmed, someone who is a bright spark. Each of us is surrounded by an electromagnetic field that is outside of our visible range, yet it is there.
Usually, we radiate our whole light. But I’ve been pondering this week, what do we hit that refracts and separates out our light like a prism?
Could it be in moments of great challenge that our light gets deconstructed and comes into clear view? None of us like hard times, we long for happiness and relief. But when others look on at us in our trials, what do they see?
Sure, there are times that who we are is reflected – it changes course, but there is no deconstruction in the process. We shine light and that light in its entirety shows through our actions.
We know instinctively that we grow during hard times. We want to grow and develop, but we’d rather do it in comfort. When difficult people come our way, that bends us. We can’t continue as we were. It is painful when our light separates, but when that situation is hard and solid and reveals the intricacies of our attitudes and desires, we get a long hard look at who we really are.
Where we’re tempted to be offended, we have the opportunity to observe ourselves in a challenging situation. What shines through? We see glimpses of pain and pride and unmet expectations, tempered by empathy, understanding, love, and humility; in this moment, we are deconstructed and we have the opportunity to decide which parts of us we will engage with and lean into while the options are painfully obvious.
Being laid bare is not a fun place to be, but it is very informative. Where we can step back for a moment and observe the gamut of emotions, we can choose how to move forward.
It’s really easy to justify our pain and explain ourselves away, but sitting with intention, even if it’s just for a moment, can reset our trajectory for the immediate future.
The thing with prisms and rainbows is that they don’t last indefinitely. They’re beautiful in the moment. We try to capture them, but they elude us. All that we can do is observe them and treasure the moment. The learnings and memories that we make from them can last. We might even get a snapshot that reminds us of the beauty that we found there.
Consider it pure joy… whenever you face trials of many kinds, James 1:2
There is a verse that talks about considering trials as joy. That kind of perspective doesn’t come naturally. But when I ponder a trial as an opportunity to see things clearly and gain clarity on what is really going on in my heart, all of a sudden, I wonder if I could view trials differently. The verse goes on to talk about perseverance and maturity; could I persevere and mature through this hard situation? What can I learn as my motivations and attitudes surface for this brief period of time?
When we take offence, we hide our light. We cover up who we are when this person is around. Perhaps we cover it for others too because our feelings are so raw. We are present but we no longer radiate. Our colour dims because we have created shadow. When someone has seen our radiant colour, they will notice the difference when our light is absent.
As onlookers, we get a sense of who someone is when they go through a hard time. Do they rise to the challenge? Do they shy away?
It’s in a crisis that we find out whether someone is truly for others or if their priority is themself. Will they choose offence or will they make the hard decision in the moment and evaluate what comes up in the moment of refraction? When we see the different parts of someone while they’re deconstructed in a hard place, we see them in a new way from that time forward. Where we used to take them as a whole, we realise that we prefer some parts of them over others and we can better choose how to engage with them going forward.
When a chef presents a deconstructed menu item, we can be sure they have taken great care to display it in a way that invites the guest to appreciate something familiar from a new perspective. We’re used to life. We know the way things go. But in that heightened moment where the emotions are coursing through our veins and our logic is pulling in the other direction trying to calm things down and create balance; will we appreciate the beauty in that fleeting moment and capture a memory or a lesson that leads a step closer to maturity?
A prism doesn’t look outstanding by itself, but when you know what it can produce, you value it differently. The tall old dresser could have stood against a different wall where the sun didn’t shine, and it would have done its job and held the special trinkets safely. But positioned where it was with the sun shining on it during the afternoon, it created moments of beauty for those with eyes to see. Other members of the family glanced at the colours and carried on with their lives. When I was older, I too simply glanced at the colours without turning aside to wonder and marvel. Childlike wonder has its up sides – taking time, being curious, even noticing in the first place, are valuable traits.
What if our greatest challenges were prisms, hard things which create moments of beauty? Could that help us to find joy in our trials? Could we view the moment of offence as a deconstructed moment where we are invited into perseverance and maturity?
Maybe our challenge is less about the person on the other end and more about confronting what is displayed in us?
