BROTHERS AND SISTERS

"Beach Sunrise", oil, by Sharon Schock
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     It’s easy to understand how “connected” I am when I see the sunshine spreading across my wife’s gardens on these spring mornings, for it’s the same sunshine that warms the whole world. We live in a small town, but we share the sun with limitless numbers of living things, sharing as close as brothers and sisters. The light that lands on her daffodils also fills valleys in France, and the same sunshine that sometimes brings out our sunscreen starts trees setting out new leaves in Italy. I try to think of this when the world seems like a disjointed, straggling place. When I feel like a confused sightseer on an utterly undisciplined planet, I try to see, in my mind, all the many millions of us living our lives lit up by the same sun. It’s like we’re all the offspring of sunlight. We all need the sunshine to restore us each morning, and all of us say thanks, in our own ways, when it does. It’s like we’re living in an infinitely large family that finds comfort together under a light that never leaves us for long, and that illuminates each of our lives in similar ways. Even in our most troublesome times, the sun stays with us like a father for brothers and sisters, like a mother making sure her children are sharing, as one, her unfailing light.