The Sun of God

It's a cloudy morning here on the coast. A fairly cool and dismal looking sort of day. The type of day that is just perfect for either bundling up and walking on a storm-swept beach, if you're into that sort of thing, or cuddling up in a thick blanket with a nice hot mug of cocoa and a good book, if you're not.

Or, if you're like me, sitting on the computer tossing a few thoughts down on the virtual paper.

This morning, while looking through Gleanings, I ran across the following passage:

Consider the sun. Were it to say now, "I am the sun of yesterday," it would speak the truth. And should it, bearing the sequence of time in mind, claim to be other than that sun, it still would speak the truth. In like manner, if it be said that all the days are but one and the same, it is correct and true. And if it be said, with respect to their particular names and designations, that they differ, that again is true. For though they are the same, yet one doth recognize in each a separate designation, a specific attribute, a particular character.

I just love this piece, on so many levels.

In the original, Baha'u'llah is talking about the essential unity of the various Manifestations, and how They are all the same, in the spiritual realms. And this is a wonderful explanation that I have paraphrased so many times over the years. I just love it.

But what really gets me, at least this morning, is the new perspective of the sun itself. I mean, really, how many times do we consider the perspective of the actual sun?

Just think about it. We experience time by the rising of the sun, the changing of the seasons. Our entire concept of time, at least until we developed atomic clocks, was based around the sun. And if we think that it might have been lunar based, just remember that our measuring of lunar time is due to the moon's reflection of the sunlight. Even that is such a powerful metaphor.

But all of this is only due to our very limitation of experience by being trapped on the surface of this planet. The earth itself rotates under our feet. We cannot help it. We cannot stop it. The earth is hurtling around in such a manner that every 24 hours, or so, it rotates on its axis and we experience the rising and setting of the sun. Due to its orbital movement, we experience the changing of the seasons.

This is all beyond our control, and we just take it for granted.

So much of what we experience is solely due to our circumstances.

But then, consider the sun.

The sun doesn't experience time as we do.

It just burns. It processes its hydrogen and helium, and radiates its light. It casts its glow in all directions, unconcerned about the various bodies zipping around it. The sun just is.

The very concept of a day is ridiculous in the perspective of the sun. After all, how is it any different 24 hours from now? Or 48 hours hence? Or in a week? A month? A year? What possible difference could it see between the years 117 and 2017? It still shines on.

And in the end, isn't this a most beautiful aspect of the metaphor of the sun as God?

It makes the cloudy day almost irrelevant to me. After all, if I just go up a little ways, above the clouds, then the sun is still shining.

Mind you, though, it is still a little chilly today.

Maybe I will just curl up in that blanket now and read.