A Tiny Light

After publishing In Your Bones I was looking for a way to communicate the power and joy that comes next in healing. Much to my chagrin the idea of tiny lights kept popping up. That image seemed far too much of a cliche to be useful. However, it refused to stop popping up. I knew that if I was going to use it I would have to flesh out exactly what I meant by it and how it would be used. This poem came out of the struggle to define for myself what “tiny lights” or “a tiny light” might mean. You will see the poem in its entirety here because it came to represent how to go forward. That process led not only to this poem, but the name of this website, the A Tiny Light Facebook Page, and numerous other iterations of the idea.

• Close your eyes and see yourself as one tiny light. Now see yourself standing among billions of other tiny lights. Breathe in your light, breathe out into all the others, again and again.

• Read the poem one stanza at a time stopping to meditate on the images and power of each one. Think, too, about the shadow side of light- trying to deny our light, the potential for flames running amok, etc.

• How can we honor the spark inside of us? We must not let it become a mere cliche, only a flicker, clouded over, or in danger of outshining ourselves or others.

  To be one tiny light among billions is truly enough.