Let There Be Light

I walked into the bathroom this morning, flipped the switch and the light came on.  I realize that for most people this is not an unusual experience.  But our bathroom light is special.  In the words of a friend (describing the windshield wiper on his 1980 pickup truck, which coincidentally had a similar sort of problem) "it's not broken, it just works in a different way".  A few years ago, the light went out.  Experiments with a new bulb and jiggling various wires failed to make it come back on.  We assumed a problem with the wiring.  Fortunately vanity lights and the good old sun keep the room reasonably well lit, and "fix wierd bathroom light" soon fell to the bottom of a very long to-do list.   

The habit of flipping the switch persisted, and a few months later the light came back on.  Over the years this has become a pattern.  The light is off and then, one day, it comes on.  Once it resumes functioning, we have light in the shower for days or weeks, then one day it disappears again.  And because I don't really expect it to work, it has become a pleasant little suprise, an omen of a good day.  Oh look, the light is back on, I say to myself as I get into the shower. And I am cheered by the unaccustomed brightness until it goes away again. 

I have tried to connect the light's moods to various factors -- the temperature, whether we've been walking around in the attic -- but have never found a predictable pattern.  And my response to this intermittent electrical mystery has gotten me thinking about seasons. 

We have seasons, of course.  Times when the weather is different and we need some rearrangements in our wardrobes to move in comfort from our climate-controlled homes to our climate-controlled cars to our climate-controlled offices.  But modern life has pretty much been engineered to obliterate seasonality.  We can buy pineapples and mangos at the supermarket all year long.  If the bed is chilly in mid-winter we don't have to light a fire or add another quilt, we simply punch "up" on the thermostat.  Sweat is an embarrassment to be avoided.  Drafts are just indications that it's time to buy new storm windows.  We feel entitled to all of life's comforts, delivered in thirty minutes or less, all the time.

But the truth is that life's biggest joys are for the most part seasonal.  The tomatos I buy next month at the supermarket just won't taste like the ones I got at the farmer's market in the heat of July.  Next week those beautiful fall leaves on the drive home will have disappeared.  Christmas comes but once a year. Family traditions change.  Friends move away. Our children will not be babies forever, our bodies will not be young and pretty-much-healthy forever, our parents and grandparents will not be around to share our lives forever. 

We all resist change.  When we find something good, we want to hold on.  But I am learning that life has seasons, and that pineapple in January and a life in which "good things" are frozen and preserved so that no new good things can fit into my tightly controlled universe, may blunt the joy of encountering the new and the unexpected, the uncontrollable blessing.  And I wonder, as I shower in a warm glow, whether God might be using my bathroom light as a reminder to bask in the season, while it lasts.