return of the light
Dear friend,
I am astonished by the return of the light as spring blooms slowly in the valley. I had forgotten how the winter changed not only the duration but also the quality of the light. In these in-between days the wind blows cold but the sun shines hot on our skin, and I got my first sunburn of the season the other day just by spending the morning in a friend’s backyard.
Even before the spring time change that just this past Sunday took one of our sunlit morning hours and gave it to our evenings, the light lingered late for our first climbing outing of the season on Friday. This allowed us many hours at the rock with a group of our young climbers despite our late start (we picked them up after they got out of school for the day). We went to Balomir—the crag closest to us, and only a short, steep, well-trodden hike up from where we’re able to leave the cars. The afternoon stretched on and on as we climbed routes named Veronica, Aurica, and My Lady (easy, medium, and hard respectively) and we soaked in the long, gentle softening of the light as the sun made its way closer to the mountain ridge towards evening. We took in every last moment, scurrying to take down the routes when the sun finally slipped out of view and left us in the chill of a deepening shadow. We ran down the forest trail as darkness chased us, and by the time we got to the cars, night had fallen—a sweet summer kind of night, just cold enough to want to build a campfire, which some men had done by the creek that ran strong with melted snow. A fine mist had settled in the blue of the evening and some bird kept singing a trilling sort of song. I breathed it all in like I had gone without air for quite some time.
If we look for it, we can find beauty in the darkness of winter with its shy and tardy mornings and its eager early evenings and the deepness of the long nights. But there’s something about the light of spring that just calls for rejoicing—you can’t help but delight in it. I’m writing from Alba Iulia where I came with a friend to spend a weekend away, and spring is even more fully underway here outside of our mountain-shadowed valley. The trees are bursting with white blooms, the afternoons are warm, and in the mornings the apartment where we are lodged is just swimming with light. It is a hopeful season, one that you feel you can grow in, one that promises some sort of change on the horizon. And so we make our plans for gardens and for foraging, for afternoons at crags and weekends at monasteries, and the days open up so as to make room for our dreamings. May we inhabit them well and fully.
With joy,
Xenia
P.S. By the time I’m able to post this letter just a few days after writing it we have awoken to zapada mieilor or “lamb’s snow” (snow that unexpectedly falls after the lambs have been born) and a cold snap that has pulled the valley back into a sort of winter limbo…but the light remains! The warmth must soon follow.
And then this, another surprise (for those who know a bit of my struggle over the past two and half years with my left eye): at my ophthalmologist appointment on Tuesday in Timisoara I was given news that made me nearly cry of joy in the clinic: my eye has been stable since my last injection in November and so we will stop injections all together for the foreseeable future. There was a time I thought I would have to endure the monthly injections for the rest of my life. Through the doctors’ care and the Romanian healthcare system’s ability to give me access to a medication that was not available to me in my home country, through the love and generosity of friends who drove me four hours to Timisoara and four hours back on my injection days, and most importantly through the intercessions of my family, friends, and our blessed Saint Lucia, God has answered my prayers in the most beautiful of ways. I am overwhelmed with gratitude and astonished indeed by this light!
Christ, the true light,
You enlighten and sanctify every man who comes in to the world.
Make the light of Your countenance to shine upon us, that in it we may see Your unapproachable light, and guide our steps that we may keep Your commandments.
By the intercessions of Your most pure Mother and of all Your saints. AMEN.
