I stood facing west once and watched a mountain dance, watched it change slowly, from the first timid breaking of light to the final remoteness and inevitable return of darkness – absorption and radiation… green slopes upwards to the grey summit, spotted here and there with green. During the long dance of the mountains day, the clouds came and went, changing the intensity of light, the intensity of green or grey or white.

By midday the colors, vibrant in the absorption of light, delighted in their creativity and re-imagined the mountain into being. All too soon though, the intensity of light waned and the mountain and I passed from vibrancy into hushed waiting. The early mountain evening came and when the shadow of the mountain at last overtook me, I found myself still waiting, longing to recede with the green into the dark where there are no colors, only a darker shade of black to remind me of their presence.

It was then that I began to wonder: is the shadow of the mountain merely itself getting in the way of what makes it a mountain?

An amazing thing, color. From the embracing  source of light, an object absorbs all colors, keeps some for itself, and radiates one back to us, the beholders.

Is it the same with me and the two faces of my soul  – one to the cosmos, one to the world? Which do I absorb, which do I radiate? How does the light of the cosmos bend as it passes through me? All of the colors of the cosmos in me, can I radiate them all to the world?

And what of my seasons? Does the color radiated through the world-face of my soul change in times of hurt? In times of joy? Is there always the color of my soul going out to the world?

And is my shadow merely my ego standing between me and what makes me human? Between me and the radiation of my soul into the world? I am suddenly thankful for the shadow; without the light of the cosmos, there would be no shadow.