The right light

 

[All pictures real and completely unenhanced except for cropping.]

 

I’ve noticed something interesting as I’ve tried to take pictures of hummingbirds at the feeder outside my bedroom. 

Sometimes a hummingbird will look all normal and mostly brown.

But then, if he turns just right and the sun peeks out from behind the clouds a little, you see that you were wrong and he is not mostly brown.  There is something kind of interesting and cool about him.

Do you see that?  Parts of him are bright red!  And immediately he becomes far more interesting because you have seen this coloration.

And then, just as you’re becoming used to the idea of him as not just your run of the mill plain regular hummingbird, he turns just right, and the sun shines just right, and

Holy Cow!  Hummingbird on Fire!!

And you wonder how it was that you could have not seen that before, how you ever could have missed that brilliance and thought of him as plain and regular.

You come to the conclusion that it must be something about the light shining just right on him that enables you to see his true beauty, and you feel blessed to have seen it.

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It occurred to me this morning as I was sitting here watching another hummingbird, noticing that I could see bright glints of color around his neck even though I don’t have  my glasses on and can’t see really clearly, that this is very much like real life.  How many times do I see a person and think they are ‘just’ normal and plain, mostly brown.  But the truth of the matter is, and I know this in my soul but sometimes it has a hard time registering in my brain, that there are no ‘just normal’ people.  Everyone is magnificent and brilliant in some way…even if the sun isn’t shining on them perfectly so that I can see it right now.  

The challenge for me is to do a better job being true to this knowledge as I interact with people every day…

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship… All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal…
          C. S. Lewis