Sister Doreen’s Reflections
One of the smiling discoveries of some profound encouragement for reflection has been the little packages of Splenda … and the message written on the backside of the package. Today as I opened one for my decaf-coffee I read “CREATE your own sunshine”.
I began to recall songs from my past, songs that had a great influence on me, and like many things from our past while it may have had an influence, the poignancy and the thrilling discovery of a new ‘truth’ fades. So, when this message on the Splenda package came, it was as a gift, it brought back into the present a new opportunity for reflection.
“You are my Sunshine”: For me this song was made popular and became very meaningful in the 1970’s when sung by Jimmie Davis and several others, but really captured my attention when Anne Murray sang it as her own release at the beginning of 2001. I was just recovering from a heart attack and by-pass surgery. As is true of many popular songs, portions of them I find also become prayers of longing in my life as I reached out from my own darkness for a deeper relationship with God, with myself, and with those I live with, and for our world.
So today as I stirred the Splenda into my coffee, stirring in the message ‘Create your own Sunshine’, and as I drank it, I recalled the words that have laid dormant, perhaps even faded, gave thanks for this new gift, and offered them once again to God: “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey. You’ll never know, Dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.” The chorus of Anne Murray’s song has always been the words that I direct to myself in response to that longing for letting God be my Sunshine. Those words are the challenge that follows my prayer: “So let the Sun shine in, face it with a grin. Smilers never lose and frowners never win. So let the sun shine in, face it with a grin, open up your heart and let the sun shine in.”
This is not about being a ‘Pollyanna’ towards life, an irrepressible optimism that doesn’t face the reality of life as it is or the world as it is. There is a call, more important today than ever before, to dare to hope, to have a hope that is not defeated by circumstances. It is so much easier to be indifferent or pessimistic or feeling overwhelmed or defeated. Hope is an act of daring, of not being afraid to see reality for what it is, for accepting the contradictions of life. We dare to hope because we know, we have the expectation, that God calls into being a new thing for the future. Or as Pope Francis said: “Christian hope is the expectation of something that has already been fulfilled.” This act of daring – hope – is the challenge to find ways to help make more visible now the future that God’s promises have already secured for us. It is a call on our part to work, to take action, in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, even as we face an uncertain future. It will often feel like we are entering darkness, but at the same time we are determined to walk to the light.
It is the words of the song that inspire me to know that there are important reasons to act, to love, and to hope. To actually turn on the sun, to create my own sunshine. It is surprising how much the smile that lightens up our faces can brighten the hearts of those around us.
Joan Chittister makes it clear in her book “Scared by Struggle, Transformed by Hope” that hope never exists on its own, it is always interwoven with struggle and pain. She says that hope is rooted in the past but believes in the future, for God’s world is in God’s hands. Hope is in the struggle, and it gifts us with opportunities for change, for courage, for resilience and for many other life changing and life enhancing gifts. She says: “Hope, on the other hand, takes life on its own terms, knows that whatever happens God lives in it, and expects that, whatever its twists and turns, it will ultimately yield its good to those who live it consciously, to those who live it to the hilt.“ She goes on to say: “Hope says, remember where you have been before and know that God is waiting for you someplace else now, to go on again to something new .. Life is not one road, it is many roads, the walking of which provides the raw material out of which we find hope in the midst of despair. Every dimension of the process of struggle is a call to draw from a well of new understandings. It is in these understandings that hope dwells. It is that wisdom that carries us beyond the dark night of struggle to the dawn of new wisdom and new strength.”
Nana Mouskouri sang another song “Turn on the Sun” that I find myself often singing in the midst of bad times, and perhaps it is a fitting way to end this reflection. It’s a song that was originally written by Mitch Murray / Peter Callander.
Turn on the sun, turn on the sun, light up the world, come everyone.
Turn off the wind, thunder, and rain, turn on the sun, let’s smile again.
Turn on the sun, let’s smile again.
Thinker, tailor man, radiate all the love you can.
Lawyer, engineer, let your heart be a pioneer.
Turn on the sun, turn on the sun, open the doors, come tell everyone.
Bad times are out, good times are in, turn on the sun, let’s smile again.
Turn on the sun, let’s smile again.
Minors, steeple-jack warm emotions are coming back.
Sailor, stevedore here’s a message you can’t ignore.
Turn on the sun, turn on the sun, light up the world, come everyone.
Turn off the wind, thunder, and rain, turn on the sun, let’s smile again.
Gather up all the goodness in you, turn on the sun, turn on the sun.
What a world when we are all thinking good, turn on the sun, let’s smile again.
Turn on the sun, turn on the sun, open the doors, come tell everyone.
Bad times are out, good times are in, turn on the sun, let’s smile again.
Turn on the sun, let’s smile again.
