May is Mental Health Awareness month.
On this Day 3, I choose the word “life.”
The Fourth Gospel begins with a powerful image:
“In him was life,
and that life was the light of all mankind.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Much of what we describe as “mental health” is vitality:
a being-in-touch with life as Source;
a shining bright in daily life.
Life is not just a temporal process that begins and ends: we are not a candle that consumes itself to give light.
Rather, we are like the Moon—
in itself not light, but that shines ever more glowingly by being receptive to a Light beyond itself.
Darkness comes—but no darkness can overcome the Moon: indeed, Night itself just reveals the Moon’s light even more brightly.
So it is with each one of us:
being vital and healthy is not our doing;
it is only our receiving;
and no worry, anxiety or regret will change the basic fact of life given to us as gift.
Like the Moon, that is not in itself light but still shines in darkness,
to be “healthy” is to be receptive to all that life brings… without judgment or resistance.
All of it is life-giving … when received with gratitude as it IS.
“Mental health” is a living in gratitude,
in the trust that we can let go of all control:
for while “the body indeed keeps the score,”
the body is also not the last word.
Our “soul” shines with vitality even in physical frailty … just as bodily health shrivels when the soul is restless, anxious … feeling less than ourselves.
In the beginning, we received life generously.
What follows next is just that we are called to … rest.
