Twilight & Buechner

With the title of this post, one might think I'm going to talk about my favorite books/authors. However, twilight will first and foremost always be a time of day. Not a book about vampires.

Twilight, or dusk, is absolutely my favorite time of day followed closely by sunrise, although I'll save that for another post.

So, twilight. I love the time of day when the sun sets and yet the earth, or my portion of it, is still lit by the suns remanence. Yes, part of it is spiritual for me, I like the symbolism behind the sun leaving and its effect is left behind. And yet part of it is simply the feeling I get at this time of day. Twilight doesn't last long, it's unfortunate lighting for photography, and yet I relish every moment of it. I seek to be outside and experience the fullness of what twilight offers. It's a beautiful time.

The other night, as the sun set, I was walking around part of Baylor's campus. Baylor is a beautiful campus, green (mostly), red brick which echos prestige, and many large shady trees. As I was walking around, I rediscovered another reason for loving dusk. Fireflies or what they call, lightening bugs in Texas. Having my camera with me, I desperately attempted to capture their magnificence on film. Although I caught 4 or 5 in a minute, the video doesn't do justice to the moment.

I read something about 2 years ago that challenged me to think about life a little differently. The article or book spoke about how we, particularly as Americans, take lots of pictures (guilty) in order to remember the moments, but often get so caught up in the taking of pictures that we forget to live the moment.

I was reminded of this truth once again in another book, the Alphabet of Grace by Frederick Buechner. He says,

Forgot yourself in the dream of daily life, Tolstoy says, and forget myself, yes. To forget myself in the very process of being myself, I ask no better. Perhaps there is no gift more precious than the gift of spontaneity, the ability of certain men an animals to act straight and fresh and self-forgettingly out of the living center of who they are without the paralyzing intervention of self-awareness. But the dream of daily life, no....I don't want to dream this day out. I want to live this day out. I want to live this day out as though it were the first day of my life because that is of course what it is....Live a day of it and see. Take any day and be alive in it. Nobody claims that it will be entirely painless, but no matter. Live this day out.

So I sat. And I listened. And I watched as the fireflies danced around in the cool air of the evening.

I love these moments!