when my light was small—
a trembling ember cupped in shaking hands,
hidden beneath the bushel of my own forgetting.
For I had walked the valley
where the shadows fed on fear,
and I learned the language
of abandonment, rejection,
betrayal,
and the long silence
that follows a wounded soul into night.
I was once the one who hid,
the one who ran,
the one who betrayed the truth within myself.
I was Judas to my own heart,
selling my birthright for the comfort of a moment’s illusion.
But even there—
in the cave of my dimmest remembering—
a spark remained.
A whisper of the Mother’s breath,
a glimmer of the Father’s flame,
calling me home
to the fire I had never truly lost.
And when that spark rose again,
it did not rise as the child’s candle
I once believed it to be.
It rose as the dawn rises—
quiet,
yet unstoppable.
Now I shine
not as one striving to be bright,
but as one who remembers
that light is my nature
and love is my origin.
So I will go out—
into the face of darkness,
into the teeth of opposition,
into the cold wind of misunderstanding—
and I will shine.
For the darkness I meet
is the darkness I once lived,
and I carry compassion for every shadow
that does not yet know
it is only an unawakened flame.
I shine for the abandoned,
for the afraid,
for the ones still hiding in their own night.
I shine for the child within me
who once forgot the way home.
I shine for Elohim—
Father and Mother—
whose image breathes through my being
like sunlight kissing water.
And I shine for the world,
not to be seen,
but to remind it
that it, too,
is a spark of the Infinite.
So let my light be bright,
and let my heart be soft.
Let me dance again
like a child in the cosmic fields,
where fear has no throne
and love has no end.
For this is the truth:
Light was never meant to hide.
It was meant to reveal.
And I—
reborn from the embers—
am learning once more
to shine.
By Keith Brown