I returned today from two different retreats held on consecutive days. One focused on spiritual practices for anxiety and the other on grief. I probably won’t do that combination again.
The retreats themselves were meaningful, but I entered already feeling a bit emotionally burned out and then spent two days surrounded by a talkative group carrying some very heavy things. Somewhere on day two, I realized what I probably needed wasn’t more reflection, conversation, or processing.
I think I needed more silence. Solitude. Less input.
Oh well. Here we are.
(Random side note: I was the only male attendee among 30 people, most of whom were over 60 years old. Unfortunately, I don’t have a group picture…though I wish I did.)
Oddly enough, the moment that stayed with me most from the retreats had very little to do with anxiety or grief directly. An elderly woman named Pat and I ended up talking about the spaces in our homes that bring us the most peace. She started describing the role of light in her favorite room. Morning light, specifically. The way it enters. The feeling of it. The comfort. She went on and on and I was with her every step of the way.
At some point, in the middle of two emotionally dense days, two strangers found a surprising amount of joy talking about light.
Not “filmmaking light.” Just the ordinary kind.
The kind of light that quietly shifts the feeling of an entire room. The kind that turns a kitchen into a sanctuary for fifteen minutes before work. The kind that accompanies grief at 6am, joy around a dinner table, loneliness in the middle of winter, or peace on an ordinary afternoon when nothing remarkable is happening at all.
I realized afterward that I’d never really had a conversation with a stranger centered entirely around light before, which struck me as strange because light plays such a massive role in our emotional lives. It is present in some of our most peaceful moments and some of our most sorrowful ones. It fills hospital rooms, childhood bedrooms, churches, kitchens, funeral homes, early mornings after loss, and evenings where everything feels okay for a little while.
Light becomes the canvas beneath so much of being human, yet we rarely talk about it. At least I don’t. And definitely not with non-filmmakers.
We talk about sadness, joy, anxiety, memories. But rarely the light that held those moments.
I left wondering if maybe part of why our conversation felt so unexpectedly joyful was because appreciation itself can be healing. Not solving. Not fixing. Just noticing. Maybe wonder is underrated. Maybe pausing long enough to notice something as ordinary as light softens us a little. Maybe it reminds us there is beauty accompanying our lives in ways we almost never acknowledge.
I don’t know.
But even in a retreat centered around grief, two people eventually found themselves orienting toward light.
Maybe we all do.
I’m exhausted after these past couple of days, but I realized I had a few photos from the other day of light moving through my living room.
Seemed fitting.
Enjoy.
