Illuminating light

This is a weird picture.  It does not capture my bedroom accurately.  For one thing, I'm usually pretty meticulous about making my bed.  (I took the picture before I made my bed this morning, to illustrate a point about how sunshine falls on the linens.)  For another thing, the room is a lot more symmetrical than the photo makes it appear; the dimensions in this shot are oddly warped.  My bed, for example, is level in real life, and the light fixture is smack in the center of the room.  The way this cellphone camera foreshortens things is astounding. (I especially recoil at what it does to the nose on my face.)

However, this picture does capture the bright morning light.

Seriously.  I love midsummer.  I am not going to nay-say the week of summer solstice.  I live all year in anticipation of the longest day (or, in this case maybe the second-or-third-to-longest day, since there was a monsoon on the longest day).  The longest days of summer are my favorite, the absolute triumph of life, and a glorious foretaste of our eternal life to come.

But.

Yes, but.  Early mornings are brutal these days, as the fierce sun rises and explodes in through my bedroom window onto my bed at something like 5:15am.

I've not been sleeping particularly well as of late, so often when I awaken for the second or third time, around 3:30 or 4:00am, realizing that there is only about an hour of darkness left for sleeping, I relocate to my study on the northwest corner of the house.  There, I can nest on my cozy futon, which comes accessorized with a small, cuddly, brown dog, and I can sleep until 7:30 with no sunshine blasting through my eyelids.

See the flopped-out doggy on the left?  He likes to nestle in the crook of my knees, which is fine until I want to turn over, but still.

Lesson of the Day:  Find a dimmer place to sleep, when you need to.  It's okay.

Another Lesson:

When you are seeking to become a better listener, ask the Lord to grant you the humility to be compassionate to the person speaking.  Listen "between the lines."

It is a prideful thing to claim, "You said X, and that means X," and then interrupt someone's attempts to clarify, insisting, "No. You said X."

It is actually cruel to accuse someone of lying when the person is trying to clarify what was meant by what may have been unintentionally clumsy words.  We all choose the wrong words sometimes.  Be kind in the way you would hope others would be kind to you.  Give people a chance.  That's grace.

A listener is not a good listener if the listener listens with a goal to trap and judge rather than to understand and build bridges.

It is a sign of humility and compassion to ask for clarification, or at least to accept clarification when someone tries to give it.   Conversations are not about besting, "winning," attacking unfortunate word choices and triumphantly declaring someone else to be in the wrong, despite protests or even apologies.  This style of communication bears bitter fruit.

We all long to be heard and understood.  Yes, there are manipulators.  God will deal with them.  We need to approach one another with humility, compassion and a desire to understand.

Do you know, you find the best in people far more often if you look for it.  Look for the best, and listen between the lines.  Grace yields sweet fruit.