Holiday Perspectives: Sunsets and Family Gatherings

Some friends offered us their condo in Coronado for this past week.  The unit is on the 9th floor with impressive views of the Pacific, and one night I took this photo of the sunset.  

Seeing our environment from a higher vantage point helps us see beyond our up-close, on-the-ground view of life. We see where we are and what’s around us more clearly. 

While here, we celebrated Thanksgiving with some of our own family and my wife’s sister’s family.  Altogether there were 14 adults and 9 children.  

I’ve heard that all photographs have three levels: bottom, middle and top. In my photograph, the bottom is the pool and shoreline; the middle is the ocean; and the top is the sky.  As I looked at our gathering, I realized there were three groups:  the 9 kids all under the age of 10 who are coming up in the world; the group of adults and parents who are in the middle of their journeys; and the four of us grandparents.  I also became aware of who was not there…parents, grandparents, and friends with whom I’ve shared holidays over the years who now live only in my memory.

I recognized that I was the oldest person present. I’m in the top third of that photo — I am approaching my sunset. But I am also beholding the sun rising and shining in the lives and faces of the children and younger adults we were with.

It again brings to mind a talk I once heard at the local Lobero Theater given by my beloved mentor and scholar of world spirituality, Huston Smith. Someone asked him what he thinks will happen when we die.  He said there are two common ideas. One is that we will be able to forever experience something like the sun rising. The other is that we will be absorbed into the sunlight.  He smiled and said if he was given a choice, he’d watch the sunrise. But after a few thousand years, he assumes he will have had enough. At that point he’d be ready to merge into it.