The Shadow

     Lying in the grass, I look up from my reading and watch the shadow of the building approach. Just inches away, the shadow represents the coming close of the day. With only a few hours left, this time of warmth and light, this momentary spring, will soon give way to a cold, dark winter night.
     Welcoming the time in the sun with flip-flops and t-shirts, a new optimism filled the campus during this warmth. Walking across campus, I cannot miss the many people taking advantage of it, studying, reading, and chatting outside. This afternoon, I studied in the sun, allowing its light and warmth to rejuvenate my spirit. I cannot help but enjoy this rare moment to lie in the grass and relax.
     Looking down at my biology book, I think of the glory of the sun, or rather one component of it – its light. I think of the beautiful processes by which this light enters plants, transforming into life giving sugars. Water, air, and sunlight, transforming into the wonderfully complex molecules from which all life derives its energy. I think of the path that energy follows until it enters us, driving our brains, allowing us to read, to write, to build, to fly, to know and understand this complex world, and finally, providing us with the heat that keeps us alive.
     The shadow draws closer now, almost touching the edge of the grass. I glance up to the cause of this shadow. The large glass building stands tall at the edge of the square. I squint at the bright sun, hovering just over the top edge of the building. My heart yearns for it to remain in that spot, providing the light and warmth that pulled me out of my dorm to study outside.
     It cannot last. Despite my deepest desires, the sun sinks lower and the shadow creeps closer. As this grey shadow begins to cover my body and the grass around me, a soft cool breeze picks up and the temperature drops noticeably. I do not yet need my sweater, but the time draws nearer.
     As I consider moving inside, I look around and realize some warmth, some hope remains. This long, cold shadow has yet to cover most of the campus. Many people still sit, enjoying the sun, not aware of the impending cold night. My gaze travels further, out of the square to the white peaks beyond the campus buildings. Long after the valley lies in shadow, the mountains will reach up into the path of the sun’s rays, continuing to receive light and warmth.
     Perhaps this is why holy places are always equated with high places, with mountains. The mountains receive the last light, the last glory from the sun. Though the light will remain for some time; though those tall, beautiful mountain peaks will be illuminated for hours longer, the night will come. The cold will set in. Even these mountains, thousands of feet above me, will fall under the shadow as the sun drops below the horizon. Even these, where light and glory remain the longest, a long, dark night will fall. And there at the peaks, the highest places in the world, the nights are the loneliest and coldest.
Without the heat and light from the sun, the warmth from the day will seep out of the ground, out of the cement and dirt and wood that make up this terrestrial sphere. It will seep out into an infinitely colder outer space, dissipating into virtually nothing.
     It becomes apparent that all that protects us from the irreversible seep and dissipation is the heat our bodies produce, a heat that cannot long battle the overwhelming chill of space. We use machines to produce heat, but machines use energy living things collected from the sun millennia ago; our clothes hold in our heat, but we produce it by consuming energy other beings collected from the sun. Ultimately, the source of all energy and heat is the sun. Without its return, our sphere, with all of its life, would become a cold, dead sphere, with all of its heat lost to cold space long before.
     But hope is not lost. Tomorrow, the sun will return. Tomorrow, that dissipated heat will be replaced. Tomorrow, those same peaks that were the last to lose the light and glory will be the first to receive them again. Upon this hope all life relies: that the morning will come, that the light and life of the world will return, spreading its glory over the face of all the earth.