Do you have a happy place? A place you return to now and again sometimes for no reason, or when you do have a reason. I have a few like maybe you do too. This one below is almost exactly like the one I went to, eons ago, on a hill next to a forsaken lighthouse. It had lilies though, and a brick path with fallen out gate, I’d wait to hop over it and onto wild bush of Touch-me -nots.

The sheer smallness of the chapel was magnified by the amount of light falling in it, through it, it lit up chinks in the woodwork, so when you looked at it from the outside it was like a small house on fire. Emotional, some would say. But I’ve grown past mere emoticons. There was a Stillness in there that got into me. It defied, and still defies human conditions for joy. It stilled my father’s bad temper at being pulled out of bed to be on time for service 7 am. My Ma was the prettiest warrior I ever saw; when she sang the sun shone specially on her, her curls lit up with fire and faith in the God who taught her how to bring up us three girls all on her own with dad away on postings all over India. She taught us how to be Indian traditionals, yet free of false humility, how she did that I do not know.

when I return to the memory of that first chapel ever, I’m reminded of how small I am in the vastness of an era I do not understand. I’m reminded of fearlessness, of the brilliance of Light as It un-hides the dark- exposing areas in my life that needn’t be subject to human frailty. And I love how freeing that is, to lean on Light and feel Its’ pressure on my skin, on my senses even, and on my human spirit so frighteningly prone to Self-reliance. Which in itself is a good thing. And some days, the human spirit wants to lean on a Thing bigger than us. No matter the fuss and kick at higher strength, humans like/want/need the Infinite whether in affairs of mathematics or promises. We need the falling in love then the expectation of that Significant Other who needs be that Leaner-On. Some of us need a Festival, a Shopping Mall, Online heroes, or Plates of This and That. We go low, then high on things that will transform us via vein, brain.

Today I’m leaning on the One that found me in Unexpected Places, else I’d not have noticed Him. Else I’d have been suspicious of too much goodness, or Structure based mementoes that Transform our inner spaces irrespective of life as is visual, aural, tactile….