Our Lord's Candle

Today I have been contemplating about the different roles we walk through in our lives. This contemplation brought me to looking at different words, childhood, adulthood, neighborhood, parenthood, gangsters as the hood, and even for some sainthood. But each one of these words have the root word hood.  The description of hood in the dictionary is a covering over something, which made me think what are we covering in all these different words?  When all is stripped away, and we return inward to our original source  we find we are the Infinite Light behind these different hoods we have taken on.  Sometimes we do not come to this part of our self until we approach death's door.  Other's may find it when giving birth or an intense life transformation.  There are those who see it in another's eyes when we allow our hearts to open to another and the identity dissolves and all that is left is love.

There are so many ways to arrive at this point one can never really know how this will happen for an individual, but sooner or later we all have to remove the identities of the different hoods we have assumed. When the identities fall away, we discover the Infinite hidden within our mortality.  I would like to call this  "Being Full of Grace"

Little side note; This image of the Blessed Mother is a garden shrine I created in a Catholic School, Marin County about 25 years ago. I went back there a couple of years ago the garden has gone back to the wild, but the shrine still stands.  The desert plant known as yucca is the Sacred Flora I choose for this image. Yucca is also known as Our Lords Candle.  Yucca is also was called the Tower of Ivory a description taken for the Litany to Our Lady of Loreto.  Yucca was used by the South Western Indians as a soap to wash their hair. The Desert Indian used Yucca's tough fibrous leaves to make sandals.  Yucca plant signature is to wash and to purify  It was given the name Our Lords Candle by the Spanish padres , because it delicate flowers  look like a chandelier.