Ain't No Sunshine

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I'm posting this for myself, since I had forgotten exactly which numbers on plastic can be recycled.  I see (again) that it's #1-5 and #7.  It's that #6 that we are not supposed to recycle.  I took this photo of the screen during a presentation we had in the Weinberg Lounge back in July 2018.  It seems so long ago, but that's because it's been "years" since we began lockdown in March.

Today started off gloomy, and it stayed gloomy.  My spirits seemed to go down, down, down all day, and I was feeling very negative.  A song title popped into my head:  Ain't No Sunshine.  I googled to find it on YouTube (click the link, if you want to listen to the song).

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
It's not warm when she's away.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone,
And she's always gone too long
Anytime she goes away.

And feeling down, I added mentally, "Ain't no sunshine when EVERYBODY is gone, when I'm isolated from the whole community, only seeing people out my window jogging or walking their dogs."  Music didn't lift my spirits, so I went on Facebook and it was another downer, reading about what's going on in the world.  I was flat on my back on my bed, staring out the window, when the sun suddenly brightened my day.  I actually looked at the time:  5:54 pm.  I smiled.  It was sunny and beautiful.  I did, truly, feel uplifted — and I smiled — for mere seconds.

A shadow fell over the building across from me, and I watched that little patch of sunshine float away through my neighborhood.  "Noooooooo!" I thought.  "No, no, no!"  But it was gone.  Still, I felt less depressed for that less-than-a-minute splash of sunshine.  I marveled at it, that a few seconds of light can make such a difference.  About ten minutes later, another patch of sunshine rolled in, and I smiled.  The clouds kept showing me patches of sun, then more overcast until it stayed sunny for quite a while.  My whole day improved.

So let's flip the atmosphere in this post.  Here's something upbeat that happened after the sun arrived.  I saw TWO birds fly into that vent across from me, one after the other.  I wonder if that means there are now baby birds to be fed.  It's been a couple of days since I told that story about the birds, so here's the link, in case you missed it before.  It's dark now, but the sun even late in the day was uplifting, and I wanted to share it with you.

The Sacrifice of Isaac, a 1635 painting by Rembrandt

On Thursday, I shared the idea of a TED Talk by Noah, as suggested by Joanna Harader.  Here's another of her suggestions.  What do you think Abraham would say to us?  Here's the title of that imagined talk, along with the gist of what Abraham might tell us.

Don’t Sacrifice the Vulnerable

How I thought I had to prove my faith by killing my son but turns out I was wrong and putting my son in harm’s way wasn’t really what God wanted.