Dear God,
In St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians (1:12-20), we read that each of us, your children here on earth, has a trust fund (yah!):

Brothers and sisters: Let us give thanks to the Father, who has made you fit to share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light. He delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption.

So on this feast of Christ the King, God, we can all celebrate our inheritance . . . deliverance to the light.
Some of us down here may get more excited over a 12-acre waterfront property on Cape Cod, or a 120-foot yacht named after a waitress at Hooters, or a 30-inch flat screen computer monitor than we would over … light?
But I’m willing to bet any person who has struggled with mental illness would take the light in a heartbeat, because the heart can’t beat without light.
The other night, I picked up a book called “What Once Was White,” written by Samantha Abeel, who, at the time she wrote the book, was an adolescent girl in Traverse City, Michigan struggling with learning disabilities and anxiety.
Her poem, “Sunrise,” reads,

Silently in the darkness
pale and hushed
I dream about this still cold world.
Opening my eyes,
waiting to part the curtain of night,
I ascend
and the grass, once black, is green
stretching towards the sky.
The wind yawns through the trees
and I gently caress the darkness from their leaves
and whisper “Wake.”
The birds take flight
carrying my light upon their wings.
I behold this newly born world
and whisper in the ears of those who
covet darkness,
“You can’t keep out the light.”

It reminded me of the words of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s villanelle composed in 1951, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” which so many of my friends (including Larry Parker, Lynne, and other Beyond Blue readers) quote as a directive against darkness, as a way of hanging on to the last bit of hope when dreams are smothered by despair:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

It seems like I wake up each morning raging against the dying of the light. Every effort in my day from the moment I drink my first cup of coffee onward (because before then doesn’t really count, does it?) is about preserving hope, fighting against the weeds of self-destructive, illogical, and self-delusional thinking—trying my hardest to carve a passageway for light.
If I really am to share in the “”inheritance of the holy ones in light,” as the reading for today says, this is the best news I’ve heard since Dove Chocolate came out with its bag of dark chocolate squares. (Go to their website by clicking here to check out their products!)
I do have one question, however: When, exactly, do I get this this inheritance? I can’t speak for any of your other children, God, but I think it would be nice to have three lump payments . . . at the ages of 35, 43, and 50 … (or better yet with each hospitalization?) so to allow the enjoyment of some of this light before my death, while keeping intact some guidelines for my brothers and sisters who don’t know how to budget and might spend all their light in one afternoon at Sacs.
I know. I know. I know. Your kingdom doesn’t run like that of Donald Trump’s. Benefactors don’t necessarily know they’re in line to inherit massive heaps of light. And the ones most confident that they are usually end up surprised in the end, or at least that’s what you always say in your book, the Bible. Moreover, unlike the estate of billionaire J. Howard Marshall (Marshall v. Marshall), family members aren’t suing each other for shares of light.
And here’s the part I like, as a depressive battling a few other illnesses: the healthy folks who have been spared the ugliness of despair and suffering don’t really understand what is meant by light. Only the sickies and those who have begged God to take them home early so that they wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of ending their own lives themselves, can truly appreciate the gift of hope, and know instinctively that is a divine sort-of-thing that can’t be manufactured by Procter and Gamble.
St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians goes on to say that in God’s beloved Son “all things hold together.”
I’m thinking that includes my bipolar brain? Yes?
If so, I would like to thank you, God. Because I need a lot of holding together. That’s where your light comes in handy. It’s like glue. Super Glue. And I’m like the guy in the Super Glue commercial, hanging over a construction site swinging my legs, my helmet Super-Glued to the steel scaffolding. That’s us, God.
If I can remember to “rage against the dying of the light,” like Dylan Thomas wrote, and if I can “whisper in the ears of those who covet darkness, ‘You can’t keep out the night,'” then I can wait in hope and in anticipation of my inheritance of light, as well as enjoy the small disbursements of it here on earth.