Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative

by George Wharton James

To suffer and be strong.

So study the stars, get from them all you can. Let their serenity sink into your soul, and their calm peace speak peace to your troubled and restless spirit. Yield to your imagination as to whatever they bring you, and be thankful for every suggestion of largeness, bigness, power, and love.

In his Saul, Browning has David tell how the stars suggested to him the life of the people far away, who dwelt far beyond the possibility of his ever seeking them. How could he, the poor and humble shepherd lad, ever hope to see and know these people? Yet he could picture them. So can you. Let your imagination grow! Let it roam! Enjoy all it gives to you of good and inspiration. Think of the life you might live if you had the power some of these people have, and then seek to live worthy of that larger life even in the restricted sphere in which you are placed.

But there are other things in the heavens, almost as common as the stars, that may become a great and glorious inspiration to you.

I once saw a display of lightning that came to me as a revelation from God. It was so vivid and intense that the friends who were with me, old Arizona pioneers who had braved hundreds of storms, were afraid, and like myself hid their faces in their blankets. But by and by the absurdity of this act struck me;—as if we were safer with our heads covered than if we were taking in the sight in all its sublimity and terrible splendor. So I resolutely cast my blanket aside, and although I had not yet gotten over the shaking of my knees, I stepped to the cabin door and enjoyed the splendid scene to the full.

Who could hope to describe this display so that others can see it, or to be believed if he even attempts to picture the intense and vivid brilliancy of that evening's marvelous fire-works? For a few moments we were enveloped in a "darkness that could be felt," and then, in a moment, what seemed to be hundreds of millions of darting, zig-zag forks of lightning struck downwards through the heavens in every direction. We were encircled in these myriad flashes of vivid violet light that almost blinded us with their brilliancy. For an hour or more this display continued. But it was a sight that I can never forget, and it gave me a new insight, and new thoughts about the glory of God.

I have sat in the grass on a summer night or have walked many a mile both in the South and in the West watching the scintillating, yet soft and delicate, light of the fireflies as they sparkled and twinkled at my feet and in the air all about me. With a sort of irregular yet rhythmic movement they opened and closed their tiny lanterns, and interested, fascinated, and thrilled me by the perfection of their simple beauty.

With equal fascination I have watched the phosphorescent glow on the ocean beach, as the great foam-crested breakers curved over and dashed shoreward, gleaming with that peculiarly weird brilliancy, altogether different from any other light known to man. It is even more fascinating when seen in the amethystine waters of the Gulf of Mexico, as the steamer plows its way through the yielding waters and casts the gleaming and phosphorescent spray from side to side in the otherwise dark and silent night.

Talk about the beauties of Nature! Once begin on such a theme and there seems to be no end. A thousand and one things crowd upon the mind begging, clamoring for utterance in this record, but space forbids. Do not say you cannot see, do not say there is nothing in your immediate surroundings for you. You cannot take a step without glimpsing beauty of some kind if your eyes are awake to observe and your heart to absorb. Only this morning the maid in "doing up my room" in the city of Chicago pointed out the beauty of the black trunks and branches of the trees in the avenue contrasted against the pure white of the snow which had just fallen. Then she remarked that even the smoky buildings were changed into something beautiful and harmonious when the snow came, and she commented upon the fact that she found beauty here that charmed, thrilled, and stimulated her soul, just as much as she did amid the much-described and certainly more glowing and picturesque scenery of California.

Here is the true spirit! Do not repine for the things that are away off and that you cannot have. Take from what you can get, or go resolutely to work to get the more desirable surroundings. But wherever you are absorb that which is now and here presented to you, and thus you will learn to know and appreciate greater and grander things when opportunity places them before you.