You Better Bring Your Own Sun

"Oh! could we make our doubts remove,
Those gloomy doubts that rise,
And see the Canaan that we love
With unbeclouded eyes."

We listened to this hymn in church this morning and a tremor of sorrow and recognition struck me.

Unbeclouded.

I long to see my own city with unbeclouded eyes.

I have been struggling with the fogginess of San Francisco in my first few summer weeks. The eerie cloudedness seems to enhance the gloomy thoughts residing inside of me... the remaining grief from my cross country move which I have been trying desperately at various times to avoid, endure or sidestep. In some moments, the heaviness of the grief feels like too much. (And this smothering fog doesn't help.)

My roommate K. and I were taking a driving tour of the city last week and she commented on the strangeness of San Francisco compared to the other fair weathered Californian metropolises which surround us. She explained that if you just drive an hour north, south, west or heck, just right over the Golden Gate: the curtain of fog opens up and, behold, the sun is there.

The sun still exists!

(Okay, yes, I apologize. The melodrama is to enhance the effect.)

But I started thinking about it and I fell in love with the notion that the sun is as big and as bright and as beautiful as ever, as it has always been. Only that momentarily it's brilliance and it's heat is covered and overshadowed from where I am currently standing, from my physical perspective.

The Floridians and the Bahamians in this same moment are contentedly soaking up their supple rays, as happily as ever.

There is something about the image, the memory of the sun still shining brightly that helped melt away some of the cloudedness of my dark thoughts.

And then I allowed myself to start looking at the city in a different way. Walking home after church today I realized that the hills and the houses and the white trimming and the fog are all pieces of a whole. The gloomy cloudedness is part of this city's beauty. It is part of the same portrait. Just then and only then did I notice the other elements standing out, contrasted against the darkness... the whimsy of pastel houses, the tingling coolness of the wind and the huge, gorgeous blue bay... I get a scenic, breathtaking glimpse as I reach the top of a peak in Nob Hill.

What else would I see if I were to glance upon this city with unbeclouded eyes?...

Perhaps an unbeclouded vision does not require sun.

Perhaps it means remembering the sunshine and seeing the beauty that lives in spite of the darkness.