Welcome to The Light, your quiet moment of reflection in the middle of the day.
In the hills of northern Iraq, Yazidi women who once fled the terror of ISIS have returned — not to rebuild homes, but to clear the ground beneath them. They train as demining specialists, walking slowly through the earth their people once fled, reclaiming it inch by inch. There is something almost sacred in that patience, that refusal to let violence have the final word.
From reclamation of land, we turn to reclamation of self. In the streets of Southeast Asia, a young man named Chu Prayad finds in sepak takraw — that breathtaking sport of acrobatic kicks and woven rattan balls — something the road cannot give him. Precision. Grace. A body that answers to him. Sport, at its quietest, is a form of coming home.
And from Rome, Cardinal Czerny received a sustainability medal this week and spoke with urgency about protecting the environment, calling on all of us to change not just our policies but our habits, our daily behaviors, the small choices that accumulate into the world we leave behind. Laudato Si' reminds us that the earth is not ours to consume, but ours to tend.
That's this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
