Welcome to The Light, where we pause together in the quiet hours.
Father Chad Ripperger, an exorcist with the Archdiocese of Denver, sat recently with Shawn Ryan for a three-hour conversation about spiritual warfare. His counsel was spare and searching — be willing to suffer. In an age that avoids discomfort, that invitation lands with uncommon weight.
Suffering of a different kind surfaces in the work of Toni Morrison, whose novel traces the friendship of Nel and Sula, bound since childhood, then broken by betrayal. Nel's question — didn't I count — is one most of us have carried in some form. The wound of being unseen by someone who knew us is among the quietest and most lasting.
And then there is this — footprints preserved in ancient earth are telling us that Paranthropus boisei, a distant relative who walked this world long before us, was larger than we had imagined. Those impressions in stone ask us to reconsider who we are in the long unfolding of human becoming.
Suffering, betrayal, and the deep past — three invitations to pay closer attention. That's this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
