Electrifying Times

(This Musing was inspired today by a postcard I came across from attending an exhibit in May at Nashville's downtown library.)

“Electrifying Times: How Power Transformed Our City” the postcard read. The library was hosting an exhibit of materials highlighting the bringing of electricity to Nashville decades ago. I went.

Photos and documents lined the walls. Prior ads read:

“Order your electric range now. Get $20 for your old stove.”

“Our electric appliances are labor and time savers. Let them serve your home.”

People were suddenly served from cable cars to vacuum cleaners, and oh, the lights, lights, lights. The power of electricity transformed lives.

I wasn’t alive then and I know the Great Depression was dark and maybe it’s just me, but it seems like electricity arrived, people got lights and the times got darker at least in some ways.

Did sex trafficking, hunger and homelessness exist sixty years ago to the extent they do today?

Can it be the lighter our loads, the lighter our lives, the darker the times?

I want to receive a postcard that reads: “How Power Transforms Lives” – not the power running through electric wires, but the power of the heart, the current of love.

That’s the exhibit I want to attend the one with ads that read: “Expand your heart’s range now. Give $20” and “Let love serve your home.”

Then I realize I am that exhibit and these times are grace. The power of electricity brings the needs of the world to my home, to my heart's door. The power of love allows these needs a place inside. What once would have been a heavy load is light. What once was dark is bright.

At least for today, gratitude runs through my power lines, gratitude for dark times, revealing quiet currents of love.

Dark times reveal love's currents. Dark times help turn on the light.

We are each exhibits to the power of love walking in the world. I'll be pondering the possibilities in this power for some time.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 22 September 2011

dawn@imaginetheshift.com