Last weekend a photographer friend came to visit, and together we went out with our cameras in search of images for her upcoming show.

It was a spectacularly sunny day, and we were using digital cameras, which do not have the wide exposure range you can get with a film camera, so our challenge was to find either intriguing shapes to silhouette against the sun, or a place where shade or shadow would allow our cameras to see more clearly what is lost in full sun.

In the first image you see here, the light breaking into the picture casts such a strong shadow that you cannot see anything except the darkness of the shadow as it compares to the light. It is only in the second image, when we step away from the light, that we begin to see the incredible complexity of detail that lies hidden in that shadow.

I have been re-reading the poems of Rumi this week, and today I read this passage from a poem called "Enough words."

No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes, it's in front!

Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.

I can explain this, but it would break
the glass cover on your heart,
and there's no fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.

The light in both these images was constant. But as we draw closer to the light, the shadows become unbearably dark, and they are all we see; they dominate our internal landscape.

But the light, in fact, is always there, even in the shadow. And when we pause, completely in the shadow, long enough to let our eyes adjust, we see there is immense beauty -- or at least a lot of intriguing information -- there. Darkness has become the candle that allows you to see: that which hurts also blesses you. And when the darkness becomes too much to bear, perhaps it means the light is just around the corner.