Great Egret : A Tribute to Dr. King

This is a Great Egret. Standard photography practice would edit out the shadows or discard the photo altogether. A “good” photo depicts the entire bird in clarifying light. They say shadow diminishes subtleties and details. While maybe true in an academic sense, the lived reality is different. And as this Egret beautifully illustrates, real life is a mixture of both light and shadow, the liminal space.

Erev Shabbat is the expectant cusp. We have spent six days in the secular world, and as we greet Shabbat, we walk into the time of the Divine. As our liturgy relates, Erev Shabbat too is that liminal time outside of time, when daylight and darkness mix, when shadows both obscure and highlight, when our physical world constricts and our spiritual awareness becomes immeasurably larger. The blending of our outward perceptions is vital to our inward transition.

King was a profoundly believing Christian deeply learned in the Hebrew Bible. The comparisons of King and Moses are easy to make, tragically so. When I hear, “I have a dream,” I hear a man fully acknowledging the reality of living in a mixture of shadow and light. King’s era, in which we still indisputably work, is also a lived reality of dark and light, of people enlightened and benighted, of that liminal space of expectancy. At this time of shadows, one day ends and the Holy Day begins. May this Egret be an inspiration as we strive for the new day of Dr. King’s dream.