Welcome Back Sun: Light after The Murky Time
book cover of book Welcome Back Sun shows family on mountain with first rays of sun on faces
The murky time.
I didn't know it had a name until I read the children's book, Welcome Back Sun by Michael Emberley, a story of a small village in Norway, wedged deep in a narrow mountain valley. Every year the sun leaves the village in September and doesn't return until March.
The murketiden. The murky time.
I didn't know the murky time, the days without the sun, had a name, but I have lived them.
As a newlywed when we wintered among the Cree and Ojibwa in northern Canada. Daylight hours were limited and cabin fever was a Real Thing as the winter nights lengthened during the Earth's year-long journey around the sun.
As a cancer patient when I pondered my own mortality.
As a daughter when I processed the loss before the loss of both parents to cancer.
The murky time."I get hungry for the sun," the little girl says in the story.I have known that hunger. Perhaps that is the reason for a ladder to my roof.The murketiden.I have lived the murky time with several friends this week.
A friend lost a family member to cancer.
My mom's cousin - a pastor - a sweet soul who had a special bond with Mom and loved us all through her and dad's final illness- died on Monday from cancer.
And on Tuesday my women's Bible Study group ended early because we heard of two friends - a mom and a daughter - who had hit the murketiden with the mom's cancer.
Finish the Fight Banner
two teens, backs to photo, looking across a football field to the rising sun
We had been studying Galatians 6:2 - carry one another's burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ. The word for burden means a load that is too heavy for one person to carry and we thought we HAVE to go pray because isn't this the Word lived out?
When the load has become too big for one person to carry? When the remembrance of the sun is forgotten? Then we ... we ... must be that light that points to a bigger Light.
Isn't this the purpose of community?
This Friday, as part of Relay for Life, I will join others in remembering that cancer never sleeps as I walk the track for twelve hours. Relay begins in the light of full sun, a time of celebration and community. The setting sun represents when a patient is diagnosed with cancer, a time of darkness and beginning of an unknown journey. The laps throughout the night symbolize a cancer patient's treatment when he/she might be tired, sick and exhausted, unable to see the promise of a new day.
The murketiden.
At 5 am on Saturday morning we will all sit in the grandstands at Basha High School, our attention focused eastward as we join together and wait for the ending of the murketiden. The rising sun symbolizes the ending of treatment for a cancer patient, but it is also the prayer of each one of us that one day the sun will rise on a cancer-free world.Until that day, we will join hands in community to surround those whose load is too big to carry alone. We will continue hoping and believing and working with our eyes on the east. On that future, cancer-free day, when the first rays warm our upturned faces - those of us who have lived through the murky time, the murketiden, will shout joyfully together,
Welcome Back Sun!
Chandler Relay for Life details on May 1-2, 2015
If you are not interested in walking all night at Relay for Life at Basha High school, members of the community are welcome to come for a few hours. Please join us! The Opening Ceremony with survivor lap is at 6:00 pm on May 1. The luminaria ceremony is at 9:30 pm that evening.
If you would like to join my second team, Living Proof Two, or donate a luminaria in the name of someone you love, or donate funds, please click this link for Living Proof Two.
If you are reading this and want to donate to a different team or individual, follow the process on Chandler Relay for Life’s main page.
Also, if you are a survivor, and don’t want to be part of a team, you can register and participate only in the survivor events. (This is the main page, follow the links for survivors.)