Black Lightning

Black Lightning

You can read about Black Lightning here as part of the public art at Seattle Center.

Reflection

In the Christian scriptures, Jesus Christ is speaking to his disciples (his followers) and in the book of Luke, Chapter 12, he talks about the cost of following him when one’s family doesn’t accept the disciples’ choices.

“I came to cast fire upon the earth. How I wish that it was already ablaze! I have a baptism I must experience. How I am distressed until it’s completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, I have come instead to bring division. 

From now on, a household of five will be divided—three against two and two against three. Father will square off against son and son against father; mother against daughter and daughter against mother; and mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

Common English Bible translation

Action

If you can, call up a family member (either family of origin or chosen family of now) and talk with them about your upcoming decision, the threshold you want to cross. Hold in your mind what you want from the conversation: not what you want to hear, but the experience you want to have. Family can be divisive and talking with them can be really difficult, and they may be firmly against one side of a decision. But if you call them now, it’ll be done, in the past. A relief…or at least a checkmark done.

Question to ponder or to journal

  • Black Lightning is about contrast and sharp angles amidst the smooth curves of Seattle Center and soft foliage. Does this decision stick out in your life, very different and wholly other to the world you know? Or does it fit as a missing piece that completes the panorama of your life?

Walk to the Peace Pole

Walk south from the Black Lightning until you see the fountain. Go around the fountain until you find an opening in the greenspace across from the Space Needle, then turn left to find the Peace Pole (you can see it sticking up from outside the foliage).