Shadow

It was only a fleeting image. A shadow imposed upon the wall in front of me as I approached the stairway to the upper landing. As I drew closer to the wall my shadow, bobbing slightly with every step, grew steadily. Suddenly another shadow, that of a woman with a rolling gate, appeared on the wall partially super-imposed on my shadow. I grasped the handle of the stairway door, turned slightly and looked behind me as I opened the door. There was no one there, only a shadow with a rolling gate projected upon the wall. As I opened the door the shadow seemed to pass silently through the wall.

Was the shadow real? Certainly it was, but it was cast upon the wall by no physical presence. It had not intended to be seen, in all probability did not even know that it was seen; and it wasn’t in the slightest interested in me.

Here an odd question arises. Perhaps, in the face of greater realities, I am the shadow living in a land of shadows, and that other shadow was not, in truth, truly a shadow, but something in that realm of greater realities, more substantial than me.

Such stories tap our fear of the unknown, our fear of otherness. Closing the stairway door, there is a momentary twinge, a small touch of irrational fear; but something else also happened in that instant. Just as the door was closing I looked further back into the lobby and fleetingly saw a woman with a rolling gate who had just entered through the lobby door. In that instant I was given the choice of reality or illusion. I choose the reality.

But the point still remains. C. S. Lewis tells us that we live in the Shadowlands, and it is not until we stand on heaven’s ground that we become truly real. There are things, many things, more real than we, and all our lives lived in grace are lives being transformed in that greater reality.