Follow the light/Vitamin D
Part one-Musings from watching my dog.
As a society, we have almost completely moved indoors. We eat and sleep indoors. We transport ourselves indoors. We work indoors. Much of our play is indoors and we even exercise indoors.
This wasn’t always how it was!! Centuries ago, the main thing humans did indoors was sleep. Most cultures have a history of cooking outside. They hunted outdoors, foraged for food outdoors and played outdoors. In colder climates this changed for a season, but only for that season, and still, much more activity was all done outside.
We have replaced that with living behind brick and glass walls. Even when the temperature is perfect or even hot and sunny, we are inside all day in buildings that are now cooled off to the “perfect temperature”.
And all this indoor living interferes with our Vitamin D production. We need sunlight directly on our skin for so many bodily functions! (More on that in Part 2)
I was pondering this one day, when I noticed my dog, sitting in the ONE PATCH of sunshine in the house. It was early spring, and the sun was just becoming brighter and coming through different parts of the windows as it snaked its way around buildings and trees outside. And he was constantly finding that teeny tiny patch of sun to sit in.
When I would open the back door of my house, he would go outside and sit in the sun until he was cold, then come in and warm up. Umpteen times a day, I was letting him in and out of the house to seek the afternoon sunshine. Unless it was too cold, then he would find the one square foot of sunshine left in the house and sit there.
I thought about how so many of us in Canada are so Vitamin D deficient that, in Alberta at least, the government will only pay for testing of Vitamin D under specific circumstances. They simply acknowledge that we are all D deficient and need a supplement. Sunlight, however, is nature's source of Vitamin D. We should be more like my dog and seek the sunshine whenever we can.
And then the text popped into my head: “I am the light of the world”.
It was so easy to make these connections: When we do not get enough sunshine, we are alive, but we are just not full of energy. And when we do not sit in the glory of our Father’s light, we are still breathing and functioning, but we lack something. We lack the light of His energy. We lack power and we lack the Spirited life that we can only get through the light of our Father.
I love connecting thoughts like this, because when I see my dog seeking light, it reminds me first of all to seek sunshine, for my own health, because God uses sunlight for specific biological functions in my body. But then, watching my dog seek sunshine also reminds me to seek Gods word, God’s light and truth. Even better yet, I choose to often do my seeking of God’s truth and light in his sunshine.
If you are interested in learning more about light or Light, check out my free health minded community!
Stay tuned for more blog posts on sunlight and Vitamin D.
