The strength of the prism is that it is hard, it is solid, yet it is complex. It is not static. In it, the light is alive. Life is a maintenance of constant balance, a unity of many structures and powers, many purposes, in a grand interconnected web of meaning. These webs are the vertices of the facets of the prism. Wisdom is any time light can be collected through a facet and refracted to give light to the activity of life.

Knowledge is an activity of life. It is the orientation of our minds toward the reality that we are best able to see through our clearest facets. Goodness is action that follows the path of the light of wisdom, informed and empowered by the gathered light of knowledge. It is the substance of proper growth in action. Beauty is the loveliness of that which grows from following the light of wisdom. It is the bloom of perfection and strength that knowledge and goodness have created. It is the loveliness and delight in the colors that the prism reveals.

All these powers and all these faculties can be subverted if our prism is broken, distorted, or incomplete. Light is given in many places, raw power and energy regardless of how it is collected and used. God makes his light shine through all of creation.

Each of us begins as an unshaped stone, with rough facets, collecting light as we are shaped, but unclearly, and refracting it unclearly. As we grow, we gain knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge shines a brighter light upon us. Wisdom sculpts and clarifies and hardens the edges and facets. A skilled gemcutter recognizes the greatest strengths and flaws of the stone and shapes it according to them, taking advantage of the greatest potential facets to bring in the most light, finding ways to bring light into the darker corners, opening new paths, finding ways to smooth the rougher corners that steal and leak the power of the gem.

No person can contain all the light of every possible prism at once. We imitate it, we seek completion, we carve ourselves ever more complexly, we seek to strengthen the light we receive and the light we refract. We seek to love and appreciate the beauty that is revealed. But none of us contain the whole of the light. None of are the light. We must resist the urge to possess the light, to declare that we are, in our identity, the whole of it, that we are the light. We live by the light, we love it, we follow it. We are made to receive and reflect it. But we must always remember that we are not the limit, not the totality. We are the prism. We are alive. But we are not the living prism that is the source of all light.