Tag: illumination

Reveling in Rays of Light

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A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter.
I feel no obligation to deal with politics.
I do feel a responsibility to society.
A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy;
true, not false; lively, not dull;
accurate, not full of error.
He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.

A writer must reflect and interpret his society, his world;
he must also provide inspiration and guidance and challenge.
Much writing today strikes me
as deprecating, destructive, and angry.
There are good reasons for anger, and I have nothing against anger.
But I think some writers have lost their sense of proportion,
their sense of humor, and their sense of appreciation.

I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad:
one role of the writer today is to sound the alarm.
The environment is disintegrating, the hour is late,
and not much is being done.
Instead of carting rocks from the moon,
we should be carting the feces out of Lake Erie.
…I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer
if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle,
to accept the warming rays of the sun,
and to report them, whenever,
and if ever, they happen to strike me.
~E.B. White 1969 (on writing)

It is tiresome always feeling angry
about what it is happening in the world,
feeling that everything has become political.

I’m tired of reading (and writing) words of frustration,
but want to rail against the meanness that surrounds us,
and push back the bully to seek out a balance
of kindness, perspective and insight.

When I need to feel something other than mad,
I walk as far as I can go,
look up, revel in the gift of rays of light
and bask in their warmth and promise.

I will accept what the Sun has to offer
and tell about it
so that my anger drains away
like so much waste flushed down a pipe,
never to be seen again.

Lyrics:
Even before we call on Your name
To ask You, O God,
When we seek for the words to glorify You,
You hear our prayer;
Unceasing love, O unceasing love,
Surpassing all we know.

Glory to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.

Even with darkness sealing us in,
We breathe Your name,
And through all the days that follow so fast,
We trust in You;
Endless Your grace, O endless Your grace,
Beyond all mortal dream.

Both now and forever,
And unto ages and ages,
Amen.

Preoccupied by Tiny Flowers

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Still, what I want in my life
Is to be willing
To be dazzled-
To cast aside the weight of facts

And maybe even
To float a little
Above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking 

Into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing —
that the light is everything —
that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
~Mary Oliver from “The Ponds” from House of Light

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
~Emily Dickinson 1263

Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought?
~ Sophie Scholl from At the Heart of the White Rose

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”

I can’t always handle all the truth all at once,
especially when it hurts. 

It is best if truth
coaxes me slowly out of the shadows
where I like to hunker down, preoccupied,
like a tight little bud refusing to open.

Truth told slant is an illuminating back drop,
encouraging me to peek out from the darkness,
open up, dazzled by the light.

And then, perhaps,
~just maybe~
I too may become almost
dazzling to behold.

Come and See: Light of the World

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Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, 
“I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness,
but will have the light of life.” 

So the Pharisees said to him, 
“You are bearing witness about yourself; your testimony is not true.” 

Jesus answered, 
“Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true,
for I know where I came from and where I am going,
but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. 
You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. 
Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true,
for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. 
In your Law it is written that the testimony of two people is true. 
I am the one who bears witness about myself,
and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.”  

They said to him therefore, “Where is your Father?”

Jesus answered, 
“You know neither me nor my Father. 
If you knew me, you would know my Father also.”  

These words he spoke in the treasury, as he taught in the temple; but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.
John 8:12-20

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen.
Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
~C.S. Lewis from “Is Theology Poetry?” given to the Oxford Socratic Club

I see your world in light that shines behind me,
Lit by a sun whose rays I cannot see,
The smallest gleam of light still seems to find me
Or find the child who’s hiding deep inside me.

I see your light reflected in the water,
Or kindled suddenly in someone’s eyes,
It shimmers through the living leaves of summer,
Or spills from silver veins in leaden skies,

It gathers in the candles at our vespers
It concentrates in tiny drops of dew
At times it sings for joy, at times it whispers,
But all the time it calls me back to you.

I follow you upstream through this dark night
My saviour, source, and spring, my life and light.
~Malcolm Guite “I am the Light of the World”

Those who do not yet share our faith can share our wonder at the beauty and comfort of light in the darkness, from the stars in the heavens to the candlelight at a service or over a shared meal.
~Malcolm Guite “The Light of the World is For Everyone”

Darkness is not where we will dwell forever.
We are hushed in fear and hungry for Light.
Jesus promises to feed us from Himself.

We are promised this in the Word:
and night will be no more.
They will need no light of lamp or sun,
for the Lord God will be their light…
Revelation 22:5.

Somewhere between the Word in the beginning
and the Word that becomes flesh
and the Word thriving as Spirit in our hearts and hands,
there is the sacred silent Light of God come to earth

a threshold of quiet stillness
as we stand poised to cross into the Light brought by His Word;
He is a flint struck to our wick
in our eagerness to abolish the Darkness
with the eternal glow of His illuminating Word.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

The Light and Shadow of Faith

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A shadow is hard to seize by the throat and dash to the ground.
~Victor Hugo from Les Miserables

Be comforted; the world is very old,
  And generations pass, as they have passed,
  A troop of shadows moving with the sun;
Thousands of times has the old tale been told;
  The world belongs to those who come the last,
  They will find hope and strength as we have done.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from “A Shadow”

The shadow’s the thing. 
If I no longer see shadows as “dark marks,” 
as do the newly sighted,
then I see them as making some sort of sense of the light.
They give the light distance;
they put it in its place.
They inform my eyes of my location here, here O Israel,
here in the world’s flawed sculpture,
here in the flickering shade of the nothingness
between me and the light.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.
~Blaise Pascal

These days I find myself seeking safety hiding in the shadows under a rock where lukewarm moderates tend to congregate in times of disagreement and dispute.

Extremist views often predominate simply for the sake of differentiating one’s political turf from the opposition.

The chasm is most gaping in any discussion of faith issues. Religion and politics have become angry neighbors constantly arguing over how high to build the fence between them, what it should be made out of, what color it should be, should there be peek holes, should it be electrified with barbed wire to prevent moving back and forth, should there be a gate with or without a lock and who pays for the labor.

And so it goes. We bring out the worst in our leaders as facts are distorted, the truth is stretched or completely abandoned, unseemly pandering abounds and curried favors are served for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Enough already.
In the midst of this morass, we who believe still choose to believe.

There is just enough Light for those who seek it. No need to remain blinded in the shadowlands.

I’ll come out from under my rock if you do.

In fact…I think I just did.

The Humblest of Things

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The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.
~Louisa May Alcott

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And as you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged on the shingly beach of a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.
~Stephen Graham from The Gentle Art of Tramping

That great door opens on the present, illuminates it as with a multitude of flashing torches.
~Annie Dillard (in response to the above quote) from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

About living in the country?
…peace can deafen one, beauty surprise
No longer.  There is only the thud
Of the slow foot up the long lane
At morning and back at night.
~R.S. Thomas

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Ever since I started noticing
how beautiful are the most humble things
and the most humble people,
I realized a great door was opened to me:
the door to my own soul
and my own happiness.
I need go no further than my own back yard.

I must not forget my
astonishment
at the beauty around me
even on the grayest of days,
trudging the barnyard path
to exhausted chores.

If ever I fail to see
what is right in front of me,
this Lord’s grace-given gift
to my eyes and ears and arms,
I do not deserve to put on boots
or hold a pitchfork.

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Lyrics
Praise to the Lord of the small broken things
Who sees the poor sparrow that cannot take wing
Who loves the lame child and the wretch in the street
Who comforts their sorrows and washes their feet

Praise to the Lord of the faint and afraid
Who girds them with courage and lends them His aid
He pours out his spirit on vessels so weak
That the timid can serve and the silent can speak

Praise to the Lord of the frail and the ill
Who heals their afflictions or carries them till
They leave this tired frame and to paradise fly
To never be sick and never to die
Never die

Praise him, O praise Him all ye who live
Who’ve been given so much and can so little give
Our frail lisping praise God will never despise
He sees His dear children through mercy-filled eyes

Bring to Light the Mystery: That Patch of Sunlight

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It appears now that there is only one
age and it knows
nothing of age as the flying birds know
nothing of the air they are flying through
or of the day that bears them up
through themselves
and I am a child before there are words
arms are holding me up in a shadow
voices murmur in a shadow
as I watch one patch of sunlight moving
across the green carpet
in a building
gone long ago and all the voices
silent and each word they said in that time
silent now
while I go on seeing that patch of sunlight
~W.S. Merwin, “Still Morning” from The Shadow of Sirius

photo by Barbara Hoelle

Our memories can play tricks.

Just a whiff of a fragrance can trigger an experience of another time and place, a song can transport us to a decade long ago, a momentary sensation will remind us of a past experience long forgotten.

We dwell inside a different age as the years go by, in a body that no longer looks or feels exactly the same, yet our memories take us powerfully back to a special moment that happened before.

For those who struggle with post-trauma recollections, this is a curse to be overcome. For those whose memories bring joy and comfort, they seek to nurture and cherish what has been as if it is still here and now.

Let us remember the Light, just as the poet W.S. Merwin in this poem “Still Morning” remembers the moment of his baptism in a church long gone and whose voices are long since stilled. The Light of that day remains, as fresh today as it was when it moved toward him.

Our memories aren’t tricks, and neither is the Light that shone on us. They sustain us in the here and now.

Our Savior: an ever-moving patch of Light in our lives –
forever radiant.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

TEXT
O nata lux de lumine,
Jesu redemptor saeculi,
Dignare clemens supplicum
Laudes precesque sumere.

Qui carne quondam contegi
Dignatus es pro perditis,
Nos membra confer effici
Tui beati corporis.

TRANSLATION
O Light born of Light,
Jesus, redeemer of the world,
Mercifully deign to accept
The praises and prayers of your suppliants.

O you who once deigned to be hidden in flesh
For the sake of the lost,
Grant us to be made members
Of your blessed body.

In the Willow Stillness

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…today, the unseen was everything.
The unknown, the only real fact of life.
All this he saw,
for one moment breathless and intense,
vivid on the morning sky;
and still, as he looked, he lived;
and still, as he lived, he wondered.
~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Purposefully lost in the willow stillness
of a late summer meadow
in the deer-filled dusk—a silver evening
following a blue and amber day.
~Tim Hawkins “Purposefully Lost” from West of the Backstory

I search for the unseen,
purposely lost,
hoping to find meaning in the unknown.

I am bewildered by this life much of the time.
Anyone looking at what I share here sees
my struggle each day to discern
how to make this sad and suffering world
a little bit better place.

I have little to offer you
other than my own wrestling match
with the mysteries we all face.

Then, when a light does shine out through darkness, 
when a deer steps out of the woods into the meadow,
I am not surprised. 

I simply need to pay attention.
Illumination was there all the time,
but I needed the eyes to see its beauty laid bare,
brave enough to show itself even brighter in the light of day.

A Sight Unsought

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I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night,
in the white and the walk of the morning:
The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe
of a finger-nail held to the candle,
Or paring of paradisaïcal fruit,
lovely in waning but lustreless,
Stepped from the stool,
drew back from the barrow,
of dark Maenefa the mountain;
A cusp still clasped him,
a fluke yet fanged him,
entangled him, not quit utterly.
This was the prized, the desirable sight,
unsought, presented so easily,
Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me,
eyelid and eyelid of slumber.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Moonrise” June 19, 1876

how you can never reach it, no matter how hard you try,
walking as fast as you can, but getting nowhere,
arms and legs pumping, sweat drizzling in rivulets;
each year, a little slower, more creaks and aches, less breath.
Ah, but these soft nights, air like a warm bath, the dusky wings
of bats careening crazily overhead, and you’d think the road
goes on forever. Apollinaire wrote, “What isn’t given to love
is so much wasted,” and I wonder what I haven’t given yet.
A thin comma moon rises orange, a skinny slice of melon,
so delicious I could drown in its sweetness. Or eat the whole
thing, down to the rind. Always, this hunger for more.
~Barbara Crooker “How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River,” from More

The secret of seeing is,
then the pearl of great price. 
If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever 
I would stagger barefoot
across a hundred deserts
after any lunatic at all. 
But although the pearl may be found,
it may not be sought.

The literature of illumination reveals this above all: 
although it comes to those who wait for it, 
it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, 
a gift and a total surprise.

I return from one walk 
knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek
and the hour the laurel blooms. 
I return from the same walk a day later
scarcely knowing my own name.

Litanies hum in my ears; 
my tongue flaps in my mouth. 
Ailinon, alleluia!
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

photo by Josh Scholten

The greatest gift is the one I stumble upon
rather than having desired, sought out, fought for.
Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m missing,
so oblivious to being surrounded by hidden treasures.

Surprise me, dear Lord. 

Though I regularly lament in the shadows,
though I try to hide under the blankets each morning,
slumbering through the tragic, the painful, the sorrow,
you send your gentle crescent light to awaken me.

So I lift my voice in praise and gratitude for your unexpected gift
that I didn’t know I needed, would never had thought to seek, 
the pearl of great price held out for me to take each day.

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Written as with a Sunbeam

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The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for,
among old parchments, or musty records.
They are written, as with a sun beam,
in the whole volume of human nature,
by the hand of the divinity itself;
and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
~Alexander Hamilton, from  “The Farmer Refuted”

What sparkling flashes of God’s wit and brilliance—
His coruscations—
have caused your mind today to
run back up the sunbeam to the sun and given you cause
to give thanks and to worship the Lord?
~C.S. Lewis from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

photo by Nate Gibson

God illuminates through His Word,
not once but twice. 

In the beginning, He created
the sun and the moon to shine
upon bodies, hearts, and souls. 

Then, He came to light the world
from below as well as from above
so we could be saved from darkness.

By His descent to us,
because He leaves heaven’s light
to be in our arms and by our sides-
He illuminates us
so we reflect the light He brings:
loved
saved
despite all our efforts
to remain in the dark.

photo by Nate Gibson
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The Color of an Eggplant

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Every morning, cup of coffee
in hand, I look out at the mountain.
Ordinarily, it’s blue, but today
it’s the color of an eggplant.
And the sky turns
from gray to pale apricot
as the sun rolls up…

I study the cat’s face
and find a trace of white
around each eye, as if
he made himself up today
for a part in the opera.
~Jane Kenyon, from “In Several Colors” from Collected Poems.

If you notice anything
it leads you to notice
more
and more.

And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around, looking
at this and that.

If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world can’t be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.
~Mary Oliver from “The Moths” from Dream Work

I try to look at things in a new way as I wander about my day,
my eyes scanning for how the hidden dusty corners of my life
become illuminated by a penetrating morning sunbeam
when the angle is just right.

The rest of the time, cobwebs, dust bunnies and smudges
remain invisible to me until the searching light finds them.

What was “blue” becomes “eggplant” in the new light.

Trying to clean up a grungy messed-up
upside-down world of pain is hard work.

It means admitting my own laziness,
while falling down on the job again and again,
I must always be willing to get back up.

If I stop acknowledging my own and others’ messiness,
if I refuse to stay on top of the grime,
if I give up the work of salvage and renewal,
I then abandon God’s promise to transform this world.

He’s still here, ready and waiting,
handing me a broom, a duster, and cleaning rags,
so I shall keep at it –
mopping up the messes I can reach,
seeking what tries to stay hidden.

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