Tag: Light

Laid Aside His Crown: Help Me Push Myself Aside

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I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
~R.S. Thomas “A Bright Field”

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

Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to.
You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see
and my self is the earth’s shadow
that keeps me from seeing all the moon.
The crescent is very beautiful
and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see;
but what I am afraid of, dear God,
is that my self shadow will grow so large
that it blocks the whole moon,
and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing.

I do not know You God
because I am in the way.
Please help me to push myself aside.
~Flannery O’Connor from A Prayer Journal

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God…
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I am learning to step aside so my own shadow stops obscuring God’s gift of illumination. I can be so blinded by discouragement, busyness and distraction that I lose sight of God Himself.

I stand in the way and need a push to let the Light shine forth.

Surprise me, dear Lord. Cram this common bush with heaven. 

Though I regularly lament in the shadows, help me lift my voice in praise and gratitude for your gift: the pearl of great price you generously hold for me to find each day.

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
Matthew 13: 44

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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And When From Death I’m Free: I Tell You a Mystery

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Trust your bones
Trust the pull of the earth
And the earth itself
Trust the hearts of trees
The stone at the edge of the sea
And all else true

Trust that water will bear you up
Trust the moon to keep faith
With ebb and flow
Trust the leafing
The chrysalis, the seed
And every other way
Death gives birth to resurrection
~Bethany Lee, “To Keep Faith” from The Breath Between

Over the last several weeks, roots have become shoots and their green blades are rising chaotically, uneven and awkward like a bad haircut.  And like a bad haircut, another two weeks will make all the difference — sprouts will cover all the bare earth, breaking through crusted soil to create a smooth carpet of green.

There is nothing more mysterious than the barren made fruitful, the ugly made beautiful, the dead made alive.

The muddy winter field of my heart will recover, bathed in new light;
I trust love will come again like shoots that spring up green.

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed…
1 Corinthians 15:51–52

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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While Millions Join the Theme: Light Reflected

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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”

photo by Joel DeWaard

I believe in God 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 “They Asked For A Paper,” in Is Theology Poetry?

Without God’s Light that comes reliably every morning, I would be hopelessly casting about in the dark, stubbing my toes, stumbling and fumbling my way without the benefit of His illumination.

Dawn feels like a fresh gift each time, whether a brilliantly painted sunrise, or here in the Pacific Northwest, a somber gray cloud comforter.

I don’t mind the gray: the darkness in the sky, and in me, has been overwhelmed. And I do try my best to reflect the Light.

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
John 8:12

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

And Through Eternity: Facing the Storm

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A front of thunderstorms had sought you out.
It vowed to run a diabolical
black line through all that you were sure about—
the ordinary, sane, the sensible.
You raced to get the loose stuff off the lawn,
with purpose rearranged and stacked the chairs,
relieved, almost, when the phenomenon
of gray-green storm clouds simplified your cares.
And though it couldn’t miss, it kind of did.
Darkness at noon gave way to sun at one.
Catastrophe and doom had been short-lived.
Embarrassed that your fears were overblown,
you faced your mundane day-to-day concerns,
vaguely upset that normalcy returns.
~Robert Crawford “Squall”

Beneath our clothes, our reputations, our pretensions,
beneath our religion or lack of it,
we are all vulnerable both to the storm without
and to the storm within.
~Frederick Buechner – from Telling the Truth

I watch the storm fronts roll in, threatening my outside and inside: heavy damaging winds, thunder and lightning, torrential unpredictable rains, mudslides, horrible forest fires destroying what is familiar and routine.

Inside my own head, the storm clouds of news headlines overpower day-to-day mundane concerns: devastating wars and violence, crime and protests, homelessness, rampant starvation and disease, man’s ongoing inhumanity to man.

I want to hide under a rock until the storms inside and outside blow over.

In the midst of the tempest — while wars rage on the planet, while a bitter election season is underway — a miracle may be wrought.
Brilliant light exposes how heaven weeps from heavy clouds. A rainbow touches the earth in holy promise.

God assures His people: this storm too will pass, even the storms of our own making. Darkness is overcome by Light.

Painting of snowy Cascades by John Hoyte

He stilled the storm to a whisper;
    the waves of the sea were hushed.
They were glad when it grew calm,
    and he guided them to their desired haven.
Psalm 107:29-30

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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When I Was Sinking Down: A World Bereft

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The darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew,
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Inversnaid”

There is despair in untamed hearts lost in the wilderness.
Wildness lies just beneath the surface;
it spills over, swirls round and round, spins out of reach. 

Our world feels that way right now.

How are we spared drowning in its pitch black pool?
Can we thrill to beauty surrounding us
without being tempted into darkness?

Christ came not to tame creation’s wildness,
but to pull us gasping people from its unforgiving clutches
before we sink ever deeper in despair.

We are mere weeds trying to survive this wild world,
to grow, to flourish, to witness to those who are bereft.
O Lord, let us be left to live long in your Light.

Let us be left.

Because of your great compassion
you did not abandon them in the wilderness.
By day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path,
nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. 
You gave your good Spirit to instruct them. 
Nehemiah 9: 19-20

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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From Death We’re Free: Opening Wide to the Light

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I saw that a yellow crocus bud had pierced
a dead oak leaf, then opened wide. How strong
its appetite for the luxury of the sun!
~Jane Kenyon from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems

Beyond my window in the night
Is but a drab inglorious street,
Yet there the frost and clean starlight
As over Warwick woods are sweet.

Under the grey drift of the town
The crocus works among the mould
As eagerly as those that crown
The Warwick spring in flame and gold.

And when the tramway down the hill
Across the cobbles moans and rings,
There is about my window-sill
The tumult of a thousand wings.
~John Drinkwater “A Town Window”

This is why I believe that God really has dived down into the bottom of creation, and has come up bringing the whole redeemed nature on His shoulders. The miracles that have already happened are, of course, as Scripture so often says, the first fruits of that cosmic summer which is presently coming on.

Christ has risen, and so we shall rise.

…To be sure, it feels wintry enough still: but often in the very early spring it feels like that.  Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale.  A man really ought to say, ‘The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago’  in the same spirit in which he says ‘I saw a crocus yesterday.’

Because we know what is coming behind the crocus.

The spring comes slowly down the way, but the great thing is that the corner has been turned.  There is, of course, this difference that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not.

We can. 

We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on…to which He is calling us.

It remains with us whether to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.
~C. S. Lewis from “God in the Dock”

Our appetite is strong for light and warmth, leaving winter behind.
Our desire is to defeat death, piercing through the decay
and flourishing among the living, opening wide our faces
to the luxury of luminous grace freely given.

We have turned the corner and have the power to choose Light.
We need only follow the pathway out of darkness. 
We need only follow the Son as he leads the way.

The desert and the parched land will be glad;
    the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus,  it will burst into bloom;
    it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
Isaiah 35: 1-2

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Whatever This Day May Bring

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O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray
And to concentrate my thoughts on you;
I cannot do this alone.

In me there is darkness,
But with you there is light;
I am lonely, but you do not leave me;
I am feeble in heart, but with you there is help;
I am restless, but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience;

I do not understand your ways,
But you know the way for me….
Restore me to liberty,
And enable me to live now
That I may answer before you and before men.
Lord whatever this day may bring,
Your name be praised.
Amen
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer “Prayer”

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
~Wendell Berry “To Know the Dark” from Soul Food – Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
~Mary Oliver “The Uses of Sorrow”

In the beginning, God did not banish the darkness. He balanced it with His illuminating Light. Fallen as we are, we search blindly for Him in the dark, where we need Him most. And He is there.

We are promised this: “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.

Darkness is not yet banished. But it is overcome.
Whatever this day may bring, we have a lit pathway leading us home.

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Living in the Changing Light

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It was like a church to me.
I entered it on soft foot,
Breath held like a cap in the hand.
It was quiet.
What God was there made himself felt,
Not listened to, in clean colours
That brought a moistening of the eye,
In movement of the wind over grass.

There were no prayers said. But stillness
Of the heart’s passions — that was praise
Enough; and the mind’s cession
Of its kingdom. I walked on,
Simple and poor, while the air crumbled
And broke on me generously as bread.
~R.S. Thomas “The Moor”

A strange empty day. I did not feel well, lay around….
I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. I am still pursued by a neurosis about work inherited from my father. A day where one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room, not try to be or do anything whatever. Tonight I do feel in a state of grace, limbered up, less strained.
~May Sarton from Journal of a Solitude (January 18, 1971 entry)

Once in your life you pass
Through a place so pure
It becomes tainted even
By your regard, a space
Of trees and air where
Dusk comes as perfect ripeness.
Here the only sounds are
Sighs of rain and snow,
Small rustlings of plants
As they unwrap in twilight.
This is where you will go
At last when coldness comes.
It is something you realize
When you first see it,
But instantly forget.
At the end of your life
You remember and dwell in
Its faultless light forever.
~Paul Zimmer “The Place” from Crossing to Sunlight Revisited

My family members and I have had weeks of feeling just on the verge of conquering the latest viral upper respiratory illness, but then would find ourselves welcoming the next cold as if it were a long lost friend.

I’m discouraged by ongoing fatigue and need for isolation that has accompanied these illnesses, due to our persistent sneezes and coughs.

All this has forced me to rest, take a breath and feel lucky to be alive, even if feeling unwell. I know too many folks who are dealing with much greater burdens.

Indeed, this morning brought a moment of grace for me.
I witnessed manna falling from the sky.

Often times a sunrise is as plain and gray as I am,
but at times, it is fire lit from above and beneath,
igniting and transforming the sky, completely overwhelming me.

I was swept away, transfixed by colors and swirls and shadows,
forever grateful to be fed by such heavenly bread broken over my head.

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January Light

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Today is one of those excellent January partly cloudies in which light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then the shadow sweeps it away. You know you’re alive. You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet’s roundness arc between your feet.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

After years of rarely paying attention,
too busy with work or household or barnyard tasks needing doing,
I realized only a finite number of sunrises and sunsets are left to me.

I don’t want to miss them, so now I stop, take a deep breath
and feel lucky to be alive, a witness to that moment.

My feet are planted on the ground beneath me.
My face feels the light from above,
then a shadow sweeps it away,
just for now, not forever.

Sometimes sunrises and sunsets are plain and gray,
just as I am,
but there are days lit from above and beneath
with a fire that ignites across the sky.

I too am engulfed for a moment or two,
until sun or shadow sweeps me away,
transfixed and transformed,
yet forever grateful for the moment of light.

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The Sunrise is Here: Shadows Flee Away

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You, who are beyond our understanding,
have made yourself understandable to us in Jesus Christ.
You, who are the uncreated God,
have made yourself a creature for us.
You, who are the untouchable One,
have made yourself touchable to us.
You, who are most high,
make us capable of understanding your amazing love
and the wonderful things you have done for us.
Make us able to understand the mystery of your incarnation,
the mystery of your life, example and doctrine,
the mystery of your cross and passion,
the mystery of your resurrection and ascension.
~Angela of Foligno (1248-1309)– prayer

May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing you are a child of God.
Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.
― Thérèse de Lisieux of Avila

No heaven can come to us
Unless our hearts find rest in it today.
Take heaven.

No peace lies in the future
Which is not hidden in this present instant.
Take peace.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow;
Behind it, yet within reach, is joy.
Take joy.

And so, at this Christmastime,
I greet you with the prayer that for you,
Now and forever,
The day breaks and the shadows flee away.
– Fra Giovanni Giocondo letter to Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi, Christmas Eve 1513

Our long night no longer overwhelms.
The sunrise has come,
heralding our slow awakening to the gift we’ve been given.

We bathe in the Son’s reflected glory and grace.

The Son is now among us, carrying our load. 
We take heaven, take peace, take joy and
He takes all our sin,
all our fear,
all our pain,
all our burdens upon Himself.
They are all His — ours no longer, forever.

Advent 2023 theme
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song

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