Tag: Light

Come and See: Bearing Witness to the Light

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There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh
nor of the will of man, but of God.
John 1:6-13

God, Who made the sun, also made the moon.
The moon does not take away from the brilliance of the sun.
The moon would be only a burnt-out cinder floating in the immensity of space were it not for the sun. All its light is reflected from the sun. On dark nights we are grateful for the moon; when we see it shining, we know there must be a sun. So in this dark night of the world when men turn their backs on Him Who is the Light of the World, we … await the sunrise.
~Archbishop Fulton Sheen from The World’s First Love

John the Baptist was clear: he was a witness to the True Light Jesus, not the light himself.

He reflected the origin of light, like the moon reflects the sun.

We are naturally wary of prophets, not knowing who to believe and who leads us astray. God warns us about false prophets, yet we have difficulty discerning truth, so turn our backs to it, missing the Light.

Instead, when I see moonlight, I try to remember the message of John the Baptist: seeing the moon glow reminds me the Sun is the true origin of Light. And so as God’s children, we are to reflect the Light as well, bearing witness in the darkness.

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

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Giving Alms to the Poor

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That year I discovered the virtues
of plants as companions: they don’t
argue, they don’t ask for much,
they don’t stay out until 3:00 A.M., then
lie to you about where they’ve been….

I can’t summon the ambition
to repot this grape ivy, of this sad
old cactus, or even to move them out
onto the porch for the summer,
where their lives would certainly
improve. I give them
a grudging dash of water – that’s all
they get. I wonder if they suspect
that like Hamlet I rehearse murder
all hours of the day and night,
considering the town dump
and compost pile as possible graves….

The truth is that if I permit them
to live, they will go on giving
alms to the poor: sweet air, miraculous
flowers, the example of persistence.
~Jane Kenyon “Killing the Plants” from The Boat of Quiet Hours

During my dorm-room years
and city apartment dwelling days,
this farm girl had to reconcile
that no pets were allowed,
so I surrounded myself with an indoor garden,
every square inch of window sill
occupied by a living thing
whose survival depended only partially on me.

Those plants sustained me,
cheered me, moved me,
carried by me to new windows
with better light and grander views.

Despite my occasional neglect,
they usually persisted, often thrived,
and gave back to my shriveled city spirit
far beyond any water or repotting I offered.

A start from my grandmother’s old fern
divided decades earlier from her cousin’s plant,
originally a start from a long-passed auntie,
this 100 year old fern traveled far and wide with me
until it dried up, turned brown and gave up the ghost.

Having given a start to my sister years before,
she divided it so the fern came back home
staying happily green in my kitchen window.

Somehow these miracles in chlorophyll
knew just what I needed when I needed it:
they fed me when I was starving
for something alive,
something beautiful,
something that knew exactly what to do
and what to become
when I had no clue what would happen next.

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The Dialect of Pure Being

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The world does not need words.
It articulates itself in sunlight, leaves, and shadows.
The stones on the path are no less real
for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only 
the dialect of pure being…

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds, 
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always–
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.
~Dana Giola from “Words”

The words the world needs
is only the Word itself;
we exist
because He breathed breath into us,
saying it was good.

Whatever we have to say about His Creation
pales compared to His
it is good

But we try
over and over again
to use words of wonder and praise
to express our awe and gratitude and amazement
while painted golden by His breath of Light.

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A Peculiarly Genial Light

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I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
There is no season when such pleasant
and sunny spots may be lighted on,
and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings,
as now in October.
The sunshine is peculiarly genial;
and in sheltered places,
as on the side of a bank, or of a barn or house,
one becomes acquainted and friendly with the sunshine.
It seems to be of a kindly and homely nature.
And the green grass strewn with a few withered leaves looks the more green and beautiful for them.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne from The American Notebooks

After the keen still days of September,
the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth…
The maple tree in front of the doorstep
burned like a gigantic red torch.
The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze.
The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels,
emerald and topaz and garnet.
Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her…
In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.
~Elizabeth George Speare from The Witch of Blackbird Pond 

If I were a month,
I would choose to be October:
bathed in a “peculiarly genial” and friendly light.
A kindly and homely nature,
slowly withering, yet still crisp,
with mild temperature and modest temperament
despite a drenching rain and wind storm or two,
once in a while foggy.

Most of all,
I would cherish my flashes of burnt umber
as I reluctantly relinquish the light.

text by Mechthild of Magdeburg
Effortlessly, Love flows from God into man,
Like a bird who rivers the air without moving her wings.
Thus we move in His world one in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the Source strikes the note, humanity sings —
The Holy Spirit is our harpist, and all strings
Which are touched in love must sound.

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An Unshadowed Light

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Within the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight.

                                       The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite.

                      What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
falling, and is pleased.
~Wendell Berry “VII” from This Day

What more did I think I wanted?

What always has been and always will be:

Until I’m not able to hold on in the wind and rain,
may I be a spot of unshadowed light
in this dark and bleak world.

I’ll let go like a yellow leaf in autumn,
when the time comes,
if it pleases my Maker.

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Call Nothing Common

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Begin the song exactly where you are,
Remain within the world of which you’re made.
Call nothing common in the earth or air,
Accept it all and let it be for good.

Start with the very breath you breathe in now,
This moment’s pulse, this rhythm in your blood
And listen to it, ringing soft and low.
Stay with the music, words will come in time.

Slow down your breathing. Keep it deep and slow.
Become an open singing-bowl, whose chime
Is richness rising out of emptiness,
And timelessness resounding into time.

And when the heart is full of quietness
Begin the song exactly where you are.
~Malcolm Guite “The Singing Bowl” from The Singing Bowl

In the center of my chest,
a kindling there in the hollow,
as if a match had just been struck,
or the blinds snapped up on a sealed room,
gold suffusing the air,
and through the wide windows,
a solstice unfolding,
mine for the lengthening days.
~Andrea Potts “On Reading John Donne for the First Time” from Her Joy Becomes

I will not forget, dear harvest moon,
to keep you as my singing bowl
where I can find your song months from now,
even when your reflected light leaks out
to tangle up in the weary trees of autumn.

Once the leaves fall, you illuminate
even the most humble branches
in their embarrassed nakedness.

Call nothing common in the earth or air,
Accept it all and let it be for good.

When I too need your warm light
in the center of my hollowed chest,
I’ll know exactly where to find you,
as you sing lullabies, waiting for me to empty.

I’ll not forget you,
because you never forget to
keep looking for me.

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Heavens’ Embroidered Cloths

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To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand,
and Eternity in an Hour.

When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light 
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day
~William Blake from “Auguries of Innocence”

dandy426153
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Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
~William Butler Yeats “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”

dandy426155

If I look closely enough underfoot,
I might find the extraordinary
in the commonplace things of life.

So I keep my eyes alert;
my heart open to infinite possibilities
and try to tread softly.

Sometimes what I see is so beautiful,
it is uncovering heaven come to earth,
when the cosmos is contained
within the commonplace.

The God of Light and Living Water
is no further away
than my back yard.

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To Yield to Change

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I went out to cut a last batch of zinnias this
morning from the back fencerow and got my shanks
chilled for sure: furrowy dark gray clouds with
separating fringes of blue sky-grass: and the dew

beaded up heavier than the left-overs of the rain:
in the zinnias, in each of two, a bumblebee
stirring in slow motion. Trying to unwind
the webbed drug of cold, buzzing occasionally but

with a dry rattle: bees die with the burnt honey
at their mouths, at least: the fact’s established:
it is not summer now and the simmering buzz is out of
heat: the zucchini blossoms falling show squash

overgreen with stunted growth: the snapdragons have
suckered down into a blossom or so: we passed
into dark last week the even mark of day and night
and what we hoped would stay we yield to change.
~A.R. Ammons  “Equinox” from Complete Poems

I yield now
to the heaviness of transition
from summer to autumn –
the soaking morning fog, with
dew clinging like teardrops,
a chill in the air
means I sweater-wrap my days.

It is time for change, reluctant as I may be;
both day and night now compete equally for my time
and each will win.

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Extravagant Sky

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You were the one for skylights. I opposed
Cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove
Of pitch pine. I liked it low and closed,
Its claustrophobic, nest-up-in-the-roof
Effect. I liked the snuff-dry feeling,
The perfect, trunk-lid fit of the old ceiling.
Under there, it was all hutch and hatch.
The blue slates kept the heat like midnight thatch.

But when the slates came off, extravagant
Sky entered and held surprise wide open.
For days I felt like an inhabitant
Of that house where the man sick of the palsy
Was lowered through the roof, had his sins forgiven,
Was healed, took up his bed and walked away.
~Seamus Heaney “The Skylight” from Opened Ground.

The last moments of summer are revealed
as if the roof has been ripped open
to let the sky be lowered in ~
the veil torn down,
the dark corners lit in extravagant morning glow~

suddenly sky enters into unexpected spaces
we preferred to keep hidden.
The miraculous happens
when we are bold enough to
accept the invitation
and take a chance on the Light.

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A Light of Beginnings

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For seasons the walled meadow
south of the house built of its stone
grows up in shepherd’s purse and thistles
the weeds share April as a secret
finches disguised as summer earth
click the drying seeds
mice run over rags of parchment in August
the hare keeps looking up remembering 
a hidden joy fills the songs of the cicadas

two days’ rain wakes the green in the pastures
crows agree and hawks shriek with naked voices
on all sides the dark oak woods leap up and shine
the long stony meadow is plowed at last and lies
all day bare
I consider life after life as treasures
oh it is the autumn light

that brings everything back in one hand
the light again of beginnings
the amber appearing as amber
~ W. S. Merwin, “September Plowing” from Flower & Hand

photo by Joel De Waard

When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not

and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks that lean
over their broken
shadows across the cracked ground

but they all know
that you have come
the seed heads of the sage
the whispering birds
with nowhere to hide you
to keep you for later

you
who fly with them

you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with blue plums
that have fallen through the night

perfect in the dew
~W.S. Merwin “To the Light of September”

Now that it has rained a bit, the light of September is a filtered, more gentle illumination than we have experienced for the past several months of dry summer glare.

It is more lambent: a soft radiance that simply glows at certain times of the day when the angle of the sun is just right, and the clouds are in position to soften and cushion the luminence.

It is also liminal: it is neither before or after, on the threshold between seasons when there is both promise and caution in the air.

Sometimes I think I can breathe in light like this, if not through my lungs, then through my eyes.

It is a temptation to bottle it up with a stopper somehow, stow it away hidden in a back cupboard. Then I can bring it out on the darkest days, pour a bit into a glass, and imbibe.

But for now, I fill myself full to the brim. And my only means of preservation is with a camera and a few words.

So I share it now with all of you to tuck away for a future day.
Perhaps you too will be thirsty for a lambent light.

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