light – The Consolations of Writing

Break (Lent 8)

Christmas Day: Last Last Thing

After all we have done and left undone,after joy, after grief, after unbelief,after wrapping paper scattered on floor,after food is gone or stashed away,after conversations thrive or starve,after bombs are thrown and names are known,after fire and flood, after duties done,after every going down of Sun,the darkness still has not overcome,the darkness will not overcome.

Advent 24: Incarnate

Christmas hath a darkness Brighter than the blazing noon… (Christina Rossetti, “Christmas Eve”) Minutes before the shops shut, I walked supermarket aisles with other forgetful ones, gleaning the last sheaves of festive cheer while the muzak paused to say it was time. And two millennia ago, a carpenter and his pregnant bride found themselves strappedContinue reading “Advent 24: Incarnate”

Advent 23: In Darkness

…he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead.(Psalm 143:3 KJV) One Christmas,my brother and I sleeping onfold-out beds in our grandparents’ living room,I found myself awakewell past the usual hour, andmy thoughts like the room plungedin obsessive black, savefor a red electric glow from someunidentified source, I knewContinue reading “Advent 23: In Darkness”

Advent 22: Remember your last end

But for now, in what passes as daylight, remember night: remember those who dwell in night, remember the night that lies before those who fail to remember the light. Remember the absence of memory or light, remember the path out of darkness tonight.

Epiphany: The Implications of Light

At first darkness you saw it, Light looming large on the horizon, transfiguring and sanctifying all that it struck. Yet you were drawn, contrariwise, to a glistening object that, no light of its own, could only reflect or, at worst, refract. Distracted by prismatic brilliance, you answered the wrong call, saw charisma and grabbed atContinue reading “Epiphany: The Implications of Light”

Broken Epiphanies

Save me, O God: for the waters are entered even to my soul. I stick fast in the deep mire, where no stay is: I am come into deep waters, and the streams run over me. (Psalm 69:1-2, 1599 Geneva Bible) Is it, as Bosch would have it, a sinking scene, hut scarcely erect, while in the background knights andContinue reading “Broken Epiphanies”

“The thick darkness where God was”

This is what must first be given to the painting, a harmonious warmth, an abyss into which the eye sinks, a voiceless germination… (Paul Cézanne) How often is he shown with those horns of light, as though his head were itself full of the brightest luminescence and two cracks, two holes had formed inside his skullContinue reading ““The thick darkness where God was””

Go!

Go! into the world and find! the overlays that blind your eyes from what surrounds. Go out. Decide the lens through which to see your world. Behind your chosen screen is light that shines wherever you may walk. Be light. The world has many interfaces; see the face before you. Look into the eye ofContinue reading “Go!”

20 Contemplations #20: Enlighten

Arise, shine, for your light has come… (Isaiah 60:1a) Then the Glory opens up, and the exposition begins…after the sheaves of night, the spirals of anxiety, here the triumph of love and the tears of joy – all the passion of our arms around the Invisible!… (Olivier Messiaen) Do you see a star unlike theContinue reading “20 Contemplations #20: Enlighten”