The light fell,
Tumbled onto this day.
I wasn’t quite
Finished with the night.
My unadjusted eyes.
Tears, those glassy
Cataracts of ache,
Suspend the river-roll
Of a rumbling soul.
The morning opens still,
And shines on.
Another new mercy,
Just like yesterday.
*
“I am the light of the world.” Jesus, the Christ of God.
A few months ago I began lighting a candle as part of my morning ritual of coffee, reading, praying, and writing. The little light sits off to the side and after a while goes unnoticed…until recently.
We bought a house in the dead of winter. What emphasized that fact was more and more empty drawers and taped up boxes. When my candle dwindled down to uselessness I went for a replacement, and the only available were several Christmas gift candles. We had bought the kind which sound like a mini-crackling fire. Figuring this would add a bit more ambience, I gave one a go.
A couple of days in, I noticed slight slips of concentration, more than usual anyhow. This particular little light of mine had much to say. The conclusion: candles should be seen, not heard. I don’t dismiss these crack candles out of hand. My muse did though. She thought it distracted our communique. “You’re not listening hard enough,” She’d say. “What’s up with gibbering candle there?” She’d ask.
What would it be like if all candles crackled? Imagine a fine dining situation with the love of your life… The glow highlighting the subtle curves of facial recognition. Eye contact melting into soul connection. Soft conversation. After a few minutes the spit and sputter of the center lit ambiance highjacks the focus of togetherness. Instead of staring at each other, you’re gazing at “it.”
Or you walk into your catholic parish to light a votive or two, say a prayer, and sit quietly under the vaulted ceilings. But no, not today, because it sounds like a brush fire in the foothills. You can’t even hear your own echoing steps on the marble floors.
I repeat, candles should be seen, not heard, when it comes to keeping silence and listening. Now, fires in the hearth are different. They are destined to speak, give off light, warmth, and an ambience for deeper refection. Campfires too. Bring a guitar, marshmallows, wieners, a circle of Adirondack chairs, and a recipe of reciprocity is complete.
But a silent light, holy light, serves sometimes as a reminder to close our lips. Let us find place to still our souls for a bit, open the flue of our hearts, and pray. Welcome the Muse if need be. Let the lit wick melt the waxy elements of a hurried worried life.
“I am the light of the world.” Jesus
P.S. I do like the crackling candles, by the way. They serve a purpose, but fail in joining my quiet time in the morning.
There’s a hole in our roof. More like an aperture. In the middle of our kitchen is a skylight…an upside down crater in the ceiling. The window has fallen into disrepair, and every time I look up I see not only natural light, but mold, bubbled paint, and another opportunity to procrastinate.
So, last night, after a long and arduous day helping the heavy-set, white haired, red dressed icon from the north, I went “up on the roof” (Do you hear the song in your head? Youtube the Drifters.)
There is a big difference between channeled light and being out in the light. I was no longer simply looking through the skylight, but under the great big sky. The sun had run off to illumine another side of the earth, and I stood above the skylight and cricked my neck. I heard the melancholy moan of a train, and a drone of a plane. Clouds sporadically tip-toed by. Stars twinked at me in the gaps.
I sat for a moment.
“When this old world starts a getting you down…” (Cue the Drifters)
Well, yes and no. If the newsfeed spoon-feeds my anxious thoughts, rather than summons compassion and prayers, I get more “down.” Just what are we to do with all this inflowmation? Then I thought of the skylight.
God is in charge of the satellite-skies as Mark Heard describes them. The square of sunshine graced to us is our piece of presence. Our little light, you know, the one that we’re gonna shine, is like the holey roof, the aperture which God’s great light can focus on a dark portion of this world.
Is there a possibility we all might be skylights? Sure, many, like mine, are in need of some repair, but hey, light still shines through. It shines in place, my place in the world.
“I am the light of the world.” Jesus
Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me today to be a little light in the dark places. Shine through me. Amen
By the way, the skylight is not falling, it is filling. Filling you to spill light on your place in the world.
Not only circumference
but an orb
of circumstantial evidence.
What keeps us from flinging
into thin air, breathless
to the pin drop darkness?
Every spinning and expanding
island riding on predestination.
What keeps us from bringing
a thin air of presumption?
What great expanse of reason
finds its edge, its end?
Thought rides tides to the Temple.
And Jesus writes in the dirt with his finger.
John 8:1-12John 1:5
Who threw the salt into center night?
Deep space thoughts sprinkled
and preserved.
The flavor of infinity dashed
between light years
and a dark night.
The staring, my taste buds,
the stars, raise my blood pressure.
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?”
Psalm 8:3,4
Who knows where wonder lusts,
and how gold retains the end
of all layered compulsion.
The push pins of night
will stick a staggered light,
and day lids will fall again.
The cloudscape
scraped the sides,
and wayward beams
invaded the lows.
A push down
and in.
Strands of yellow
light weaved
where fog
and mist
were wrested.
The quilted air
pried from
the sculpted knolls
was lifted by
a yellow oscillation.
Together, they were
a secret.
Separate, they are
a mystery.
Genesis 1:3
Photo courtesy of Jessica Szopinski. Guatemala
Photo by Roberto Gonzalez
Khor Virap Church, Arashat, Armenia
From whence came this beam of light?
Did the particles roll off the Tongue?
Can sound give birth to brilliance?
Genesis 1:3
John 8:12
John 1:1
She dozed off in a Stryker bed.
Her head tilted and cricked.
She mumbled and snored a bit.
It was an afternoon nap
and we just were.
Might I stay until bedtime
to tuck her in and say a prayer?
I’ll leave the light on and the door cracked.
I could be just down the hall
beneath that same light.
“Oh Father,
Come to her in her dreams like the daddy
she once adored.
Oh Jesus, take her hand,
like the big brother she once looked up to.
Oh Comforter,
Lay the baby Jesus in her dreams to hold
as she did each of us in a room such as this.
Oh come and be the light in the hall.
Come and be the opened door.”
“I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety.” Psalm 4:8 King James Version
As you have wished to us many times over; Sweet dreams, mom, sweet dreams.
© Gerald Allen Barrett and parentheticallyspeakingin3d, 2012.
Gerald the Writer 