cairns

Why is snow white? Ice can look blue, green, or I suppose even some other colors. But, snow is white.

My silly thought on the Grace of Creation is that we need the extra light it reflects in the dark of winter. Amazing how the dark of winter gives way to blazing brightness. Freezing cold outside, but the brightness and the squirrel sitting in the sun on the tree outside my window lift the gravity of winter darkness from my soul!

peace

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The Solstice has come again, the western New Year has arrived. So, I would like to hear; how has the light come to you in new ways? Or, how have you become a light in new ways — big or small. Remember in the darkest times, a very small light changes everything!
peace

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about the candle?

I grew up on songs about the wonders of the candle for beating back the darkness –This little light of mine, It is better to light just one..Pass it on…

Lately I have been thinking more about the darkness than the candle.  Then Mavis Staples found her turn on my ipod, and tonight a TV show ends with another rendition of ‘this little light’…

And it makes me wonder

about the candle,

does it feel

the weight of the darkness

that surrounds it,

does it feel

its own fate

in the fight,

does it love

or curse

the hand

that lights

it,

gives it

purpose,

and sacrifice,

makes it

a beacon

for a season,

and invites

its consumption,

and transcendence

into heat

and light?

peace

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Its a quiet snow day.  Just a little sunlight is enough when the world is clothed in snow and ice.  The view out my window lifts my spirits.  In the dark and cold, just a little light brings great relief.  Things are looking better for the loved one I wrote of earlier.  Friends surround us as they also surround the globe.  And there is a little light. 

peace

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I am reading Christ and Empire, (Thanks for the recommendation Tim).  At the end of chapter two, Rieger is explaining how the early councils’ theologies of Christ’s oneness with both God and humanity open up the world of understanding of both God and each other.

“Is the divine somehow linked with the success of those in power (or other preconceived notions of the top down), or is the divine linked to the Christ who cannot easily be defined and whose power moves from the bottom up instead of from the top down?  Second, how do we understand humanity and its relationship to divinity?  If we understand humanity or divinity according to the private-property model (as if humans would “own” some part of God), we will not get much beyond an identity politics that closes the doors to deeper encounters with Christ and the complexity of his full humanity and full divinity.  Only if we do not own the divine can divinity in Christ yet surprise us by being other than we imagine.”

That gets at the darkness I am comfortable in — not darkness as the absence of the light I have been given so far — but darkness in comparison to the light I yet expect.  There is such joy in waiting to be surprised by the God who is both known and beyond all knowing! peace

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I am still exploring something of this that is beyond my grasp.  How do I go out into the dark to seek others if the fire travels with me?  Does the light shine out where I go?  Is that determined more by the power of the light or my degree of transparency?  How does my small frail self hold the Light of All Lights?

Sunday the song “Come to my heart Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for Thee.”  Really?  If I go beyond sentimental meanings of “Y’all come now Jesus,”  room?  seriously enough room in my small heart for the Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, Restorer and Lord?

This is a great mystery I am exploring, not trying to solve.  I’m not looking for simple verses or easy answers.  I am just blown away by the immensity of what we claim so casually!  And yet, in some ways, it is the same mystery I was describing earlier in my little heresy post.  In the moments when I am unable to perceive light, when the darkness of this world and age loom largest, when the educated of the world including theologians proclaim that the God I know is dead, I find Him right there in me!

I do not know how that can be.  I do not know how His own earthly body could contain Him. 

But, I know it is true.  He said it.  I have met Him there on the border of hell speaking out from within me.  I have found Him on the mountain top bringing me home to work again. 

What I am musing about here are the questions which draw me to understand how much bigger, other, beyond — and at the same time close, intimate, and available He is.  What a great wonder that all present light is darkness compared to the full understanding of Him, and my darkest days are pure light compared to life without Him.  I am exploring mysteries in great gratitude.

peace

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Maybe it was somewhere in reading Os Guiness quote John’s words about living in the light and no longer being able to live in the dark, or watching Bruce Springsteen sing “This Little Light of Mine,” or CS Lewis’ tool-shed analogy coming back around again that it hit me.  Maybe the spiritual world looks dark for the same reason the woods does to a little scout with a good flashlight!

I learned long ago not to use an artificial light for walking unless absolutely necessary because it blinds you to everything not in its light.  You can see your little spot to put your foot and the rest of the world is cloaked in darkness.  It happens sitting by the fire as well.  The bigger and brighter the fire, the darker everything else in the world appears.

So here I am contemplating the moment of Jesus arrival to claim the Old testament saints and it dawns on me.  Where He is its light.  Where I am, He is.  Where I am it is never dark.  But looking outward from the light– the world looks dark, very dark.  I live in the presence of The Light.  How can the rest fail to look anything but dark in the contrast?  How many times do I have to learn that the physical and spiritual worlds are not so separate or distinct from one another as we make them?  How foolish to sit in the light looking out into the dark and proclaim myself to be in the dark!  I am laughing.

It is time to quit looking out there somewhere for light and do more inviting into the fire-circle!

peace

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