June 22: Light and Darkness, Domino Effect, Poem from "Kyrie"

If you want beautiful light, you're going to have to deal with darkness, too.  That's the way the universe works.  You can't have one without the other.

This evening, as I walked into church to clean, I was in a particularly dark mood for some reason.  One of those funks that fall on me seemingly out of the blue.  I call it the domino effect--a bunch of little or medium-sized problems that turn into a cascade.  Suddenly, you're at the bottom of a very dark place.  That's where I was as I pulled on my rubber gloves, grabbed my bottle of bleach, and walked into the sanctuary to start sanitizing.

I had gotten to the church later than normal because of another obligation, so, by the time I was done with my work, the sun was giving one last yawn in the sky before retiring to the other side of the planet.  I walked back into the sanctuary to retrieve my cell phone and make sure I hadn't left any lights on.  The room was quite dark.

Yet, there was a wall of stained glass that was literally blazing with sunset.  I snapped a photo with my phone, but the resulting picture just doesn't capture the full cut-glass beauty of the moment.  And it pierced the darkness I'd been experiencing.  Gave me some kind of solace.  A moment of grace is what writer Flannery O'Connor would have called it.  Where, through the ugliness of the world, something wondrously frightening and frighteningly wondrous appears.

The window, the sun, the darkness (surrounding me and inside me) combined into a miraculous, grace-filled vision that filled me with something like hope.

And for that, Saint Marty gives thanks.

. . . and a poem that ends with a moment that could be grace, too:

poem from Kyrie

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

I told him not to move, they'd said don't move.

The weeks of fewer cases were a tease,

a winter thaw that froze back up worse

than before, backswing of a scythe, we filled

the gym, cots and pallets on the floor.

And many now in uniform--I could spot

who'd been gassed, their buttons were tarnished green--

and many of them were missing parts, like him.

Did I say the nurses were wearing masks?

My last day she put him next to me,

sweet little nurse but not enough of her

to go around she said don't let him move.

You tell me, was it prayer or luck kept

me from being that boy reaching for water?