The clouds cleared enough in the late afternoon that we were able to catch some glimpses of the last sunset of 2011, seen at various points on campus -- glimpses of light through all the paraphernalia of the ordinary.

And to close off 2011, this closing blessing from Philip Newell's Celtic Treasure:
        The blessings of heaven,
        the blessings of earth,
        the blessings of sea and of sky.
        On those we love this day
        and on every human family
        the gifts of heaven,
        the gifts of earth,
        the gifts of sea and of sky.

I'm still reading Philip Newell, this time in Christ of the Celts, and this passage caught my eye:

One of the most ancient symbols of Christ in the Celtic world is the salmon. We find it in the earliest strands of Celtic Christian art and poetry. Even in the pre-Christian Celtic world, it is a favorite image, associated especially with true knowledge and wisdom. Of course, the fish had been a symbol of Christ in the earliest centuries of the church, but in the Celtic world, it specifically became a salmon. So the ancient symbolism for wisdom merges with the Christian symbolism for love, and love and its longings are viewed as the deepest expression of wisdom.    p.90

Musing on the fish imagery, I'm reminded of an O Antiphon I worked on at a writing retreat last year. Traditionally, the O Antiphons are a series of Advent songs, or verses, that call on Christ with a title from the Old Testament. If you are familiar with O Come, O Come Emmanuel, you'll recognize the pattern.

We were working with a variation on this, based on a collection of invocations written by Richard Skinner, Calling on the God in All, from the Celtic-based community on Iona. These O Antiphons begin by addressing God as revealed in some aspect of creation -- the first line beginning O (fill in the blank), four lines describing the thing seen, a line naming the facet of God that has been illuminated, and then a line or two of petition.

This particular antiphon was inspired by a recurring event that happened as I sat scribbling on a pier by the lake. I've worked on it a couple different times over the past year, and I'm not sure it has settled yet, but here it is. I enjoyed looking at it again with this image of Christ the Salmon.

    O Splash –
            sound and spurt of water in a silver lake,
            brief backwash ringing outwards into ripples,
            shimmering moment that draws my eye
            to seek the silent fish below,
        you are the tangible trace of unseen action:
            come, sound in the waters of our lives,
            alert us to the Spirit, rising.

Today some of the details on "barren branches" caught my eye -- a fascinating mix of buds and berries at various stages. I especially liked the water berries above. When the temperature drops below freezing tonight, will there be little ice berries on this tree?

Light came streaming into the living room today, highlighting a few of the ornaments on the tree, like my Danish glass reindeer. And Rudolph's nose was a bright cherry-red spark.

And outdoors an evergreen on campus had its own sunlit ornaments.

Doesn't look much like Goshen in the winter, does it? It's not. In this morning's sermon, Carmen Horst shared some of her fond memories of darkness, including Christmas time in her childhood home of the Argentinian chaco. She talked of the beauty and scent of the night-blooming cereus, the cactus whose flowers open once a year, for a single night.

This night-blooming cereus was in the little backyard laundry area at Casa Goshen, in Costa Rica. It bloomed, hugely, soon after we got there in 1992. For a sense of the size, each bloom was about a hand's width across.

While acknowledging the many biblical passages that use the image of darkness to talk of trouble, sin and death, Carmen also named some of the positive passages, like Isaiah 45:3:
     I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in             secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the LORD, the         God of Israel, who call you by your name.

The night-blooming cereus certainly counts as one of the treasures to be found in darkness.

Carmen's sermon wasn't just on darkness and possible gifts to be found there. Our Advent theme has been "Darkness is cradle for the dawning," and her sermon title was "Celebrating the Dawn." She reminded us that the dawn is not the same as sunrise, especially not this time of year. Dawn begins with the first lightening of the sky, and we wait and watch, wondering what the day will be, just as we wait and watch with a newborn child.

I've been up before dawn the last day or two -- it's not much of a challenge here in midwinter. Yesterday I stood in the wondrous luminosity of a clear sky, shortly before sunrise, and felt surrounded by light. Not something to capture with a photo, but simply to be enjoyed.

The clear sky held all day, so in the afternoon, John and I made a quick trip to the Defries Calendar Garden south of town.

Light and color, even on a cold December day in northern Indiana.

















And there were even a few open blossoms, though on a much smaller scale than the night-blooming cereus. I don't know what bush this was, but the flower clusters were only about the size of a quarter. Large or small, midwinter or midsummer, day or night -- this world holds much beauty and many wonders to be discovered.

Many moments of light on this sunny day, like a by-chance breakfast with old family friends, and this sunshine highlighting our Costa Rican nativity scene, and an afternoon visit to the calendar gardens, and the candle dance at the Christmas Eve soup supper at church this evening, and sitting with John, watching the flames flicker in the fireplace.

We ended our worship service this evening sitting in the glow of many small candles, singing "Silent night, holy night." And the third verse shimmered for me, and seems an appropriate one to repeat here this Christmas eve:
        Silent night, holy night!
        Son of God, Love's pure light,
        radiant, beams from thy holy face
        with the dawn of redeeming grace,
        Jesus, Lord, at thy birth,
        Jesus, Lord, at thy birth.

Winter solstice -- last night was the longest night, so we're beginning the slow climb of gradually longer days and the sun's return, and this sun on my sister's porch, with its messages of believe, relax, life, warmth, grow, plant, breathe, daydream, love, feel, create, and laugh seems like a good way to celebrate.

I went out midday in search of glory. In The Book of Creation, Philip Newell quotes George MacLeod as saying in one of his prayers, "Show to us the glory in the grey." He describes this as looking for the light of God in the most ordinary, and even dullest, of contexts. I decided that an overcast northern Indiana winter day, without snow, qualified.

And this water retention area on the edge of campus, with the industrial park in the background, full of dead and dry plants, seemed like a prime candidate for the ordinary in the midst of everyday life.

And there were intriguing shapes and bursts of light, in the midst of the grey and papery brown.

And even in the midst of dried stems and grasses, there was new life and color, growing greenly on a south-facing slope.

Winter solstice. The turning of the year. The shortest day, the longest night.

I'm pondering invisible light. Not darkness, not the absence of light, but invisible light. The light that is at the heart of all life, the light of God.

In The Book of Creation: an introduction to Celtic Spirituality, Philip Newell writes:
Nothing has life apart from this light. It dapples through the whole of creation. It is within the brilliance of the morning sun and the whiteness of the moon at night. It issues forth in all that grows from the ground and in the life that shines from the eyes of any living creature. This is not to pretend that there are not also terrible darknesses deep within us and in the whole of creation. Rather it is to say that the light is deeper still and that it emanates from the love of God.

This 'first day' light is something other than sun, moon, stars, which aren't created until the fourth day. They come forth from that light, but so do the earth, and the waters and all of creation. For Celtic Christianity, all life is woven through with this light of God, which is dark inaccessible mystery, invisible, divine darkness, the dazzling dark, the invisible fiery light.

Perhaps it is the darkness and the light that the psalmist wrote of, in Psalm 139:11-12:
    If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,
        and the light around me become night,"
    even the darkness is not dark to you;
        the night is as bright as the day,
                for darkness is as light to you.

Newell writes:
    From that inaccessible light of God all life comes forth, whether that be the morning light of the burning sun, the yellow brilliance of a sunflower growing from the dark ground or the glow of a starfish emerging in the depths of the sea. It is the light within all life, or as George MacLeod says, the 'Sun behind all suns.' Our eyes cannot see it, not can human thought nor imagination grasp it.

We may not be able to see it, or comprehend it, but perhaps the 'eyes of our heart' might catch a glimpse as we ponder the sparks of light that we do see. So here, from the archives, is a sunrise, a sunflower and a star, each in its own way a mix of dark and light.

* Image Credit: NASA/Swift Science Team/Stefan Immler
(I wanted a photo that hinted at some of the astronomical background for the solstice, and chose this one primarily because it's beautiful -- but then I read the accompanying explanatory note below, and was struck by the juxtaposition of worldviews wrestling with mystery and beginnings.)
    The Triangulum Galaxy is located nearly 3 million light years from Earth. And, in a study that pushes the limits of observations currently possible from Earth, a team of NASA and European scientists recorded the "fingerprints" of mystery molecules in the Triangulum Galaxy, as well as the Andromeda Galaxy.
    Figuring out exactly which molecules are leaving these clues, known as "diffuse interstellar bands" (DIBs), is a puzzle that initially seemed straightforward but has gone unsolved for nearly a hundred years. The answer is expected to help explain how stars, planets and life form.

I'm reading The Book of Creation by Philip Newell, and found this prayer from the Celtic tradition, one that was said or chanted with the lighting of the morning fire:
    I will kindle my fire this morning
    In the presence of the holy angels of heaven. . .

I don't light a fire each day in this house with its central heating, but there is a band of angels keeping watch on my piano these weeks of Advent, and each wintry Sunday evening at Faith House Fellowship we kindle a fire.

The prayer continues: 
      God, kindle Thou in my heart within
        A flame of love to my neighbour,
        To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all. . .
        O Son of the loveliest Mary,
        From the lowliest thing that liveth,
        To the Name that is highest of all.

A flame of love. Perhaps it is like the flames I was looking at last night, discovering that through the light of one flame I could see the light of another. A flame of love for my neighbor, foe, friend. . . for all living things and for the One whose fire of love holds us all.

Last Sunday evening we kindled our weekly fire at Faith House Fellowship, and sang "When the night becomes dark, your love, O Lord, is a fire" and "Within our darkest night, you kindle the fire that never dies away," both Taize songs.

What might it be like, to pray that prayer each morning, and to sing one of those songs each night?

I'm thinking about shadows today. Since there wasn't much sun showing through the clouds, there weren't many shadows. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there was one large shadow, cast by the thick layer of clouds overhead, so that everything was more or less an even gray.

At the risk of repeating myself, it is much harder to find photographic sparks of light on an overcast day.

I was musing on this at supper, and on the shadow I saw in the center of the flame I carried into the Advent spiral Saturday. John questioned whether it was actually a shadow. "The light isn't being blocked, it's just thinner at the base of the flame."

We peered at the flames of the Advent candles burning for our centerpiece. There's the blue at the edge of the base, and then a part with not much light. Squinching up one eye, and looking through the thin area, I could see the edge of the cranberry red candle behind it.

Indeed. There is a thin place there (but not the sort of thin place the Celtic Christians wrote of, those places where heaven seems closer than normal to earth).

Then I discovered that when I looked at a second flame through the first flame, I saw some intriguing effects. I could see the second flame through the first even beyond the thin part.

Here are three candles in a row, with the back two flames much smaller than the first.

Still, you can see something of what I saw. Here we are looking at the back two candle flames through the first flame. And when I moved so that all three were in a line, I could see the second through the first and the third through the first two.

Light a few candles and see what you see.

_Before we get too far past Sunday's lectionary reading from Luke, I want to return to the angel's message to Mary in verse 1:35, and spend a little more time with another kind of shadow.

The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.

A few days ago my musings on this passage took me to the bright cloud on the Mount of Transfiguration, which overshadowed the disciples. Today I'm thinking about the golden statues of cherubim in the temple "overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings" and to all those psalms that have references to being sheltered in the shadow of God's wings, like 36:7 How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings, or 63:5 7: My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips when I think of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.

The English word "overshadow" can feel heavy, like an overcast Indiana day, or a submissive Mary being overpowered by the dominant "Most High." Shadow feels like negative space. But what if shadow is a place of refuge, a place where we can sing for joy? A place -- a thin place, perhaps -- that gives birth to holy new life.

And holy is your name....

This was Mary's Sunday. We heard the story of Gabriel's visit to her, and then the Magnificat, her song of praise and prophecy. The story was read by a young couple whose little girl died shortly after birth a year and a half ago and who are now awaiting the birth of their son.

Darkness and light.

. . .and holy is your name.

After the five verses, the refrain is played over and over again. The six dancers did it together, and then with each repeat, another seven or so dancers stood up in the aisles and joined them. By the last time through, there were dancers spread through the whole congregation -- including a few who joined in on the spur of the moment.

Linda, the choreographer, calls it her Mary's Song Flash Mob dance.

It was a joy to be part of the flash mob. I wasn't too sure about it when we started rehearsing before the service and there were only about five of us there to be the "mob." But additional participants kept arriving as we rehearsed, and by the end, there were enough to have the aisles well-filled.

Much sunlight throughout the day, and a lovely singing fire at Faith House Fellowship this evening, and some good quotes on light from Philip Newell -- but I'll save those for another day.

I'm thinking of the intertwining of light and shadow again. Today there was retreat space set up at the meetinghouse, so that people could come as they were able, and spend time in Advent space.

There were tables set up with supplies for folding origami cranes or working creatively with paper supplies or decorating candles with malleable colored beeswax. And there was a large spiral laid out on the floor, outlined with pine branches and tree stumps for setting candles on, with the path leading in to the glowing Christ candle at the center.

We were invited to spend time in prayer or pondering questions such as:
    In what ways are the Darkness and Light interacting in you and in         the world this Advent season?
    How have you seen darkness becoming the "cradle of the                     dawning"?
    Can you name the spots of light and the dark places of this past         year?

If we chose to do so, we could carry an unlit candle into the spiral, slowly, mindfully, prayerfully, light it at the Christ candle and then carry it out, placing it on one of the stumps.

On the way in with my unlit candle, I noticed one golden origami crane catching the light as it hung on the mobile that has been made of many origami cranes folded in prayer for Heidi's healing.

And I noticed the dance of the light and shadow of candles that others had left on the stumps of wood.

I didn't have my camera along, so this is a re-creation at home. I looked down at flames that were flickering slightly in the movement of air in the room. Beneath them, the white candles glowed in their wooden holders.

Beneath each holder there was a pool of light, dancing a bit as the flame flickered. And at the center of each pool of light, there was a dancing shadow, cast by the candle itself. In one case, the drips and decorations on the side of the candle were such that the cast shadow looked like a bird, moving gently in its pool of cast light.

On the way out, my attention went to the flame I carried. When I held it at eye level, I could see the beautiful clear blue at the base, then the warm dancing light above. And at the center of the flame, a shadow that was part of the flame and so of light, and yet still a shadow, around and above the wick.With each step I took the flame bent and bowed regally, first to one side, then to the other. I soon had the verse from the old Shaker hymn singing through my head:
        When true simplicity is found
            to bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,
        to turn, turn shall be our delight,
            till by turning, turning we come round right.

How appropriate to accompany a spiral walk. And how fitting with the last questions we were given to ponder: Have any new insights emerged [as you walked the spiral]? Are you feeling called to any new action, to a shift in your current practices, or to letting something go?

Before I entered the spiral, I had folded an origami crane of black paper shot with black threads that caught the light and shimmered. It seemed fitting for this season of ruminating on darkness and light. I left it on the art table.

As I finished the spiral, I realized I wanted to fold another crane to go with it, one of some light colored paper. I shuffled through the papers that were there, and chose a light blue, sprinkled with lighter blue strands. It reminded me of the blue of the flame, and the blue light that Heidi has written about experiencing during her radiation treatment.

I finished folding it, and reached across the table to put it beside the black crane -- and discovered someone had already folded a tiny blue crane and placed it lovingly on the wings of the larger black crane.

Darkness and light.

Dark paper with light threads, dancing candle shadows and flames, and a tiny blue bird of hope.

I had a retreat day at the cottage at Pathways Retreat Center today, a good day of rest and reflection. The morning was gray and drippy, and could have been dismal, except that everywhere I looked, I saw beads of light. There was even color.

The afternoon was drier and I was able to walk the small labyrinth. I came back to my snug cabin and Seeking with All My Heart by Paula D'Arcy, and found myself reading about her experience walking a labyrinth made with luminaries (candles in paper bags). She describes how she half-closed her eyes, so she was no longer aware of the others walking with her through the narrow rows of candles.

"There was only light. And suddenly I was nowhere, and I was everywhere. At the same moment. I simply was. And there was nothing more or less than now."

She held that awareness as she refocused her eyes and started the journey back out, passing the people who followed her, this time meeting their eyes, holding their gaze. She realized that the labyrinth wasn't just a work of art, but a representation of something deeply true.

"The path we each walk, the movement of the soul toward awakening, is ablaze with light. We never take a step apart from light. By light we are held and defined.
    But on the path itself, day to day, we seldom, if ever glimpse light. We're more likely to see difficulty, adversity and sorrow. We often feel alone, not held. There is no sense of a life-sustaining embrace. There is the sense that life is an incomprehensible puzzle, which often goes in a direction we would never have consciously chosen. Far from seeing light, we perceive darkness."

She goes on to tell of meeting, years later, the nurse who had cared for her in intensive care in the days after a car accident that took the lives of her husband and daughter. She didn't recognize her, but the nurse knew who she was and told of how she had tended her and prayed for her, and hoped against hope that she'd make it -- praying that the flicker of light she saw in her would not go out.

Driving home after the encounter, Paula was overwhelmed by "a realization that those days, for me, had appeared to be totally and utterly dark. And if my life at the time had been depicted as a journey within a labyrinth, I would have insisted that that particular section of the path was unlit. But that night, in a rare moment, I not only got to see that I was mistaken, I got to see the very embodiment of the path's light."

Darkness and light. Walking in the light, whether we are able to perceive it or not.

A wet December day makes me feel like curling up in an afghan, with a cup of hot tea and a good children's book. I did that last night with Moominland Midwinter, by Tove Jansson. It's the story of Moomintroll's extraordinary wakening from his winter hibernation and his discovery of the winter world in Finland.

It's a fun little book, with some wise words on living in the moment and not longing for the summer that is past or the spring that is to come. It brightened my winter day. I pulled it off the shelf in part because earlier in the day I was reminded of one of the incidental characters in the story -- the little squirrel who thinks of himself as "the squirrel with the marvellous tail."

The midmorning coffee klatch at the birdfeeder included the usual crowd of sparrows, a cardinal or two, and a couple of squirrels. They looked like they might well think of themselves as "the squirrel with the marvellous tail." And they were every bit as flighty as the book's squirrel, an absent-minded and foolish fellow who comes to a sad end, freezing to death when he meets the Lady of the Cold, in the deep midwinter freeze. Or does he?

"[Moomintroll] hardly turned his head as a small squirrel jumped across his path.
  "Happy spring," said the squirrel, absent-mindedly.
   "Well, thanks," replied Moomintroll and continued on his way. But all at once he stopped short and stared at the squirrel. It had a big and bushy tail that shone red in the sunset.
  "Do people call you the squirrel with the marvellous tail?" Moomintroll asked slowly.
    "Of course," said the squirrel.
    "Is it you?" cried Moomintroll. "Is it really you? Who met the Lady of the Cold?"
    "I don't remember," said the squirrel. "You know, I'm not very bright at remembering things."

And while Moomintroll has more questions, we're left with mystery. And a squirrel who thinks of himself as "the squirrel with the marvellous tail." And two more who may be curled up in a nest in the neighbor's maple tree right now, wrapped up in their tails, keeping warm.

_The picture above is Henry Ossawa Tanner's 1898 painting of the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel's appearance to Mary. I find my gaze repeatedly returning to that angel of light, and to Mary's face and hands.

This morning I was working with the story of Gabriel's visit to Mary in Luke 1: 26 - 38, in preparation for some gatherings later this week, and my attention was caught by the word "overshadow" in verse 35. The power of the Most High will overshadow you...

Overshadow: To cast a shadow over, to darken or obscure.

The same word shows up in the various gospel accounts of the transfiguration, the glory that comes over Jesus on the mountain, as he talks with Moses and Elijah. A cloud -- or in Matthew's version, a bright cloud -- comes and overshadows the three disciples who are watching.

This "bright cloud" is a reference to the Shekinah, the cloud that filled the temple when it was first built, which is experienced as both thick darkness and as the radiant glory of God, a sign of the in-dwelling of God in that place.

So what kind of shadow does a bright cloud cast?

What light shines when we reflect that radiant glory?

Here's a mix of cloud and light and shadow and reflections, an image received at the end of October, near the Goshen dam.

I put the ornaments on the tree today, beginning with these two -- the glass ball with the map of the world etched on, and the dove carrying an olive branch. It seems like the best place to start.

The rest of the tree gets decked with stars, angels, and other things that belong on trees -- leaves, birds, a tree frog. Okay, I'm not so sure about the reindeer, but it's in there too.

They catch the light in their own ways.

A crystal apple from a visit to Denmark just after college, years ago, and stars and angels from many places, thanks to a tradition of buying a Christmas ornament from Ten Thousand Villages every year, another way of praying for peace on earth -- or at least, for fair trade and hope for the artisans who make the products.

"Joy is a candle of mystery and laughter, mystery of light that is born in the dark..." (from Hope is a candle by Richard Leach, #15 in Sing the Story)

It's the third Sunday of Advent, and my moments of light today are snippets here and there --
   -- the light shining on Karen's head as she sang the solo during             communion
    --light from the stained glass windows dancing colorfully above             Wilma's head as she played the guitar
    -- Carmen's and my shared laughter as she stumbled over this             line in her blessing for me: "May your mouth be filled with                 laughter     ...  (from Psalm 126)
    --candles, fire, and laughter at Faith House
    --a just past full moon seen through the branches of the                        neighbor's trees
    -- lights on the Christmas tree we put up yesterday
    -- the wonderful illustrations in Julia Vivas' book, The Nativity,                 especially the angel, with his colorful, tattered wings and his             army boots

". . .laughter at hearing the voice of an angel, ever so near, casting out fear."  (from Hope is a candle)

One more quote from the article "Times of Abundance," and the spark of light and beauty in imperfection (see yesterday's blog for more on this):
If you get just a few items from a local farmer, or even a few herbs from your windowsill, you create a personal connection to food and to the people and place it came from. The bottom line is that good food is food that connects you to the earth and to others -- it is a very real communion.

I experience that communion on my weekly trips to Goshen's Farmers' Market, and at a weekly breakfast date at Rachel's Bread.

Rachel grew up in Belgium and missed the bread and the ambiance of the bakeries there. She has created her own version here, in her bakery attached to the Farmers' Market -- definitely a spark of light in my week, both for the yummy food and for the fellowship as we visit with friends while we eat.

And then there's the Farmers' Market in the same building.

I take delight in buying veggies that have been grown nearby, by farmers I now know by name. At this time of the year, the variety isn't as colorful as in the supermarket, but it feels more connected to the season I'm experiencing. You can't get much more connected to the earth than the rugged root crops that are available these days. There's a subtle light even in dusty potato skins and dried flowers, and more light in the community that gathers to sell and to buy these goods.

This is a Japanese tea bowl from the exhibit we went to in Kalamazoo in mid-November. My eye was focusing on leaves of all kinds during that season of leaf transformation.Today it is fitting well with a paragraph I came across in a Christian Century article in the December 13th issue, "Times of Abundance", by Amy Frykholm. She interviewed Terra Brockman, an advocate for sustainable agriculture and founder of The Land Connection. The paragraph came in the midst of a discussion of people's reactions to "imperfect" fruits and vegetables:

I learned about the importance of imperfection when I lived in Japan. In the Japanese tea ceremony, you have to use imperfect clay bowls because the aging, cracked, asymmetrical bowls force you to see beyond the surface to the spark of light and beauty within. The spark points to perfection within imperfection.
    Food is not about some perfect size or color or presentation. It's about joining us to the earth, our fellow creatures, family, guests, and ultimately God. It's about life here and now, about seeing the spark of light and beauty in our world and our lives, even with all their imperfection and unpredictability.

Amen -- it's like the broken and blessed pot I wrote of November 28, it's like all our lives. It's about seeing the spark of light and beauty in the midst of all the imperfection, unpredictability, and change.

So here's a few more sparks of light, found in what at first glance was a gray, frozen, barren landscape.

Yesterday one shimmer of light came with the play of light and shadow on this harvested field. First my eye was caught by the lines of the stubble and the flow of the land, and I recorded this scene just before going in to visit with a friend.

When I came out an hour or two later, the sky had changed and the play of light and shadow was more active, sweeping across the field so that the land itself seemed to shimmer.

Yesterday's gray skies and my grumpy mood did not do much for my awareness of moments of light.It took until late evening, when John and I took cups of tea downstairs and settled in front of the tv to watch a bit of the documentary Winged Migration.

If you aren't familiar with the bird's eye view and the amazing scenes in this film, you can get a taste of it at the Winged Migration website.

I'm amazed at the photography (How did they do that? How long do you think they waited for that scene?); I'm amazed at the abilities of birds to travel incredible distances; I'm amazed at the variety and beauty of the landscapes they fly over.

Where were these geese headed, flying over my house last Wednesday? Given the cornfields around here, they probably weren't going far -- but they could. And what a different perspective they have, flying at that height.

I'm reminded of the spring that our family drove north to Edmonton, right during spring migration. As we passed through the fields of Saskatchewan, there were two Canada geese in every puddle, and gaggles of geese in every pond.

I'm only a rudimentary birder, but I think we were seeing snow geese as well -- rivers and deltas of birds in flight, and whole convocations of birds on the ground. Amazing.

As we traveled, we were listening to A Circle is Cast, by the singing group Libana. This recording includes the song A River of Birds, so that now that song and the sight of birds in migration are irrevocably linked for me. (If you're interested in Libana's music, here's the link.)

_ Yesterday our Gestalt Pastoral Care training group gathered again at Pathways Retreat Center, which was lovingly decorated for Advent. Our times together are a mixture of presentations and practice, as we take turns learning how to minister to each other and being the one doing Gestalt work.

This means that in a given session, most of us are participating as witnesses, learning as we watch, sometimes having a role to play or a response to make, and praying for those actively working.

During one session yesterday, I was one of the witnesses and the song that Adam Tice wrote for Assembly, Will You Hold me in the Light, kept going through my head. Or more accurately, two phrases – the title and “Hold me in the light of God.” I kept hearing them sing in my head, inviting me to hold the one who was doing the work that session in the light of God.

“Holding someone in the Light” is the way I often visualize intercessory prayer, and I usually think of the light of God as illuminating and healing, cradling the person I am praying for.

During this time of prayer, I had a sense of the light of God as healing, yes, but that sometimes the healing comes through the burning away of dross. The light of God can be painful in its healing and illuminating.

I kept thinking of the fire of roses in George Mac Donald’s The Princess and Curdie. In this fairy tale by the Scotch pastor and writer who influenced C.S.Lewis, Curdie encounters the princess’ great-great-great-ever-so-many-great-grandmother, a mysterious lady who lives in a garret at the top of the tallest tower, spins moonlight into thread, watches over the kingdom, and appears sometimes as an old crone and at others as a beautiful woman. As we learn to know her, it becomes clear that mysterious as she is, she is goodness and grace. MacDonald doesn’t use the words holy or divine, but this royal lady is one of the faces of God for me.

In her room, Curdie finds a hearth where “a great fire was burning, and the fire was a huge heap of roses, and yet it was fire.” The royal lady has a task for him, telling him it needs only trust and obedience, and promising, “It will hurt you terribly, Curdie, but that will be all; no real hurt but much good will come to you from it.”

Curdie is willing, and the lady tells him to thrust both hands into the fire.

Curdie does, painfully, with the end result that his hands are as white and smooth as the lady’s, and with the gift of discernment that as the story progresses helps him to know good from indifferent or evil. We also learn that the lady felt Curdie’s pain every bit as much as he did.

Near the end of the book, the fire of roses appears again, bringing health to one character near death and transformation to another.

As one of the characters in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books warns about Aslan, the great lion who plays a Christ-like role in the books: “He’s not a tame lion, you know.”

The light of God is not a tame light, you know. Sometimes it burns like a refiner’s fire, burning away dross, purifying the silver and gold.

Today's bright sunshine made for a world of interesting shadows, whether outside on the snow, or inside with houseplants and metal sculptures.

I'm pondering light and shadow in other ways these days. Darkness and shadow tend to carry negative connotations for us, and they can be scary, and threatening. But they can also be gift, as in Brian Wren's song, Joyful is the Dark, which poetically provides us with numerous images of times of darkness that were "the cradle of the dawning."

There's the holy, hidden God, in the thick darkness on Sinai, and in the mystic's "cloud of unknowing." There's the dark chaos over which the spirit breath of God hovered in the beginning. There's the darkness of the stable, and the coolness of the tomb "waiting for the wonder of the morning."

And today I had an illuminating moment as I made my way through this rather dense sentence from the book Sophia: the Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton, by Christopher Pramuk: "And although it is true that his cosmic view of Christ frequently shimmers with cataphatic light and presence, we shall see that as Sophia it makes ample room for the apophatic paradox of darkness and hiddenness..."

Cataphatic and apophatic are technical theological language, but the concepts aren't hard to grasp. The cataphatic path is one in which we experience God through the richness of the created world -- through our relationships, through nature, through scripture, through faith imagination, through music and poetry and song.

The apophatic path is where we encounter God through experiences of absence and emptiness, silence and darkness. Words and images fail to hold or express all that God is. God is mystery

While one strand may dominate for a given individual at a given time, these are two sides of the same reality, and both are intertwining strands in our lives. My photos of sparks of light are in the cataphatic strand; when i sit in silent prayer, I am in an apophatic mode.

I'm eager to read more about Merton's experience with Christ as Sophia/Wisdom. I know his poetry and prayers are full of light and presence, as well as the hiddenness and the darkness that births new life.

I'll continue to pay attention through this time of Advent, watching for the interplay of shadow and light, and for experiences of the cataphatic and apophatic ways for knowing God.

_This lightpost and banner on the GC campus captivated me this morning. Or rather, the sparkling of the frost that covered them did. Both banner and light were scintillating.

(Great word, scintillating. Sort of like tintinnabulation, only with sight instead of sound.)

You can get a bit more of an idea with a close up -- the white specks here are not a malfunction of the camera, but rather sunlight glinting off frost crystals.

You can see a few more sparks on the globe -- and a glimpse of the sun.

But none of these do justice to the light show that I could see standing there, or the shimmering that happened as I slowly walked past and the sunlight sparked off of different ice crystals.

A bit like religious experiences, perhaps. The attempt to share it gives a faint idea of what it was like, but it just isn't the same as your own experience as you interact with the Light.