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 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.

A friend recently asked how the blog was going and whether I thought I'd keep it up. Good, I told her. It seems to be an integral part of this prayer practice -- yes, there is being aware of the moments of light I encounter each day, but there is something essential about picking a few of those moments and sharing them in image or words. Or, to use Mary Oliver's words: "Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it."

First there's the paying attention, watching for the sparks that make me go "ooo -- look at that." And usually the "that" is something fleeting, unique to this moment. I'm finding I want to record images as I discover them, as the world has composed them, with the particular combination of light, shadow, object that happened to catch my eye.

Perhaps that's why I like these "wind/leaf compositions," both seen in the gutter of a Kalamazoo street yesterday.

It was a cloudy day, so there's not much light sparking, or even shimmering. The spark comes more from enjoyment in the moment of this particular but fleeting combination of leaves, road, shadow.

I'm finding that part of the fun is the sense of discovery. What will catch my eye today? What will astonish me? Can I take a moment and receive that, with thanks?

And then there is the anticipation as I load the photos into the computer and look at them on the bigger screen. What did I find? What was I able to catch in an image? What is the story I want to share today?

And sometimes the astonishment comes with what technology is able to do. I was able to figure out how to recover the photo I accidentally deleted the other day, so here it is -- a different combination of leaves, road, and light.

John and I are spending a weekend away, in celebration of our 30th wedding anniversary -- there's a spark of light right there! Our anniversary is actually the first of August, but we were busy celebrating Beth and Jesse's wedding that week.

Earlier today we visited the Kalamazoo Institute of Art, to see their exhibit of Japanese pottery. There is also an exhibit of etchings, titled Shimmerings of Light, Mysteries of Shadow, which strikes me as an excellent option if I ever want to rename this blog.

Today's photos come from the buffet lunch at Saffron's, an Indian restaurant whose flavorful dishes provided an inward spark of light. My mouth is still happy.

We also enjoyed the decor. Each booth had its own artwork, all variations on a blend of traditional and contemporary. It's hard to tell in the photo below, but those diamonds and circles are mirrors, each reflecting light in its own way.

More reflections here, with the interaction of light and water and glass.

And here's a different sort of interaction of light and water and glass, seen across the way. . . a little apple light.

During this morning's walk I stopped to record the progress on the solar water heating project for Goshen College's Recreation-Fitness Center. As I took the photo, my eye was caught by the light reflecting from the glass insulators on the nearby telephone pole. They hardly show in the photo, and I've never noticed them before in all my many times of walking past, but for some reason this morning I was intrigued by the variation in colors and had to go over for a closer look.

The sunlight streamed in the front window all morning, and then it turned cloudy around noon. I already had plenty of material to draw on for this log of sparks of light, but when the sun came out briefly about 4:30, the scarlet leaves on the Japanese maple called to me. Despite yesterday's strong winds, most of the leaves on this little maple are still holding on, and they've gone from a deep burgundy to brilliant scarlet, especially when the afternoon sun is shining through them.

Forty-five minutes later, the back yard looked like this -- the Japanese maple is on the right.

Today was a blustery day, and the mix of clouds, sunshine and leaf blizzard this afternoon would have made for some interesting pictures. Unfortunately I spent most of that time at a meeting in a room with no windows. Hopefully we were working towards light of a different sort, but that's another story.

Instead, I offer two word pictures and a couple photos from this past month.

When I drove uptown for the meeting, the wind was blowing strongly and there were leaves waltzing everywhere. As I turned east on to Clinton, leaves from the courthouse trees swirled from ground level nearly to the top of the brick buildings across the street -- where a flock of pigeons continued the swirl, the underside of their wings flashing white in the afternoon sun.

Back here, John reported that there were so many yellow maple leaves from campus trees being blown down the driveway across the street that it looked like a golden river.

Here's a few leaves that weren't quite so active, from the archives I've created in the past month or so. I keep being entranced by light seen through leaves.

And the leaves in the last photo, below, were a little too active. I cropped the picture and then, in an inattentive moment, deleted it instead of saving it. There the leaves were, still on my screen, but the underlying data was gone.

I'd pull out some words of wisdom about the need to be present in the moment and to pay attention, which is undoubtedly true, but on the other hand, it seems rather fitting that a quickly taken photo of an ad hoc still life, long since blown away, has now also mostly vanished.

Most of life is as fleeting as that. If we tried to retain it all, whether as computer files or memories, we'd be so weighed down we couldn't move. Better to let the wind blow where it will, and the leaves to swirl and dance and flow like a river. And if we record a few images along the way, why, that's a bonus.

from Leaves (in Journeying in Place by Gunilla Norris)
“There are so many of them. Piles of them. I take pleasure in their abundance. More saints than you could ever dream of. Each one singular. Each one itself. Yellow, red, orange, parchment. They sail down in the autumn air like fearless sky divers. They are so trusting – letting go completely. Not questioning as I do…Will it be safe? Will I understand? Will it hurt?...stalling, qualifying, questioning, instead of releasing and taking to the air."

". . . After that the big sugar maple begins. It stands in perfect glory for about a week. Then one windless night I sense that it sighs deeply somewhere inside its gnarled trunk and says, “Enough.” The next day I see a waterfall of leaves. They fall, no, cascade down, rustling, pouring, to pool upon the ground like a large, golden puddle. Yellow earth-light illumines my face."

"I have felt that glow before. On her last night my mother was aglow like that. She was radiant. Neither of us knew it was her last night. Standing in the kitchen she blazed like the maple tree and I said to her, “Mother, you are so beautiful.” She smiled and nodded. “I have the glory in me,” she said. Then quietly during the night, something in her declared, “Enough,” and she shed her body. She let go. It was utterly clean. Only light remained."

Today I'm noticing how much light flowers and leaves hold, even on a gray, overcast day.

Like this petunia. Yes, there's light reflected in the drops left by the afternoon drizzle, but there is also a deep, rich purple light at its center, a dazzling darkness.

And there's the blaze of maple leaves. I went on to pick up a handful, all variations of reds and yellows, a brief fall brightness.

And the glow of another maple leaf, perched on the ruddy gloss of holly.

And the kousa dogwood in our backyard glowed with its own inner light. It's enough to make you want to burst into song...
    There's a fire in the bush a burning.....