Light

 

~ Celebrate Light ~

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I must have been 2 or 3 years old when I started playing with light and dark. Light from campfires at night was my favorite, but anywhere there was dark, I wanted a light to look into it.  A flashlight, a candle, a lantern, a string of lights, the sun, the moon, stars--what wonderful contrasts of light and dark!  Wherever there was light, you could dance with magical shadows. And this was daily play, outside the many faith traditions that celebrate light or celebrate with light(s).

Now, I more often look to find light in dark and heavy times.  I agree with Eleanor Roosevelt that "it is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness."  Sometimes the light is friendship, sometimes faith, sometimes news of courage or springtime, sometimes it is a candle and at other times it is a new day.

Do you have a story to tell, a moment to explore, when you have celebrated light? or still do?

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“They can be like the sun, words.
They can do for the heart what light can for a field.”
― St. John of the Cross

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The Sun by Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

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 “How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.”   ― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

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Candle Hat by Billy Collins

In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrandt looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
from painting The Blinding of Sampson.

But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.

He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head
which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,
a device that allowed him to work into the night.

You can only wonder what it would be like
to be wearing such a chandelier on your head
as if you were a walking dining room or concert hall.

But once you see this hat there is no need to read
any biography of Goya or to memorize his dates.

To understand Goya you only have to imagine him
lighting the candles one by one, then placing
the hat on his head, ready for a night of work.

Imagine him surprising his wife with his new invention,
then laughing like a birthday cake when she saw the glow.

Imagine him flickering through the rooms of his house
with all the shadows flying across the walls.

Imagine a lost traveler knocking on his door
one dark night in the hill country of Spain.
"Come in, " he would say, "I was just painting myself,"
as he stood in the doorway holding up the wand of a brush,
illuminated in the blaze of his famous candle hat.

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