Had I not turned around, looked up from what I was doing, I’d have missed it. Bundled against the cold with one purpose, I stood in the darkness of another winter morning for the essential but mundane task of opening doors for the young students waiting to enter school from the car pool line. My fingers had grown cold within inadequate gloves and I wiggled them periodically to ward off the pins and needles. Good morning! Don’t forget your book bag. Have a great day!
Gradually the line of headlights dimmed and my surroundings emerged with more clarity. Glancing beyond the parked cars that snaked around the school building, the promise of a brilliant dawn caught my eye. Soft white bloomed from below the horizon and the bare branches of leafless trees, hidden moments before, became an intricate silhouette against a changing backdrop. The Old Masters knew, as they watched and awaited the transformation of ripening apples and golden pears in wooden bowls beneath the high windows of their paint-strewn studios; in the right light, something transcendent may materialize from within the commonplace. Such was my experience of this sunrise.
When I myself was school-age, young enough to attend Children’s Church but old enough to feel like I should be somewhere more serious, there was a youth minister who often incorporated the “Chalk Talk” to teach biblical lessons. If you were alive in the 1970’s and went anywhere near a Baptist church, you remember the chalk talk. Well before Power Point was a spark in Bill Gates’ eye, audio visual presentations meant Super 8 movies at best, or more likely a nice three point talk with a homemade poster. So the chalk talk made for a mesmerizing experience to an eleven-year-old with a budding appreciation for art.
In a chalk talk, the artist begins with a black canvas, deftly creating a work in oil pastel while narrating an engaging story. Before you the scene arises, nice enough, superficial, concrete, and you think, “Hmm. Not bad. I like the way the leaves rustle through a multitude of greens or how the river dances over these boulders.” Then, magician’s work, sleight of hand, he’s been adding unobtrusive lines and swirls in subtle tones beneath the obvious. Viola! The black light switches on, and a second level emerges, a deeper meaning revealed. Illumination. Special revelation.
Forty years or so fast forward, and I am again watching a masterful chalk talk unfold above an ordinary work day. Had the sky been clear, the dawning of the day would have been unremarkable. But the heavy clouds pressed downward, and settled in rolling layers above the cold earth. They caught the rising light, soaked up the spectrum. The empty slate between horizon and clouds was a smeared gradient of white and brilliant blue. Then the rising sun coaxed an aura of red-pink from the saturated underbelly of the cumulus and crowned them in deep purple.
Dormant hardwoods became a lace pattern imposed on a glory of color. It transpired quickly. The sun crested at the horizon, the angle of its rays moving past the gathered clouds, and I was left with simple monochrome. A curtain drawn over a moment, but my mind lingers on the daily miracle of returning light.
One of the early lessons first graders learn in science is the rotation of earth, and its path around sun, the simple truth that our star is never extinguished but burns hot and bright beyond our vision when we are turned away and engulfed in night. The light is there, we just don’t comprehend it until we are brought around to face it full on. The knowledge of seasons is an understanding that when our hemisphere is tilted toward the life source, we enjoy long full days in its warmth, but as our path takes us to a different relationship with the sun, our days are colder, our nights longer. The truth of light; all of the radiant pulsing colors we can perceive are there all along, hidden within the glare, to be absorbed or reflected. They need some prismatic vehicle or catalyst of harsh extremes to reveal them to the human eye.
A parallel exists between science and spirit in our universe. “The Light shines in darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not.” ₁ The old translation encompasses so much. Darkness is other, isolate, and those overwhelmed by darkness cannot understand the nature of light, until they actively turn toward it. Darkness, a natural state of entropy, cannot contain or overcome the energy of light. Most wonderfully, that “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” ₂
Illumination. Special revelation. Personal knowledge of God is sustaining warmth, an opening of the eyes to reality within and beyond the physical. On a path where truth about ourselves and our lives wavers between glaringly harsh and darkly confusing, love is a welcome glow where we can see ourselves in His best light. Sometimes, if you look for that break in the clouds, you may be surprised by the colors that are always under the surface.
₁ John 1:15
₂ I John 1:15
