Day 8--Light

Gardens have distinct moods and lighting makes all the difference. The same plants take on different qualities depending upon the weather and the position of the sun in the sky. I suppose they are like people in this regard: changing circumstances bring out various facets of us all--for better or worse.

Love the light on Rose's pumpkin here, but the pumpkin is a story for another day. ; )

Easily, my favorite light in the garden is morning light. It whispers. It's gentle. It's polite. (Unlike the boorish glare of the afternoon sun!) The beds in the front of our home face east, and in the high days of summer, the sun overcomes the landscape there gradually. When it does so just right, it's a living changing thing, like watching the clouds roll in over the mountains.

Emily Dickinson spoke of a different kind of light, more melancholy:

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –

I know this light too. Though I don't wrestle with depression as some of my friends do,  I know the grip of post-partum anxiety that I encountered after 9/11 and the birth of our son. On my worst days, the coming of evening brought a heaviness that was almost tangible.  Absence of light also changes us.

I suspect we are affected by light much more than we admit or realize. There is still more mystery in this world than not.

The scriptures lay out several bold assertions regarding light. One is this famous claim by Jesus:

"I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." John 8:12

Really? In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis claimed that these types of assertions render Jesus a lunatic, a liar, or the actual Son of God.  I see his point.  Who goes around declaring he is "the Light of the World" unless he is one of the these three types? How about claiming to be "the Way, the Truth, the Light"? Such statements do not lend themselves to middle ground.

Another favorite image of mine is more cryptic. It's also from the book of John--a book I disliked and avoided as a young Christian (preferring just the facts, mam'). Funny, but I like this book more as I grow older. Perhaps I'm more comfortable keeping company with the abstract and mysterious these days:

"In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." John 1: 4-5

Regardless of your position on Christianity, you have to admit this is pretty pointed stuff.  Dismiss it if you will, but dismiss it honestly after frank consideration. Sometimes I wish I could smooth the edges off some of the Bible's more radical statements. But I learned long ago in my college literature classes that one must respect the text, bones and all.   Anything less is below-the-belt.

morning light on the cosmos and daylilies

For instance, there should be no abridging Moby Dick to take out the whaling chapters. They may be boring as anything, but Melville thought them necessary. Even more egregious, there should be no messing with endings.  In maddening cases where the author includes more than one, both should be considered.  And perhaps the author's ambivalence as well. 

Each author determines which words are worthy to be included, not the readers or critics. This is basic literary law.  Although you may disagree with the author's choice and vision, you must respect the author's authority.   

So, I choose to take the whole Bible and consider it carefully and respectfully, even though I don't like or understand it all.  It is such a grand book that I believe it would require extreme hubris for anyone to suggest they like or understand it all.  It  would also require extreme hubris to pat it on the head and dismiss it carelessly or angrily as merely "a cultural book of fables."   It doesn't present itself as such.

Although I don't pretend to like or understand all of the Bible, after studying it for twenty years, I can say that I get most of big picture with a growing degree of confidence.  The small is sometimes shaky in spots, but the big can bear its weight. There are passages and statements that challenge me, trouble me, encourage me, baffle me, anger me, and more.  But I've found a process that yields more good than not. I've learned to patiently lay my question out and ask God about them. Sometimes He clarifies in time, and sometimes the mystery remains.  

Even more mysteriously---I don't understand how the Word of God interacts with our hearts. Or sometimes doesn't.  Something happens there that is one of the greatest of mysteries and far beyond me. 

However, in the same breath, I also don't understand how the light transforms my east-facing garden. 

I only know it does. 
And I know it's beautiful and different because of the light.