Half our life is spent in darkness. We are none the wiser. We are asleep. So it was in most of history. Then came the oil-lamp and the candle. More recently we have LED lights topping our lamp-posts and darkness has been tamed. It is no more.
Well, not quite. We now see our way clearly without the aid of the sun. Not like the young woman in south London who lost her front teeth after a collision with a lamp-post in the 1940s black-out. Not like the WW2 RAF pilots who were said to eat lashings of carrots to enable them to see in the dark. (It was radar that did the trick.) We have called in new technology thanks to Edison and Musk. Light has not come as an answer to prayer. It has come from human endeavour.
But again, that is not the whole story. Light is not just what comes from the sun or one of its step-sons. The move from light to darkness is a move up for life-forms. Plants seek light. So do most animals. Light is where things happen. Light is movement, manufacture, design, beauty. Light is good; darkness is bad. We can say that evil, like darkness, is parasitic. It has no intrinsic character. Like a shadow, it mimics the real thing.
When he describes our experience of light and dark, Paul resorts to the Greek word ‘enigma’. He says we see in a glass darkly. (1 Corinthians 13.12) It is as though we get a fuzzy picture from a second-rate mirror. It is good to bear this word in mind when we talk of our faith. At best we see an incomplete picture. What we see is something we can rely on but it is not the whole story. That will be kept for another day. Clarity is something yet to be. One day it will be different.
CANDLE-MAKING
Candle-making is a craft and an industry. The British Candlemakers Federation has 40 members. Like canals, candles are today supplied and treasured as never before. Tallow and paraffin were popular and beeswax was highly favoured. Soy is now widely used.
CHAGALL’S WINDOWS
Letting in the daylight at Tildeley parish church, Kent are 12 decorated windows by Marc Chagall. Chagall (1887-1985) came from Belarus and his All Saints, Tildelely windows are the only complete such set in the world. Chagall was Jewish and escaped from the Nazi occupation of France to move to the USA. It was his understanding of colour and his emphasis on it that established his reputation in various fields – painting, book illustrations, drawings and stained glass. Of his Bible illustrations Chagall once said: ‘In the East I found the Bible and part of my own being.’
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