Turned to Light

If we are mostly water, can sound turn us into light? – Jordan Arsonist on FB

Sonoluminescence:   a phenomena by which a bubble of air in water can focus sound to cause light.    Physics Page FB

As Jordan asks, I am left wondering, since we humans are mostly comprised of water, and since, in some sense, our bodies could be compared to a bubble, whether sound could turn us into light.

Having no scientific ken, I can only come at this from the vantage of the pedant or the poet, focusing entirely too much on either the minutiae or the vagaries and beauty of the thought.

If I were a bubble, what sound would render me light?

Would it be your voice?  The early-morning bird song?

The throaty laugh of the young child bemused and beholding?

No – much as I would wish it so, for I have heard these things

and remain steadfastly fastened, bound, to this non-light way

I think it would take the literal voice of God – transmuted

into sound wave upon shocking sound wave to reveal

the light that is you which might then reveal the light that is me

I think I’ll stick with the physicists to understand and then explain it to me – I have no mind, no sufficient imagination, to encounter even in my questions the idea of the air in a bubble being carried into light by sound.

So it’s the physicists – and the poets – that will have to do – for now.

Mule & Plow: Being Church

You’ll be the mule; I’ll be the plow.

Come harvest time, we’ll work it out.

There’s still a lot of love

here in these troubled fields.

Singing the pain, sorrow and hope of hard times in the farm lands, Nanci Griffith speaks into the soul of despair and in their singing, somehow reshape the darkness into light.

Reshaping the darkness into light: that, I think, is the principal ‘job’ of the Christian.

It’s not Pollyanna.  There’s no call for Hallmark here.

What there is is the belief, surely based on past experience, that together is the tipping point, if not the answer.

Fundamentally, that’s what church is: a together enterprise.

Far from perfect, shoot, we’re often not even friends.

But what we are is not alone.

What we are is together, mule and plow – plow and mule.

What we are is stepping out of darkness into the hope of love – there, where the light lives.

Sermon Cliff Note: "Now there were some Greeks . . ."

Now there were some Greeks . . .

You know – the not-from-here folks. . . 

maybe they heard about Lazarus

dead-raised

or maybe

they saw the donkey parade

However they heard, new in town,

they went to seek out the newest thing – 

the wonder-working parable speaker

In those days, everybody wanted to see Jesus

Someone wants to see him

and Jesus talks about. . .

seeds falling to the ground

and glorified things 

and serving 

and following . . . 

him

Son-of-Man-Jesus was about to die –

and he was speaking in riddles

and we were scratching our heads . . .

Taking pity on us, he gave us the parable about the seeds –

as if that helped!

Sure, I get it – seeds ‘die’ for the plant to live

and produce even more seeds –

But what does that have to do with a couple of Greeks

dropping by for a visit?!?  

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it!

We didn’t then, but we do now . . . 

Jesus’ dying brought more followers

somehow, in his dying,

We and he became more than we had ever been

And the usual blah, blah, blah . . . 

Serve me, follow me . . . 

Follow me, serve me . . . 

Serve and follow me =’s honor from God

Okay, already, we get it!

But did we?

Do we?

Probably not . . .

When Jesus died . . . 

When he died, it all changed . . . 

Without him, I would have just gone home . . . 

and every now and then, 

when someone from the old days

showed up, I’d have remembered

We’d have laughed and cried

and then gone back to our lives

But with what happened after, 

there was no going back

not for any of us . . . 

It hurts to admit how impatient He made me back in the day . . .

But it’s true . . . 

I just kept wanting him

Just once . . . 

To get – to – the – point

But he never did

how could he?

He was the point!

Loving, maddening, parable-telling, weird . . . Him!

And he knew it would be hard . . . 

It troubled him – what he, what we, would have to go through . . . 

But he showed us how to do it . . .

Not complaining . . . 

Not trying to get out of it . . .not then, anyway –

No – he took a deep breath, said “This is why I came”

and threw himself upon FatherGod . . .

And God heard him –

I have and I will . . . 

That’s what God’s voice said that day . . . 

I have heard you . . .

I will live up to myself in You, Son!

Now, said God . . .

Now you will know . . . 

Now is judging time . . . 

Now is Satan-kicking-out time . . . 

Now is Jesus lifting up time . . . 

Now is earth-reconciling to Me time . . . 

No wonder people thought the Voice of Heaven

was thunder . . . 

That kind of message

rolls 

and echoes

around the world

and down the corridors of time . . . 

making human tuning forks

of us all . . . 

Still we did not understand . . . 

How?

Who?

The questions were endless . . . 

Who are you to say these things?

How can Messiah ever die?

Why do you say these things?

He was pleading with us – 

Believe . . . please believe . . . 

Believe and become . . . 

There was darkness in the land . . . 

He wasn’t wrong about that . . . 

how he yearned for us

to step out of that darkness

and into his light . . . 

What happened to the Greeks?

I think they were the point . . . 

or their question was – 

Sir, we want to see Jesus.

In answer, Jesus 

offered up himself

Now the circle is complete -- 

for once,

somebody actually got the question right . . . 

How the Light Gets In

Ring the bells that still can ring 

Forget your perfect offering 

There is a crack in everything 

That's how the light gets in. 

                                          Chorus from Anthem by Leonard Cohen

I sit in a workshop at CPT’s Peace Congress in Chicago.  I’m not sure what it’s about, but clay will be involved.  And I am more than ready for a bit of play in my spiritual life.

Photo by Tim Nafziger courtesy of CPT

The facilitator hands us each a ball of clay, inviting us to shape it however we like.  As we press and mold and shape, she speaks. . . gently . . . quietly . . . she speaks of loss, for there is much loss in the room . . .

And she speaks of allowing the cracks into our creations . . . quoting Leonard Cohen’s Anthem, she reminds us of letting the light in . . . of seeking and finding the spaces and gullies and gulches in our faith . . . of looking there . . . in the broken places . . . for God’s shining . . .

I glance around . . . all have created small pots of beauty and symmetry . . . all save me . . . my creation is a broken thing . . . finger gouges mark it within and without . . . cracks and holes where my hands have punched through, at first unaware, mark this misshapen thing that I begin to see as me . . . broken and bent, chock full of holes, uneven, barely standing . . . and yet somehow letting in the light . . .

I start to press the clay back into a ball and begin again, aiming for beauty this time, when something stays my hands . . . no . . . this is true . . . and so I keep it . . . and a couple of Sundays from now, I will stand at the communion table and pour the wine into the misshapen clay . . . and the wine will pour out . . . like Jesus, poured not in, but out, for us . . . and the light will come in.