Let There Be Light

"Your first word of all was light, and time began..." (Rilke, I,44)

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day (INV, Genesis 1)

There is Emily Dickinson’s

...a certain Slant of light,

Winter afternoons -

That oppresses, like the Heft

Of Cathedral Tunes -

There is the Spring light that coaxes the seeds from their protective underground cases - those shy, oh so reticent shoots emerging in early Spring - knowing, do they know, that some will be encased again but this time in ice, all for the bravery they took to come forth first - maybe alerting the others “no, it’s not time quite yet.” A sacrifice for the multitude to come of translucent daffodils yellowed across the fields.

There is the summer light, never yielding until the moon rises and forces the horizon dark, leaving another light, the brilliance of stars, some exuberant, shooting from afar, an eternity of years they have traveled for the witnessing.

There is the Autumn light, that sets the maples aflame - no mourning - no dying here - no yielding yet to the Winter’s oppressive light. No not yet. I will burn forth fully in all my glory - in all my colors - in all my changing colors that contained the seeds of a full rich green life, that contained the summer side of life, the full maturity and then a final blaze - sometimes a soft yielding to the Winter - sometimes a final torrent of wind that rips away another season of life.

There is the physics of light. The first people to formally study light were the ancient Greeks like Euclid and Pythagoras, who developed geometric theories about light and vision. However, Ibn al-Haytham made the next major leap in the 11th century by conducting experiments and correctly theorizing that vision happens because light enters the eye from an object. Soon both mathematics and astronomy became intertwined with the understanding of light - the journey from a particle to a wave began.

Modern physics, particularly quantum mechanics, accepts that light is not exclusively one or the other, but rather a quantum entity that exhibits both properties. It turns out that the behavior of light depends upon both the type of measurement and its interaction with surrounding forms. This discovery is perhaps a reminder of our overall relational existence, one might surmise, of all existence - that creation is a continual interaction and relation of all elements and life forms in the Universe - that nothing is neither “this” nor “that.” That everything including us “contain multitudes” (Walt Whitman, Song of Myself).

Sometimes light is refracted, revealing an endless display of color, deepening the mystery of its nature to fold and bend, to separate into a rainbow and then dissipate and re-incorporate into its whole - perhaps a glimpse of Divine Light. For no matter - that we know the why of a rainbow - it slices the sky, its arch inviting us, even ever so momentarily, to take part in its photonic ephemeral glory. Both Science and Awe, both Divine and Earthly.

We are drawn to random flashes of fireflies, the unexpected shooting star, the rising and fading of the sun and moon’s light, the way a camp fire offers protection. We are drawn to each other’s light - the same light that illuminates place and time - the same Light that began time.