Filed under: Uncategorized
Please see below a small reflection on the theme of dazzling darkness. Also, if you would like to see a brief Youtube video (5 mins) of Philip in Advent reflection mode, filmed for the diocese of Sheffield, do click on either of the following links or copy and paste them into your address bar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-nLRq2R8dQ&feature=player_embedded#!
Philip’s Christmas and New Year reflection 2011/2012
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” Isaiah 9.2
Why is the feast of the incarnation, the celebration of the embodiment of God in Jesus, celebrated at the most wintery time? In the depth of mid-winter, when darkness comes early and cold is so often the order of the day, there is offered to us another way of looking at things: light in the darkness, the warmth of care and costly love, hope and hospitality, woven into the fabric of the ending of the year.
Gaining inspiration from the biblical tradition and many of the Christian mystics, the late Gordon Strachan – a thought-provoking educator and writer, who died last year – was drawn to the vision of God and to the paradox of the light and the darkness within which God is revealed. He found that such a dazzling darkness” is wonderfully present in Chartres Cathedral in northern France.
Gordon writes: “Chartres embodies perhaps the most profound expression of darkness that the world has seen. For Chartres, even in summer is always dark and yet its darkness is by no means ordinary, for it is a jewelled darkness. It mediates a dappled, jewelled light which comes through countless windows of the most beautiful and priceless stained glass and, quite apart from the biblical stories depicted in them, the colours of the glass itself: the deep reds and blues create a light which is mystical and transforms the vast emptiness of the building into a sacred space.”
From sacred space to Christ within, from the hidden to the arriving God, as we look back into 2011 and then forward into the New Year, we can give thanks for spiritual treasure given and received, rejoiced in and anticipated. At this time of year it is good to name and value people and places, creativity and culture, simple things and stupendous things that have presented themselves and will be likely to inform the future.
Be blessed and guided, comforted and illumined by the extraordinary grace, love and light of God this Christmas and throughout 2012.
Philip Roderick 23 December 2011
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
