Silent Lightning

Silence is a wonderful thing. A friend is a treasure from God. Time is mysterious, and darkness beautiful.

Is the last of the four surprising to be in such a list? I’ve written of time (or Not-Time) before. This is slightly different.
Many people associate darkness with things Not-Good. Maybe that’s because they can’t see what’s in it, and know that (worse), many think that they can’t be seen in it – the former is strange to me and the latter false in more than one way.

Earlier this evening I sat under a tree with a cup of tea, Another, and God. The sun had suffocated beneath piling clouds, or fallen down a mountain. I don’t know which. The day ended as timeless Evening crept forward to stealthily morph into Night.

We left the tree after a bit, walked somewhere down a road I’d never taken, and stopped after a few minutes to watch the clouds over the mountains ignite with brief flares of lightning. I don’t know how long we stood, perhaps twenty minutes.
It was all there – Time, a Friend, Darkness. Nature was raging in front of our eyes and was Silent. I know that somewhere the thunder was heard. It never reached us.

I say that darkness is beautiful (but then I can see rather well in it) because it doesn’t obscure everything – it removes some things and leaves the rest to be seen which otherwise are overlooked.
This particular species of Darkness was an unsteady rippling of light, for brief instances shrouding the starlight in pulses of silver. Other types are the steady moonrise, the waking stars, or bleak and cold, the clouded night.

To look into the darkness is like to do so up at stars or into someone’s eyes. There is everything to be seen, hidden in part by your own eyes, some things to be sought and others to remain Mystery. To know the stars or a person in whom resides the Creator are ways of further knowing Him. There, deep within the cosmos or in the heart and soul of that person, is God. If you look long enough, flashes of some truth shine out.

Look at the stars. I see hundreds of shapes between them, and unknowable points of light. Look at Another person. I wish that I could know the awful and beautiful ‘It’ which is naturally bound to the visible corporeal body, see that facet of God’s infinite beauty in all people – but far away are the stars, my eyes are blind and only God can be ever proximate.

All I know is that Sacred Mystery resides in Heaven, be It found in the eyes of the sky or a soul. And that is why I think darkness is beautiful.

” . . . faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not.” (Heb. 11:1)