Such love does
does the sky now pour
that whenever I stand in a field
I have to wring out the light
when I get home. Francis of Assisi
When I woke this morning it was raining and this poem came with the sound of it. Perhaps because of its image of wringing out the light I'd always imagined the sun was shining, soaking into the clothing of the poet. But today I understood it as rain.
And the thought of wringing light out of the sodden clothing reminded me of Stendahl-Rast's words about darkness which is also on my mind today. "The light shines in the darkness." [he quotes from the Gospel of John] This doesn't mean that light shines into the darkness, like a flashlight shining into a dark tent. No, [. . .] a great revelation: the very darkness shines."
It is vital to honour both the drenching and the darkness, not to attempt some strategy of escape but to be in them fully. There Love pours and shines. In Godly Play language, "even when we can't see it; that doesn't mean it's not there."
