Yes! Sunrise

The swami relented.

'Oh, okay, go on then. But just this once. And none of your despairing melancholic stuff, that fake, brooding inwardness. It's all a bit tiring, predicatable. Aren't you done with that yet?'


Perhpas you'd like to write it, then! ?


'No, you go ahead. But even if you tell of this decaying, crumbling edifice, mention how we lovingly called it 'home' once. And do say how when the lights failed we brought our own, how occasionally the light transformed a piece of rubbish and made it look beautiful for a while, how it glistened on the crows like oil and would suddenly break in after the rains and illuminate everything, as if we were seeing objects for the very first time...Remember there is an "up" and a "down", there is heartache and exaltation. Didn't your Goethe say give thanks for that? And tell again how all life was here, how these things were given to us from time immemorial, that even though things may fade or be half-forgotten, they are never truly lost.'


Let me be a mirror. I will try and gather, then, the light and fire, hold it in my outstretched palms and offer it to you. But open hands are no match for the love the earth gives us, mother...


Fire. You break up the intelligence of the mind and all that is solid. Some say you are life itself, the vividness of the gold in the green, the glint of light that bounces of chestnut trees. Blue and the Red. Mournful silence, exuberant spontaneity. The shape of the world is moulded by your hand. Giver of light and warmth: solar generosity. Pure excess and unconquered flame. Even 'the Fire' is called a "friend". Always changing, and yet always the same. And even though there is anarchy in your heart there is still a spacious order of the sun: volo ut sis. You help the dead across the boundary, and transmute all forms. Are you time itself?



In the monochrome early-morning light even the council flats have an alluring beauty, as if these lunar buildings, a perfect mathematical equation, were carved out of marble, moonstone. One is reminded of how light can transform our own ugliness.





This, which flickers at night..
The thin glimmer striking down here
wasn't that of a match.

---Montale





But vastness blurs and time ' beats level.
Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion!
Away grief's gasping, ' joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam.
' Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; ' world's wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.

---Gerald Manley Hopkins

'In the gloom, the light gathers the light against it
Such light is in sea caves
where copper throws back the flame'




And from Rinku:



But everything glorious is around
us already: black and blue graffiti shining in the rain's
bright glaze, the small rainbows of oil on the pavement,
where the last car to park has left its mark on the glistening
street, this radiant world.

But what are we to make of those who talk only about 'brute facts', who think life and words are meaningless, religion futile?

The swami was silent on hearing these words and became pensive.

'Is there not still beauty in this world?'

There is !

The good and just life is thus a process of clarification, a movement towards selfless lucidity, guided by ideas of perfection which are objects of love...The sun may be far away but its reflection in beauty is near..a sense of renewal in a aprticular place, a sudden vision in art and nature, joy experienced as pure, witnessing a virtuous action, a patient suffering, an absence of resentment, humble service, persistent heroism, innumerable things...Every individual has a collection of such things which might be indicated by various names and images: refuges, lights, visions, deep sources, protections, footholds, icons, starting points, sacraments, ..ritual forms, holy images. Thus may we learn that other worlds and other centres exist

.