This is the message that we have heard from him and announce to you: “God is light and there is no darkness in him at all.” If we claim, “We have fellowship with him,” and live in the darkness, we are lying and do not act truthfully. – 1 John 1:5-6

Sometimes I wonder at the curious mix of information that gets stuffed into my head and is then churned out, like so much sausage, via conversation and commentary and blogs and books and speaking and teaching and more.

I read the Bible daily – so that’s a good start, and I try to remember to ask God to guide me in my learning along the way; then I always have a book, or several, on the go – at the moment it is three: the historical novel Sarum, then I’m Proud of You – a book about Mr. Rogers, and 10 Life-Charged Words; I teach a weekly men’s Bible-study; I read news from a variety of sources; I listen to several podcasts (history, politics, crime, and psychology); I keep up with U.K. soccer and PGA golf; Rebekah and I talk about everything; we watch a little television; I listen to music; I am a natural observer…

And there is so much more. Probably the most important caveats are that 1) I approach learning with the understanding that I am wrong at least half the time, 2) I try to listen and to learn with humility and an open spirit, 3) I avoid echo chambers, 4) I try to be a discerning consumer so I often ask questions, 5) I try to digest what I hear thoughtfully, 6) I try not to leap to judgment, and 7) I seldom swallow information whole.

But it’s a lot; if you could pry open my head you’d see a tangled mess – it’s complicated in there!

So I try to be quiet a lot and to move away from all the noise and the constant input. I try to process, to reflect, to pray, to contemplate; to be, as much as possible and in the words of the medieval Christian thinkers, “A Contemplative.”

Light in the Dark:

Back to one of the books I am reading, Sarum; it is a sweeping 900 page story with small print – there are a lot of words! It takes English history from the beginnings of the emergence of “civilization” as we understand it in prehistoric Britain all the way to the present age.

I have reached 1649 and the execution of King Charles 1 (who insisted, interestingly, that because he was king he stood outside the law and that, legally, he could not be held to account or put on trial).

But what has grabbed my attention – other than the glaring contemporary parallels in the Charles 1 debacle – is that, in 1649, there will still be no source of standard, reliable, accessible, widespread lighting for another two hundred and more years.

In other words, when the sun went down it was dark dark.

Here in the 21st Century we are so unaccustomed to complete darkness it can be disorienting and paralyzing when we experience it. Even a pinprick of light, if it is a fixed point, can help us to navigate. I have thought about this when I am walking Max in the late evening. How impossible it is to move without a little light.

Here in old downtown Tarboro even the churchyards are lit, and the effect is a beautiful combination of light and shadow.

The opening photograph in this post is from HMPC, the other images are all from the Calvary Episcopal Church cemetery. The story it tells is that of light and the promise of life.

“God is light and there is no darkness in him at all.”

1 John 1:5b

I think the light in the churchyard is beautiful. The trees, the stones, the old church, the azaleas, the bricks… the truth.

In love, and because love and light and promise tell the story – DEREK