December 6, 2015
Sunday
Second Sunday of Advent

“God light” (a term used by photographers and artists to describe crepuscular rays of sunlight) greeted me this morning, the Second Sunday in Advent. The term is apt, recalling the way the religious instruction books of my childhood portrayed humans getting messages from God. God light represented the awareness of a divine presence, a message being transmitted.

No mystical message was being sent this morning. The appearance of the light means only that, judging from the angle, that it was well after 8:00, late for me. The sun is so low in the sky these days that I either must leave the table by 8:30 or draw the blind against the glare. It’s been this way for about six weeks, since the arc of the morning sun dropped below the top of the door frame. The sun will continue to get lower for another two weeks, until the solstice. Then there will be another six-week period as it climbs again, and finally no longer shows itself to one sitting at the table.

Neither do I offer any mystical message. Just a picture, and a little poetry:

Also none among us has seen God.
(…We have thought often
The flaws of sun in the late and driving weather
Pointed to one tree but it was not so.)
— Archibald MacLeish, 1892-1982
American poet