In the finalizing moments of writing this poem I came across the following lines from ‘anam cara’ by John O’Donohue:
All your life, your mind lives within the darkness of your body. Every thought that you have is a flint moment, a spark of light from your inner darkness. The miracle of thought is its presence in the night side of your soul; the brilliance of thought is born in darkness.
And then, not much later, I came across these lines:
In a culture preoccupied with fixities and definites and correspondingly impatient of mystery, it is difficult to step out from the transparency of false light into the more candlelight world of the soul. Perhaps, the light of the soul is like Rembrandt light. That tawny, gold light for which Rembrandt’s work is known. (…) Such a golden earth-light is the natural sister of shadow and the cradle of illumination.
And then I’ll just add this beautiful sequence from the awe-inspiring and magnificent Terrence Malick movie ‘The Tree of Life’ (there is a sorter HD version of this sequence available on YT as well). A film, a director - in great contrast to our culture‘s impatience - completely patient for mystery to show itself. And it does.
And so all the lights and all the darknesses are, for now, neatly tied up again.
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