Christians hunger for Sacred, shared expressions, that lift us, bind us as one, raise our vision, elicit communal tears and laughter, direct us to landmarks of faith.
When the curtain goes up on the drama of creation, we hear spoken words, sacred words. A great void trembles with their sound: ‘Let there be light’. Whatever that celestial language, whether of whisper or command, it calls forth a radiant answer, the light inherent in all that follows. At the creation we hear this ‘call and response’, a pattern that echoes across millennia.
If we bear any resemblance to that primordial voice, however diminished, however lackluster, there must remain in human language, too, some capacity to call forth shafts of light, as it says, for ‘good’. Such is the wild intention undergirding this collection of words, that when the community of faith rises to speak with a unified voice, a luster will answer, will disclose the nearness of One whose light inhabits creation.
When human expression is applied to this improbable end, it goes in search of image and symbol, it mimics music, it dissolves itself into something like poetry. There, the interstices between sound and rhythm and meaning permit a stirring held by what are, after all, jars of verbal clay. Never timeless, those jars beg to be renewed, cleansed and reshaped for varieties of need and for what the times require. Here, then, are Shared Words, Sacred Words, a faint echo of that first call and response. Let there be light. And there was light.
In his Traipse blog, Jonathan Larson writes about the mysteries, the joy and spirituality of the road. When he and his wife, Mary Kay, are not wandering scenic backcountry, they keep a ritual of afternoon tea on the back porch of a shotgun cottage in Durham, North Carolina, where neighbors are known to stop by spontaneously for a cuppa and repartee. More about the author, Jonathan Larson.
