I’m jumping around, I know. You’ll need to leapfrog back to the post before last, about Gwen.

At the close of her sermon I was telling you about, she reveals a dream she had just days before:

I come into a room at some kind of faith or spiritual gathering. I’m looking for a place to hang up my coats. I’m wearing a long woolen overcoat and a red ski vest on top of the overcoat.

I hang up my coats and go sit down in the circle. The people in the circle begin to sing. It’s a beautiful, rhythmic chant in gorgeous harmony, many parts, with a nice low bass. They sing in a slow, pulsing beat, “Jesus is the way and the light of the world, Jesus is the way and the light of the world…” I sing along, making up an alto part. A tenor begins to sing a soaring, clear, high, solo part over it all, pure notes, no vibrato, perfect pitch. I don’t know if his melody is improvised or memorized, but it’s just gorgeous. It feels free and supported by the harmonies of the chant pulsing beneath it.

As we continue singing I notice some people are singing “Jesus is the way to the light of the world, Jesus is the way to the light of the world.” And others are singing “Jesus is the way to the life of the world, Jesus is the way to the life of the world.” I wonder if I should sing “Jesus is a way to the light of the world, Jesus is a way to the light of the world.” And then as I keep singing and harmonizing and enjoying the solo and the pulsing chant I realize, It does not matter. It really does not matter. Just sing.

I woke up rocked and held by the beautiful, harmonized chant, still hearing its music. Just sing.

The copy I have here, the rest is a clog of footnotes—the sources she referenced while preparing her sermon.

Some might say Gwen’s lost. Jesus is the way and the light of the world. No turning any words around, no deviating. Except mustn’t the language be Greek—er, Hebrew—no, wait, Aramaic? Oof. Now I’m who’s lost.

Except so much seems crystal clear. Way means path. Observing last summer’s solar eclipse, standing unafraid in the path of totality, our disparate-thinking relatives and us in a clump on the driveway macadam, we saw dark in different shades, shivery, questionable, and then light so piercing we had to turn our eyes. There’s no mistaking light when it dawns. When it perforates the soul.

(Photo credit, again: Zachary)

 


 

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