Watch for the Light

A Reflection on Alfred Delp’s The Shaking Reality of Advent (pp. 82-95) For many of us, the weeks before Christmas have become a highly romanticized and domesticated time of year, filled with decorations, parties, and holiday music. It is hard for us to imagine that most people throughout the world, now and in eras past, experience the season of Advent in much harsher and less idealized environments. Certainly, Alfred Delp did. This reflection on Advent was written from Tegel prison in late 1944, shortly after his arrest by the Nazis for his resistance activities and before his execution. The Advent Father Delp describes here would be his last. Delp reminds us of a truth he faced squarely: that we tend to live with a false sense of security. We inhabit comfortable and well-appointed homes, we try to fill the holes in our souls by acquiring more and more things, we seek to protect our ‘rights’ to this or that freedom through the laws and policies of worldly rulers a...

A Reflection on Madeleine L’Engle’s A Sky Full of Children (pp. 78-81) One of my favorite things to do this time of year is to take our dog, Rosie, on a walk at night around Smith’s Point in Manchester, where we now live. While there are a few streetlights around the point, there are long stretches with no light whatsoever, other than what the moon and stars cast. As someone who until recently has lived most of his life in cities, with lots of ambient light pollution, I confess that I have not paid nearly enough attention to the beauty of the night sky with its dazzling array of stars. Wow!, what a remarkable sight it is. Gazing at the night sky invites us into lots of deep questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place in it. One of the biggest questions in astrophysics, I’m told, is just how big the Universe is. In seeking to answer this question, scientists distinguish between the ‘observable universe,’ which is bound by the physical limit of the speed of light and...

A Reflection on Isaac Penington’s Concerning the Light (pp. 76-77) “In him was life, and life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” John 1:4-5 I tend to be a worrier. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that whatever anxieties I have always seem worse in the middle of the night. Somehow the onset of darkness magnifies the fears and makes them seem larger than life. As I toss and turn in my sleep, I often feel overwhelmed by the weight of the worry. Inevitably, though, dawn comes, and the light of a new day brings these fears back into perspective, making them manageable again. And then I wonder what all the fuss was about. Strange how that happens. Darkness seems to magnify worry and breed fear; it fuels the imagination, too, conjuring up all manner of demons lurking in the shadows; and, it isolates, making us feel more alone and vulnerable. It is no wonder children are afraid of the dark and that the ghosts ...