-- Luke 1:78-79

Last week, we visited Lightscape at the San Antonio Botanical Gardens. That wonderful display of light inspired these reflections.

It was one of those nights. The natural full moon and stars in the sky tried to outdo the artistic electronic lights in the botanical garden. Dazzling lights in the sky and in the garden astonished onlookers and drew them to a reverential hushed whisper. Lights have the power to do that, in an experience of awe and wonder. Wide-eyed toddlers in strollers and bent-over elders on walkers were stilled by the transcending light show above, around and below. The way was lighted; the walk was pilgrim-esque.

Just as astonishing as the lights was the felt reverence of the people. They made a choice to come out in a dark but moonlit night, engage with nature and to be open to the awe and astonishment of artificial lights. For many, including myself, I was surprised by my own reaction to the indescribable beauty and the unpredictable draw to random interior spaces usually reserved for meditation. Choosing to experience the light brought serendipitous grace.

I thought his song, “O Holy Night (the stars are brightly shining)” would be the traditional hymn we sing in church at Christmas. Instead, the unexpected themes from Scripture drew me into a meditation of the miracle birth of the Christ Child, our Redeemer. Again, I am convinced that the more we chose to move to the light, like a magnet, the more brightness and beauty surrounds us. The more we choose to seek things not of God, the more darkness hovers like a leaden weight. In this Christmas season, choose Light - choose life.

Lightscape – what a fantastic show of high-tech magic, lighting up the night! Tiny lights, like thousands of fireflies, danced in time to music. Waves of light flowed up and down a Christmas tree, changing colors along the way. It was wondrous, enchanting, magical.

But not all the magic was technological. Actual flames burned, reflecting in the calm waters of a small lake. Above it all, a bright moon shown. “I form light,” God announces in Isaiah 45:7. There is almost always more light than we notice, as Jan Richardson reminds us in her Christmas blessing, “Where the Light Begins”:

Perhaps it does not begin.

Perhaps it is always.

Perhaps it takes

a lifetime

to open our eyes,

to learn to see

what has forever

shimmered in front of us—

Part of the delight of Lightscape was being there early in the evening, when parents brought their small children. At a place where colored lights swirled on the pathway, twin girls, maybe two years old, danced and twirled with the moving lights. “Perhaps it is always,” if only we have child-like eyes to see.

This morning we prayed this Advent prayer: “Let your radiant beauty shine forth in our hearts, Almighty God. Then the darkness of our night shall pass, and your Son’s coming will show us to be the children of light.”*

May Christ’s coming show us to be children of light, eyes wide open to see. Richardson’s poetic blessing ends:

Perhaps this day

the light begins

in us.

*Benedictine Daily Prayer, Liturgical Press, 2005, p. 1360.

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