Let there be light!

Celebrant Raggs distributing communion at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. (SOOC)

LIGHT: DDW August challenge

I love watching people receive communion.
I love watching them line up for it and sometimes kneel for it and hold out their hands or even their tongues for it.
There is a brightness and a joy that fills the church.

This photograph expresses my experience.

So does this New York Times slide show (especially #18), "Photographing the Part of Buddhism that Can't Be Seen."

There are only a few stories that appear in all four Gospels.
One is the Feeding of the Five Thousand, which I read as holy communion.
Another is the Transfiguration, which is the only physical description of Jesus in the Bible apart from a few details of his suffering on the Cross.

Luke the Evangelist tells us that Jesus took a few disciples with him up the mountain, and "as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white." This is called the Transfiguration because he was radiant with light, the same light that is shown as haloes in icons and paintings of saints. John the Evangelist speaks of it as the life that is the light of all people.

People are being transfigured all the time, every day, by sunrises and starry skies and ocean tides and old growth forests, by rituals in Buddhist stupas and Muslim mosques and Christian churches, by sites of pilgrimage and sights of butterflies, by the extraordinary within the ordinary.

For me, the light often shines most brightly in church. That's why I go!
To watch light pour through stained-glass windows and shine in candle glow.
To be moved by the brightness of music, art, and architecture.
To pray before the Blessed Sacrament, bread transfigured by light.
To hear about the light in hymns and scriptures and sermons.
To receive the light in holy communion.
To see that light in the countenance of my fellow worshippers.

O gracious Light, pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven....