The holy dark
And the light that lingers long after life slips back to ordinary
We came across the country. We drove through the darkness, state after state, night after night, headlights like searchlights. We were seeking something we had never seen before.
We came alone and together, hoping what we found could change us, stay with us. We brought the children, even the smallest ones, too young to understand. We packed plans and visions, hopes and hunches. We knew we were not the first to make the trek. We knew we would not be the last. We had no idea what we might find.
We stepped into a world we thought we knew. We approached as if reaching an altar, as if finding a cave near a sacred spring. We had only the flimsiest instruments and expectations, but what we held was enough. We followed the rituals. We exchanged pleasantries like easy prayers. We took pictures that could not compare.
We waited—and then everything changed.
We looked up and saw a new world spread before us. We craned our necks back, tipped our heads up, dropped our jaws open. We witnessed one beautiful thing consume another. We watched the holy dark set ablaze.
The day became night. The night became day. We had no knowledge of light like this.
We brought children into the terrible darkness, the beautiful glow. We pointed and told them to look at what could blind them. We screamed with wonder, awe, fear, delight. We watched everything burn.
What we saw paled before what we knew before. We asked for more than we could bear. We knelt on hard cold ground and lifted our wet faces, wondering how to believe. We wanted this moment to last longer, to stretch forever, an instant suspended in space.
What we came for lasted mere minutes, much shorter than the pilgrimage. But the journey mattered less than the destination, the finale overshadowing the arrival.
What we entered—and what we left behind—was not a hollow void, echoing empty. Instead everything was electric, pulsing and possible, inverting and subverting, expanding and enfolding. We encountered this ephemeral eternal together. We found the communion in the community. We knew the presence in the absence.
We tried to leave our mark, but it was left on us. The light—the strange light, the new light, the undone light—was burned on our mind’s eye, the memories we carried as the everyday ordinary engulfed us once again. We came seeking what could not stay.
We turned at the end and left everything behind us, the dark and the light, the hope and the fear. We piled back into cars, buckled back into seats, hurtled back into the black of night. We left as we had come: together.
We still hold the burning memory, tiny votives dancing, wisps of crowning glory. We fumble for the mysteries of faith, remembering the lost language of light, the strange syntax of stars. We wonder, whispering in the hushed dark, turning ourselves to heaven as the everyday eclipses the epiphany. We cannot forget, even when the daily drudgery makes us doubt if what we knew was real. For the briefest moment in time, we were more than us.
