A great song doesn't always strike its listener instantly. Like Polaroids, some take time to develop, maybe even a little shaking before the beauty comes into full focus. I first listened through Jill Phillips's EP Deeper Into Love at Andrew Peterson's recommendation a few weeks ago while I was working. It was vaguely pleasant, as most music is when your brain is otherwise occupied, but not particularly moving. But something prompted me to return to the album and give it my full attention a little while later, and when I did, I couldn't get past the fifth song, "Bright Sadness." I put it on repeat for a whole evening so I could sink into it like a warm bath, so I could settle into it like a freshly made bed.
"O, bright sadness, luminous darkness, do your work in me."
It was that first line particularly that got me. On an intellectual level, I recognized it as a paradox, and my English teacher brain filed it away under "literary device examples I will forget to use in class." On an emotional level, I listened to it and cried.
We typically associate sadness with darkness; it is why we wear black to funerals, why movie producers stage burial scenes with rain. Sadness, like darkness, represents absence. It is as discouraging as it is isolating. For this reason, "luminous darkness" is a paradox, for it depicts the juxtaposition of two things that do not naturally go together. At the intersection of such opposites, however, we always find in paradox a striking truth, or so I explain to my ninth graders. In this particular paradox, I saw two implications.
First, it is unnatural to derive either insight or beauty from suffering. As a species, we humans do not like to suffer, and indeed much of human history is a story of people desperately attempting to alleviate their own pain, often inflicting greater suffering on others in the process. As the song's lyrics later suggest, however, this luminous darkness has a supernatural origin, namely, in God's love and presence. He is, after all, the Light of the World. He illuminates, showing us the true nature of reality, and like Christmas lights or the moon or a starry night, He is beautiful. These qualities allow Him to break through even the murkiest darkness, both to guide us through it and to reveal it for what it is: a reminder that we live in a fallen world, a tool that shapes us into His image, and a promise that our every sadness will one day lose to the everlasting joy in the rebirthed world. This transformation of sadness and suffering is profoundly unnatural to us, and the fact that any of us can grow and find purpose through our earthly struggles bears witness to God's grace.
Yet the line "Do your work in me" speaks to a second truth about suffering: there are benefits that only suffering can work in our lives, but they are not guaranteed to everybody who goes through that darkness. If we are not willing to embrace suffering, it will not work in us––it will destroy us instead. I suppose that is why I cried listening to the song: because I am not sure whether I am a person who views suffering in this way, but I desperately want to be. I know that the world is all too often a dark place, and I know I need to be the kind of person who not only looks for the light in the darkness but reflects that light for others, too.
So I am looking for beauty, and I am trying to do what I can to make some as well.
Here's what I read, cooked, and created in the month of February.
What I Read
The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, Karina Yan Glaser (★★★★★)
The Reagans: Portrait of a Marriage, Anne Edwards (★★★)
The Mother-Daughter Book Club, Heather Vogel Frederick (★★★★)––reread
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass (★★★★★)
Good Church Stories, edited by Phylicia Masonheimer (★★★★★)
Before We Were Yours, Lisa Wingate (★★★)
If you want to hear the rationale behind my rating, head to my Goodreads for full reviews.
What I Cooked
No-knead bread recipes always sound so promising. I made one a few months back, and it turned out okay, and this one sounded even more delicious, so I figured it would turn out even better.
Reader, it did not. The finished loaf was like eating a loofah: spongy and flavorless. Although I always allow for the possibility that I did something wrong, I don't think that was the case here.
I've been on a rare cookie-baking kick recently, and since this recipe has been languishing on my Pinterest for quite some time, I gave it a shot.
Unsurprisingly, the reviews on this one in the Allen household were mixed, but not in the way I had expected. Mitchell isn't a big coconut fan, so I was thinking he would hate these, but he actually loved them. Personally, I thought they were too much work (individually pressing crushed pretzels into the cookies, banging the pans multiple times, and dusting the cookies with salt is just a little too high maintenance for me). They were good, but I don't know whether they were good enough to warrant all that.
What I Created
...uhhh...
May your days be filled with beauty, and may your heart be filled with the willingness to see and give thanks for it.