On the Dark Side of the Glass

Briefly.

There is a tiny blue church on a corner in my neighborhood that I noticed once when we moved here four years ago but have since paid little attention despite driving by it many times each week. But tonight, as I passed it on my evening walk, it was aglow with music and light. A hymn sung in Spanish poured warmly into the winter night, and near the petite steeple a small but kaleidoscopic stained glass window, a splash of color, interrupted the darkness.

I thought of that thing Pope Benedict XVI said about the Church being like a stained glass window, dark and gloomy from the outside, dazzling within. It occurred to me that tonight, I could see the beauty of the window precisely because I was outside; the worshipers within could not. In this case, it was not my being inside or outside the church that enabled me to see. Instead, the condition for my seeing it was simply being in the dark place relative to the light one.

What am I trying to say? Hopefully not just some trite mutation of …