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Sunday, March 19, 2006
Light Darkness
By Zosimo T. Literatus, RMT
“Your voice of white fire,” goes the poem Full Consciousness by Juan Ramon Jimenez, “in the universe of water, the ship, the sky, marking out the roads with delight, engraving for me a blazing light my firm orbit.”
Light cannot be truly appreciated without the darkness. The light needs the darkness, and the darkness needs the light. The dark is light enough, says British writer Christopher Fry.
To appreciate darkness, we need to look at trouble with fresh, faith-filled eyes.
No one can gather the courage to leap into the dark, to wade into the shadowy chapters of life, without the genuine faith we Christians must be familiar with. It’s like walking down the blinding darkness of the night, with only the day’s memory of the burning in our heart to guide us.
In our own small way as we work to gain our keep, we are like solitary candles that keep light burning. We keep our affairs as clean as we can honestly do. And start to bring light to our own individual darkness so our light can shine brighter for others to have courage. No need to brag about our light. Simply, be the light. Bragging is our darkness pretending to be our light.
Once candles get lighted and personal darkness conquered one at a time, the combined light these candles bring will lighten Cebu in a more astounding way, more pleasing to see and live in for our children and their children. Darkness can become a source of richer light.
In his letter to Jose Antonio Gonzalez in 1977, the late senator Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. reminded us: “There are two ways of spreading the light: either be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” Cebuanos can be either.
We need only to look at the sky, appreciate the play of light, shade, and darkness, and decide how we too can be light in the darkness of our communities. Or, simply light that one little candle that you are, and soon we will see other lights as others learn to light their own little candles, emboldened by that little candle that you keep burning in the night.
—Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jimenez in “Full Consciousness” Roots and Wings: Poetry from Spain, 1900-1975
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (March 19, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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