On Light and Darkness

On my recent visit to Lecce, I really fell in love with the leccese baroque style of architecture.  What Baroque things I see in Florence or in Rome have tended to overwhelm me and to make me want to run and hide, escaping into a room of Renaissance order or Medieval stylized predictability.  But in Lecce, everything was elegant but somehow less aspirational, more content just to exist or to be admired or to decay, whatever the universe might mandate for that particular day.  For this traveller, it gave a sense of ease to everything in the city.

The most beautiful place I visited was the Basilica of Santa Croce, one of the city's treasures, and I went back several times during my stay to reflect and meditate and spend a few uninterrupted moments being awe-struck.

One particular evening, I lit a candle and placed it on the metal tree and sat down to reflect in the peace of the moment.  When I looked up again, I realized that the fragile flame had gone out completely.  I frowned and stood up, re-lit the candle and returned to where I had been sitting, watching my candle and the others around it flicker, restlessly on the verge of going out.

The problem, I quickly realized was that I had chosen the most inopportune place in the church to try to light my candle.  Only a few feet away, an open door was letting cool, clean air into the church and a persistent breeze was teasing and toying with the small fires, threatening to put them out.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the basilica, far from the outside world and under the gaze of a beaming Madonna, another set of candles was burning brightly, proudly and without difficulty.

However, being a restless soul, my focus stuck on the vulnerable little fires in my chosen spot, struggling just to stay a-light: now flickering, now nearly out, now re-kindling to burn twice as bright.  Bending and leaning, it was a deadly dance, a chiaroscuric tango, a visible struggle between the light and the darkness.

It drew my attention to my own fragile spirit and how, as a traveler and a human, I am often leaving my own candle in wind-swept places.  Because trying to have a compassionate heart and a sense of hope in a world where so many people are hurting and suffering, where there is so much inequality is something like trying to light a candle in the wind--everything is against it.  To try to find the best, without denying the worst, can be a heart-wrenching task.  And with hope, as with candles, there are moments when it flickers and fades.  Yet just when you think it has finally gone out for good, it comes back with a vengeance, burning twice as bright.

But as rough as the constant back-and-forth can be, the un-examined alternative is less appealing still.  I think of what it means to hide in the quiet part of the church--to burn brightly without doubt and struggle. For me, this is to live, consciously or unconsciously, in denial of the world's realities, which are decidedly not all Madonnas and cherubs and vaguely-inspired upturned glances.

Not being satisfied any other way, I will likely continue to light my candles in all the literallytheworst places that I can find, in defiance of all comfort and good sense.  I will continue to flirt with the darkness and to let myself be haunted by all the uncertainties, doubts and contradictions of the world. After all, seeking refuge in the moral and intellectual quiet corner was never really my style.

And despite my best efforts, I know that my flame will never calm itself, that it will continue to flicker and fade when the wind comes to call, as it inevitably does.  But I will try to console myself that at the moments when the flame is at its lowest point, about to be extinguished for good, it's only a second away from coming back twice as bright.