How the light gets in

I have been feeling inspired by the famous lines of Leonard Cohen's "Anthem" over the past few days, and the following photo from Ramallah kept jumping to mind whenever these words came into my head - probably because I also thought of them when I walked by this window for the first time at late midday:

"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."

Ramallah, Palestine - August, 2014

Full lyrics and link to the Live in London performance of Anthem:

"Anthem"

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.

I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring ...

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.

Fazıl Say & Nâzım Hikmet

Fazıl Say: Turkish composer and pianist
Photo source

Fazıl Say

I came to know of this world-renowned musician and composer this last month, thanks to a Turkish friend of mine. You can learn more about him at fazilsay.com.

The composition that most drew me in was his Nâzım Oratorio, the words of which are the poems of Nâzım Hikmet, one of Turkey's greatest poets.
You can read some of these in English here, and if you want to know more about his life, which was a fascinating one, a quick search will yield lots of results.
Here, though, is a brief synopsis: A poet, playwright, novelist, and memoirist, Hikmet was known as a romantic communist and revolutionary, and is seen by many as a great patriot, for he dearly loved his country. Despite this, his political beliefs landed him in prison on more than one occasion, and he spent much of his life in exile, eventually passing away in Moscow, Russia (then the Soviet Union), in 1963 at the age of 61. His poetry, from what I've read so far, makes profound statements about living, prison, the pain of war, and ties to one's homeland and family, among other things.

I found that the combination of Say's musicality and the purity and poignancy of Hikmet's words made for an exquisite experience. I turned this on as study music, but once I started reading along with the oratorio's translation, I couldn't stop. It is well worth watching the whole performance, although if you're pressed for time, break it up into a few sittings.

Enjoy:

Green screen moments

Coming down from El Deir, "The Monastery", in Petra.

Start of the day in Wadi Rum - I can't believe these are real.

A few hours before settling in to watch the sun set (Wadi Rum).

To see souls

You walk down the street, or cram onto the metro during rush hour, and you're surrounded by a mob of faces.
A body - that's just a bundle of cells, proteins, water, blood - atoms, matter.
The you I perceive is perceived as such because light waves bounce off the matter making up you, and I have these rods by night these cones by day that are oh, so, adept at visualizing you.
But that's not you, that's your body.
The stinky, ratty clothes that could really use a wash; the overly proper and too perfectly polished get up; your wrinkling skin that's too old for the time you've spent here; that long, warm, dark hair falling down to your waist; those knees that give way, frail from too many adventures necessity took you on; your protruding veins, your protruding eyes, everything bulging out of a body too thin -- every single physical feature by which I too often judge capacity for life and love and loveability -- none of those perceptions are really you. It's just light bent a certain way due to a living, breathing, moving mass of matter. Which does have a lot of beauty, yes, and a lot of stories to tell. You are, in part, your body, but you are also so much more.

Your soul.

That's what I can't see. That's what I usually don't see or think of when the light's just right and I'm moving down the street quickly, when I see you all everywhere, around me in a lecture hall for 650 beings. But your soul, your heart, your mind... That's what's going to last and that's what is there to love, first, and most.

I want to learn to see the beauty in every broken and perfectly created body - I want to see souls.

Photo of friend at Wreck Beach; check out her fantastic blog: Eastern Western Chronicles

A few months ago, I was with a group of friends and we were discussing objectification, how we are all too focused on the surface. Two sides seemed to form, as we brought up strategies for how we're trying to fight this human tendency. One side said: strive to expand your definition of beauty, to perceive everyone as beautiful in a different way; the other: remember that beauty, the surface, isn't what's most important - don't let beauty matter so much to begin with.

I think though, that if we'd talked a little longer, there would have been no cause for disagreement, because I'm certain that the two can go hand in hand. It wouldn't do our capacity to appreciate beauty justice if we strove to stop valuing it, but, it is also true that it is not all-important, especially not as we define it. That's why I want to see hearts, minds, spirits, and to see these in and through the body. We do experience life through bodies after all - experiences write on each of us, our skin, fingers, eyes, and hair catching all the unsorted unfinished pieces of life story, and laying them out in one great, ever expanding and changing corpus. This, life's external imprint, is tied to its internal marks; it's in the interweave that we find people, and what is each person? As I believe it, each of us is an image-bearer of the divine. Once you see that, it's impossible for a perception of each individual as beautiful to not follow, and this beauty comes with a very expanded, supernatural definition indeed.

I want to remember that each person I perceive is not some static, 2D point that drifts in, then out, of my line of vision, not some body only, but this huge complex sphere, a planet with rings that overlap and interfere with many others' rings, just as mine do in each of the relationships I do and don't hold dear.

To not perceive a library or a metro full of ever-studying and journeying robots who drift in and out, relieving each other of their shifts, but as people that are every bit as dear to God and as much His image-bearers as I hope myself to be.

I want to see you as a bundle of emotion, intelligence, thought, aspiration, and love. To see your beautiful bright eyes, yes, but to see them as beautiful because they are reflective of whatever it is, within, that is you. Because you, you bear the image of the Most High God.

I want, desperately, to walk through life seeing souls; to not just perceive in a way that is limited by light and matter, but to see.



-------

Originally posted at: http://itsaralingua.blogspot.ca