O Gladsome Light

I still remember the first time I ate supper with Ethan's family. I sat while they prayed, letting the tide of their voices ebb around me. "O Gladsome Light of the holy glory of the immortal Father..." The sound of a family praying together is a mystical thing, all similar timbres, all similar inflections, like the light of evening in the way it turns everything its color.

A couple of days ago, Ethan and I sat, all bundled up in the July weather of mountains, about to eat our sandwiches all wrapped in cling-wrap, and looked out at this view, the threshold of Heaven, the enveloping of light, the unfathomable nearness of incarnate beauty. Can't you see it? I could almost touch the clouds. It was the nearest I had ever been to the sky. And we watched as the sun came out from behind a wall of cloud, trying not to gaze on its brightness, but asking each other, "Has it touched me yet? Can you see its light on my face? I feel it's warmth!" Ethan grabbed my hand, and those words that we'd said so many times over, those words that had felt so far in dreary winter days, and so distant in that old windowless kitchen-- those words felt as tangible as the light diffusing about us now:

"O Gladsome Light of the holy glory of the immortal Father, heavenly, holy, blessed Jesus Christ. Now that we have come to the setting of the sun, and behold the light of evening, we praise thee, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for it is right at all times to worship thee with voices of praise, O Son of God and Giver of life. Therefore, all the world glorifies thee. Amen."

What if this threshold place, this place so near the kingdom, were only a breath-prayer away? Then, talking with our heavenly Father would mean one foot in his kingdom. Talking with him would diffuse this same light into the darkness of our days, would wash everything in its color. Your voice would gradually grow more and more to match the timbre of His. What if nearness to him were only a breath-prayer away? I know it is so. I know it is so. The kingdom of Heaven is near.