Tag Archives: light

I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light

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Light to My Light

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Round and round,
Oft’ repeated action,
Oft’ repeated sin,
I go,
Blinded by the storm within,
To folly’s fortune,
And wayward whim.

Hunger and thirst
Assail in just desert,
Assail with a vengeance.
Who will pay the piper?
Who will ransom the captive heart,
Break my fetters,
And smash my chains?

Crying into the night
Black my heart ache
Black my guilt.
Still my tears betray my hope,
As for Love I grope,
Calling, because primal urge
Causes me to shout into the Darkness.

I am the smoldering candle,
That will not go out.
That will not curse the darkness.
You are fan to my flame,
And breath in my nostrils,
You are the oil that fuels my lamp
To show the way out of darkness,
Light to my light.

© 2013 Joann Nelander
All rights reserved

The Physics of Sunsets – Starts With A Bang

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The Physics of Sunsets – Starts With A Bang.

Image credit: Tamas Ladanyi (TWAN), over Lake Balaton, Hungary.

The first and most obvious is the change in coloration of the Sun, as well as a severe drop in the Sun’s brightness. On an airless world like the Moon, the Sun at sunset would look no different than at any other time. But it’s the Earth’s atmosphere that makes sunsets so special.

Image credit: Bob King of http://astrobob.areavoices.com/.

When the Sun appears progressively lower and lower on the horizon, its light needs to pass through more and more of the atmosphere to reach our eyes. You might not think of the atmosphere as being a very good prism, but when you pass through around 1000 miles of it just before the Sun dips below the horizon, it starts to add up.

Image credit: Pete Lawrence (Digital-Astronomy).

The bluer wavelengths of light get scattered away, leaving only the reddest wavelengths that reach your eye. As the sun drops towards the horizon, it progressively loses violets and blues, then greens and yellows, and finally even the oranges, leaving only the reds behind.

You may not even realize it, but by time you’d see a sunset like the picture above, the Sun has already technically set, it’s only due to the fact that the atmosphere bends light that we’re still seeing it like this.

Image credit: R Nave of Hyperphysics, from http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/redsun.html.

This is why, if you time a sunset, it will take longer than the expected 120 seconds to go from the moment it touches the horizon to the moment it dips below, even during the equinox at the equator, where it rises and sets as close to completely vertical to the horizon as possible. The Sun appears to linger due to the refraction of our atmosphere.  READ MORE………

Days of Darkness – Days of Light

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Happy Anniversary!

You registered on WordPress.com 4 years ago!

Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging!

Yup, Word Press congratulated me!  Four years today!  To celebrate, I’m re-blogging my first post with a bit of tweeking to fit the season.

Days of Darkness – Days of Light

We just celebrated the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul.  It was he, who said in a letter addressed to the Roman church (Rom.5:20), “Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more”   Well, here’s the vision, as it was told to me. I want you to picture it so that you feel it with your heart:

You and I squeak in,  passing  through those towering Pearly Gates.  People of all ages overwhelm even our enhanced understanding of the generations descended from Adam and Eve.  We can’t wait to embrace them.  We know them intimately. Instantly, we know their stories.  These are those who lived Salvation history.

“What was it like?”,  we ask over and again?   These, after all, are those who walked dry shod through the walls of water escaping Pharaoh’s chariots.  Here, too,  are the masses who had pressed upon the Christ.  They’d witnessed the manner and miracles of Jesus.  Some has eaten the bread and fish He’d multiplied.  Others admitted that they had shouted, “Crucify Him.”  Others had stood along the way as He pushed on to Calvary. The martyrs from all past centuries were among the most joyful.  They now rejoiced that their blood shed for Christ seeded the proceeding eons to bear fruit in such as we.

For all our eagerness to express our gratitude to them and give glory to God, they pressed the more upon us, for their need is to know our stories.  “Tell us,”  they asked, “how black did the times become when men who pretend to knowledge denied life in the womb.  How dark were the days in which the hearts of mothers died, choosing  to bring forth corpses instead of  living children.  You, who lived with blindness and deafness,  how did you survive?  Like Peter, was it repentance that  re-ignited your flame?   How did you find courage walking  the Valley of the Shadow of Death?  How bright was the Light that brought you home?”

That Light is shining now, on everyone. Who will guide the blind and who will lead the thirsty to the Living Water, if not you and me.

Truth’s Army, Truth’s Bride

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Truth was never far away.
It stood erect,
And with resolve,
Waited for the moment
Of my will’s consent.

It was relentless,
Devoid of error,
Stalwart and persistent.

Truth was the beacon
On the high mountain.
It appealed to me
On the level of the good.

It drew me
As home beckons the lost.
I journeyed closer,
But as the light
Revealed my tatters
I drew back,
Trapped by my choices.

Truth is a wedding garment,
That clothes inwardly,
As well as out.
My espousals never produced
A marriage of Truth and the holy.
In its stead, I’d wed
What I wanted.
Now, I feared our distance,
And what I had become.

Desiring the right,
Even if I was wrong,
I gathered courage to my breast
And risked all in the quest.

I shed my rags
And found a covering of prayer,
A robe of humility,
And came to Love
In holy fear.

Now, I am
Full of resolve,
A stalwart knight
On Truth’s high mountain,
Carrying lighted torch
To the Dark Valley,
Into caverns of deception.

Standing tall before the Foe,
Truth girds my waist,
And undertakes to speak
Light in the darkness.

I am become an army
On the plain,
As Truth marches not alone.
It goes forth,
Drawing with it men of valor,
Choosing the death of Pride,
And living as Truth’s Bride.

©2012 Joann Nelander
All rights reserved

Be the Sun in Me

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Be, O Lord, the Sun in me.
Despite, my clouds,
Masking Your Beauty,
Be seen as light invisible,
Going forth, in the Spirit,
To the world,
A world in need of Revelation.

Pierce the veil of my travail.
Linger long to suffer my malaise,
My unsettled wine.

By grace, bless me,
As you bless those
Blind to Your Presence in me.

Sacrament and penance,
My claim upon Your Heart.
Light, undiminished,
Under my bushel,
Burning bright within my core,
Make of me a lampstand,
In Your Father’s House.

Be, O, Lord,
The Sun in Me,
To a world in need of illumination.

Copyright Joann Nelander 2012
All rights reserved