At Vespers last night, the lighting was unusual, in that electric lights had been turned on in the dome; typically we do without those, and in the winter it means that we see the icon of the Pantocrator only dimly. Because the amount of light, and the angle at which it enters through the cathedral windows, is always in flux, every service at every time of day is differently illumined — but the effect is always sublime.

Over the last two days, at church and on my neighborhood path, I was warmed by the beauty of physical lights, not separate from their symbolic role: They represent and mysteriously convey the presence of Christ Who is, as the Evangelist said, “The true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”

Today was the Leavetaking of Theophany, and I was the chanter of the Third and Sixth Hour prayers before the service. On Sundays we always have hymns of the Resurrection, and usually hymns of that Sunday’s feast or saints as well. It was the Kontakion of Theophany that got my attention this morning:

On this day Thou hast appeared unto the whole world,
And Thy light, O Sovereign Lord,
is signed on us who sing Thy praise,
and chant with knowledge:
Thou hast now come, Thou hast appeared,
O Light Unapproachable.

As soon as I returned after church, I (shock!!!) changed my clothes and went for a walk. We had been surprised by the sun coming out in the afternoon, so it was delightful out there. Even though the creek was muddy from rain, the light shining on it made it lovely.

And I practiced Psalm 89 some more. Reading the same lines and stanzas over and over, thinking of links to help me transition from one thought to another, has been the most rewarding kind of meditation; the theology and the poetry fill my heart, certainly in much  the same way as one line states:

We were filled in the morning with Thy mercy, O Lord,
And we rejoiced and were glad.

But this line is in the latter half of the psalm, when the mood has turned upward. A few stanzas before, the psalmist is considering how in the evening man “shall fall and grow withered and dry.” “We have fainted away,” “our days are faded away… our years like a spider have spun out their tale,” and “Return, O Lord, how long?”

I have looked at two other translations of the Psalm, one of them a different version of the Septuagint, and compared with the one I am using (see sidebar note), to me they both are clunky and harder to read, though they do have many of the same vivid images that help me to learn this poem.

I stopped a couple of times on my walk to sit on a bench and think about these things. And when I got home again I looked at the notes in the Orthodox Study Bible, which points out that this is “a morning prayer designed to keep one focused on the Lord rather than on this temporal life and its hopelessness. For He exists outside time, and is therefore our only refuge…. It is read daily at the First Hour.” 

There are many references to morning and evening, days and years, and our lifespan being “in the light of Thy countenance.” But one reason I have wanted to learn the whole prayer poem is the last verse, whose first line brings me back to “Thy light is signed on us” in the hymn we read and sang this morning:

And let the brightness of the Lord our God be upon us,
and the works of our hands do Thou guide aright upon us,
Yea, the work of our hands do Thou guide aright.