How the Light Gets in...

A piece that is prompted by the title of the upcoming festival of ideas partly hosted by the Hay on Wye Festival team (in turn stolen from Leonard Cohen), and the oft told, doubtless apocryphal, tale of a parent explaining what the different parts of a church are for or mean, including the stained glass, with that child in their RE class at school subsequently defining a saint as "someone that the light shines through..."

Stained glass saints

Let the light in

Telling the story

To those who have

Not yet encountered

The Word.

But even stained glass

Gets stained with

The accumulated grime

Of everyday existence

Obscuring the light

Of life.

No building can ever

Effectively contain

All the glory of creation

Never mind the Creator

Who speaks the story

To be.

No sanctified sinner

Can effectively express

All the grace and mercy

Extended to them

And through them

To all.

Selah

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