Darkness and Light

Yesterday I began a new short story in response to a disturbing event that occurred this past week. A couple tentative titles await the completion of this tale: "An Ethical Adjustment" or "The Cupboards Were Bare." 

In the meantime, his morning I woke thinking about a different theme that has been wriggling around in my brain: Darkness and Light.

Darkness is one of those simple words that opens into deeper territory the longer you sit with it. At the most basic level, darkness is just the absence of light. When no photons reach your eyes, your brain has nothing to interpret, and you perceive black. In that sense, darkness isn’t a “thing” at all—it’s what we experience when something else is missing.

But we rarely use the word that way in ordinary life. We talk about darkness as if it has weight and presence. A room can feel dark even when there’s a lamp on. A story can turn dark without the sun setting. A mood can turn dark when we allow a dark thought to make its home in our thoughts. What’s happening there is psychological: darkness becomes a shorthand for uncertainty, danger, or the unknown. Our minds fill in what we cannot see, often with fear, and we all know how fear combined with unrestrained imagination can really twist our heads. (A couple of comical stories come to mind here about runaway paranoia that fortunately had a happy ending. Maybe you have such a memory.)

There’s also a moral dimension. Across cultures, darkness has been linked with ignorance, secrecy, or wrongdoing—“things done in the dark.” Not because darkness itself is evil, but because it conceals. When actions are hidden, accountability disappears. This is why a "free press" is an essential plank in our U.S. Constitution. (See: A Free Press Is Fundamental to Free Nation)

Darkness has another dimension as well. Seeds germinate in darkness underground. Sleep restores the body in the dark. The night sky reveals stars you’ll never see at noon. And I've never met anyone who's seen the breathtaking, shimmering wonder of Northern Lights during the day either. In short, darkness is not always a bad thing.   

By way of contrast light is the counterpart to darkness—but it’s more than just its opposite. At the physical level, light is energy. If I've got my physics right, it travels as electromagnetic waves—tiny packets called photons—moving incredibly fast (an amazing 186,000 miles per second). It’s what allows us to see: objects don’t “have” color on their own; they reflect light into our eyes, and our brains interpret those reflections as shapes, colors, and motion.

It's a strange thought to consider that without light the world is still there but it's hidden.

Light also conveys information. It reveals distance, texture, movement. It lets you recognize a face, read this blog, notice danger, or find your way home. When you look at yourself in a mirror, you see nothing until the lights are turned on. In that sense, light is not just illumination—it’s understanding made visible.

That’s why we use the word metaphorically so often. We speak of “shedding light” on a problem, of a “lightbulb moment,” of someone being “in the dark.” Light becomes a symbol for clarity, truth, awareness. Where light enters, confusion tends to retreat.

But like darkness, light isn’t always gentle. It can expose things we’d rather not see. It can be harsh, even blinding. A floodlight reveals, but it can also overwhelm.

So light is both physical and symbolic. Physically, it’s the energy that makes sight possible. Mentally, it’s the process of making sense of what’s there. Spiritually or morally, it often stands for truth, insight, or revelation.

It's this last dimension that I find especially profound when I consider what Jesus once said: "I am the light of the world." This is a statement with so many layers I can't begin to express it. 

My first thought pertains to the opening lines of the Book of Genesis, and God's first words, "Let there be light."

Here's the context: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

What Jesus said, though, has an even more startling suggestion. "I AM the light of the world." This phrase “I AM” comes from one of the most striking moments in the Old Testament, when God speaks to Moses from the burning bush in Book of Exodus (Exodus 3:14). Moses asks for God’s name, something concrete he can tell the Israelites. The answer he receives is most unusual: “I AM WHO I AM.”

Pursuing those ideas can be a long diversion, so I will simply call it another seed for your mind farm. How seeds germinate is a whole other post, and when they do they reach for the sun.

"Let there be light!"

A Free Press Is Fundamental to a Free Nation

"Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil."--John 3:19

One of the most. significant features of the U.S. Constitution is the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution known as the Bill of Rights. It could be argued that this is one of the more profound documents in history, guaranteeing fundamental individual freedoms while limiting government power.

Throughout our history we have witnessed assaults on these various tenets that were brilliantly and thoughtfully conceived by our Founding Fathers. To our benefit these attacks have been rebuffed. 

Today I'm thinking about one of the most important freedoms: freedom of the press, a freedom that is not universally shared. 

On Sunday March 8, the NYTimes editorial board published a feature editorial titled The Free Press Is Under Threat Globally.

The editorial argues that press freedom is deteriorating around the world and warns that democracy itself is at risk if independent journalism continues to weaken as governments increasingly use arrests, lawsuits, and intimidation to silence journalists. 

Record numbers of reporters are imprisoned today, particularly in authoritarian countries, creating a chilling effect on investigative work. At the same time, digital surveillance and unresolved violence have made journalism more dangerous. The piece concludes that a free press is essential to democracy, and that the United States must defend it both at home and abroad to maintain credibility. When journalists are silenced, corruption and abuse of power flourish. Protecting independent journalism, the board argues, should be a priority for governments and citizens everywhere.

Here's an excerpt: 

At least 330 journalists worldwide were in prison at the end of 2025, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, up from fewer than 200 a decade ago. More than a third of them were serving sentences of five years or more. Nearly half remained behind bars despite never having been formally sentenced. One-fifth say they were tortured or beaten. An additional 129 members of the press died while doing their jobs or because of them, the highest number since records began in 1992. Among the worst offenders against press freedom have been China, Russia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Sudan and Turkey.

A little further the Editorial Board stated:

The press faces challenges in freer societies, too. Israel's war in Gaza led to the arrest of almost 100 Palestinian journalists, often without charge, and at least twice that number were killed over two years, a toll without modern precedent. 

This latter statement is especially disconcerting. In addition to the elimination of hospitals and medical care, the targeting of journalists is undoubtedly one of the most troubling facets of the Gaza conflict. As I read the op-ed it brought to mind a Medium post I wrote in 2020, "The Real Reason They Punish Horse Thieves." 

As George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, noted, “Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.” Can this be the real reason they shoot journalists in Gaza or eliminate them elsewhere? 

The Watergate affair and My Lai massacre made heroes of journalists like Woodword and Bernstein and Sy Hersh. Their work inspired others to pursue this important profession.

Not all government leaders, however, want their deeds exposed. Fraud? Thievery? Corruption? War crimes? No wonder they shoot the messengers. 

The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah stated that the heart is deceitful above above all things. Even good kings can go bad. Thus the Times board concludes that a free press is essential to democratic accountability. 

* * * * *

Read: The Real Reason They Punish Horse Thieves

Related: 

Judge Rules Pentagon Restrictions on Press Are Unconstitutional

Kenny Holston/The New York Times March 20, 2026

Comments welcome below.

Light Waves, Sound Waves, Wi-Fi and the Universe

"Beyond Imagination"

At the beginning of the film Oppenheimer there’s a scene or sequence that conveys this sense of the young physicist’s mind being blown by his awareness of the incredible universe we live in. As I watched that scene it triggered thoughts and imaginings of my own regarding the nature of reality. It’s almost strange how we lose our curiosity about the galaxies and matter and how do our minds and bodies work and where life comes from. 

I remember learning about the structure of atoms in high school chemistry. There's a sense in which atoms are like our solar system. There is more nothingness than substance. That is, we have this huge space but a handful of planets circulating within it. So, too, an atom has a tiny nucleus made up of protons and neutrons which has even tinier electrons floating around it. In other words, there is more space than substance. And this is what our bodies, tools, furniture and everything else is made of. 

One of the questions that crossed my mind back then was this. What if you could line up all the molecules in your body in such a way so as to be able to walk through a wall? Those kinds of questions are where sci-fi comes from.

In 2014 I wrote a blog post about another physics conundrum. I was thinking about all the things that surround us that we can't see. In fact, it's somewhat staggering. 

I started the strange thought that the room I'm in is filled with sound waves but I couldn't hear them. Wherever you went, if you had a the right kind of radio you could pick up a radio station.

When we were kids, my dad had purchased a multi-band radio that could pick up short wave signals from all over the world. Even though he mostly listened to WOR on the AM dial I remember occasionally tuning in to strange languages on some of the other dials and trying to guess where they were coming from. "Is that Russian? Is that Finnish?" I imagined that I was listening to a submarine captain in the Baltic Sea.

All these sounds were accessible, surrounding us, but we couldn't hear them. Nor could we see those sound waves even though they were streaming all around us.  It was interesting to contemplate.

Fast forward to the present. Think of the bombardment nowadays. Satellite radio is spraying signals continuously, and satellite television. Your GPS device signals are ever instructing, and the old fashioned network TV towers keep singing. We're surrounded by a cloud of noises we can't hear at all.

Now consider this. Science has shown us that we're also awash in light waves. We don't see light waves, of course, but only see the objects that they reflect off of. Our light bulbs emanate photons likewise invisible to perception or comprehension. The sun, too, is perpetually spraying light in all directions. Scientists point out that light is a wave but also has particle-like properties. So we're surrounded by all these sound waves and light waves we can't see.

And then there is air. Oxygen and nitrogen not only fill the rooms we sit in and the atmosphere outside, but also go into our bodies as we breathe. We can't see these gases either. It's simply amazing how much stuff is wrapped around us that we are blind to.

So here is the question I asked in 2014: What if we could see all this unseen "stuff"? 

It might be interesting for a moment, but somehow I have to think if we could see all those sound waves and light waves, and all that air swirling around, it would be a little challenging. I can envision my room here stuffed with a giant mass of shredded cottonball-like material, and myself absorbed in it. Maybe I wouldn't even be able to see this computer monitor because all that "stuff" was in the way.

Bottom Line: I think I like it just as it is, the room an empty space with an easy chair where I can curl up and read a good book.

What do you think? 

Two Versions of The Comet: Dark and Light

Photo by Nick Owuor (astro.nic.visuals) on Unsplash

A few weeks back I devoted a lot of my spare time experimenting with an "intelligent machine" (A.I. program/bot) called Sudowrite. The program can create poetry and can write fiction, among other things. I found the poetry writing feature easy to use and ceaselessly entertaining. 

What you would do is feed it the first three or four or five lines and then hit enter. 20 seconds later you will have Sudowrite's inventive creation. Sometimes the poems would be lengthy, and sometimes brief. Sometimes they seem inspired, and other times  quite dark. 

Here is an example of how dark Sudowrite can get. The first poem here is one of my own. In the second Sudowrite takes a stab at completing my opening lines. 

The Comet

My appearance is as one who knows no center,
no allegiance -- racing as I do through vacant
expanses of cold and darkness, through the deep silence.
Then suddenly, in the fullness of time, I return,
my face filled with force, ferocious with intent,
doubling back on my trail, direct... Sunward

while my nine brothers plod along in their orbits,
predictable and staid, none draws so near as I
to the glory -- nor does one know, as do I,
the height and depth and width and breadth
of God's vast universe.

My appearance is as one who knows no center,
but it’s only an illusion, for no matter how far I explore,
inevitably I return, daring to draw near with unveiled face.

The Comet (AI Collaboration)

My appearance is as one who knows no center,

no allegiance -- racing as I do through vacant

expanses of cold and darkness, through the deep silence.

Then suddenly, in the fullness of time, I return,

to the exact same place I departed, and find myself

here, here, under these same stars; and we, who were

so many and so beautiful, we who knew such joy and such

love, we who were living like gods, we are now dead.

                                        * * * 

One thing for certain... the A.I. is always full of surprises.

Throwback Thursday: Every Grain of Sand: Dylan Finds a Basis for Hope in the Darkness of Despair

Bob Dylan floored me tonight. I've seen him before and felt meh, but tonight he delivered a stunning show. That Every Grain of Sand encore had me in tears.--Adam Handman tweet

One of the nice surprises for a lot of fans attending the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour has been Dylan's selection of "Every Grain of Sand" for the encore each night, though by now no one should be surprised. It's the perfect pinnacle to climb toward for these shows. On Monday a friend noted this selection, surmising that the song reflects an emotional place of being depressed. 

In 2017 I wrote the following about this sublime song, the final track from Shot of Love. 

17 SEPTEMBER 2017

Paul Bond: And what is his (Dylan's) best song, lyrically?
Scott Marshall: "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" or "Every Grain of Sand" — it's too tough to pick merely one.
--The Hollywood Reporter

A Rolling Stone readers poll listed it as #3 on the 10 best Dylan songs of the 80's. It's always been a personal favorite, and since I've not yet tackled it as a theme today is as good a day as any, because we live in a world that often cuts us and bruises us and blinds us and seems determined to thwart our dreams.

* * * *
The song begins with a broken narrator, in the hour of his deepest need, his dark night of the soul as it were. There's a dying voice within -- being strangled? suffocated? -- reaching out, it knows not how, reaching out to connect to something, someone. He mentions danger, and it is indeed a dangerous game, and then he creates this interesting phrase: "the morals of despair."

What are the morals of despair? Despair is not only the loss of all hope, but also the loss of all meaning. It's that empty-soul vacuum where right and wrong feels meaningless.

He doesn't have the inclination to look back on his life's mistakes. The landscape is already too familiar. And then another great line: "Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break." This is another feature of despair. It is a paralysis of will. Instead of living, instead of choosing, we are folded up, passive. We watch life instead of choose life. Passivity goes hand in hand with hopelessness. It is a resignation to fate.

But the two quatrain verse ends with the miracle: "In the fury of the moment" he sees the Master's hand. Where? In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

* * * *
The second verse elaborates on the root of this despair, "the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear." Dylan here references Jesus' parable of the sower. Just as Socrates taught by asking questions, Jesus taught by sharing stories. Nietzsche once stated that Jesus and Socrates were the two greatest lights in human history. It is interesting that neither of them were writers, but that their followers recorded their words and deeds.

The parable tells about a sower who sows "good seed" but that it takes root or fails to take root based on the condition of the soil where it lands, meaning the soil of the heart. Jesus explains the different kinds of soil -- stony, or on the footpath, etc.-- with the third example being the thorny soil. Dylan's line "the weeds of yesteryear, like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer." The seed is good, and even the soil is good, but there has been no weeding, and the seed is choked off.

Once again there is a reference to the passivity that has led to this condition, "the pain of idleness." In the Old Testament book of Proverbs the wise King Solomon writes, in chapter one, "the complacency of  fools destroys them."

The second half of this second stanza is striking because it parallels the reality of humankind. There are two voices calling. Again, see the first eight chapters of Proverbs. Wisdom calls out to us, but so does Folly. Each voice knows us by name.

But the wise man/woman who keeps walking on his/her journey toward the light comes to understand that "every hair is numbered like every grain of sand."

* * * *

This song is the last track on what is considered to be Dylan's third album in his Gospel period, Shot of Love, released in August 1981. What's striking about the songs Dylan wrote at this time is how astutely he observed and creatively interpreted the spiritual activity he witnessed within and around him. The freshness of his imagery is what stands out all through his writing, with deliberate avoidance of the multifarious cliche-laden language that most people use because it is easy and we all tend to be lazy. Cliches like "the sky's the limit" may work in an office water-cooler conversation, but not for serious writers. Hence some of the people most floored by Dylan are writers who have been impressed by the inventive ways Dylan uses language in lines like "but for the sky there are no fences facing" in Mr. Tambourine Man, and "the ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face" in Visions of Johanna.

And yet, rules about the use of a hackneyed phrase or cliche, even those can be broken, and Dylan does so directly to open the third pair of stanzas: "I have gone from rags to riches..."

It's followed by a string of prepositional phrases of parallel construction:
"In the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer’s dream,
in the chill of a wintry light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face..."

So here we see that money alone does not buy happiness. Simultaneous to his rags to riches experience he's seen sorrow, violence, chills, bitter loneliness and the "broken mirror of innocence."

The broken mirror, in pop culture, is a symbol of bad luck, or to be more specific seven years of bad luck, seven itself being a symbol of perfection or, more precisely, the perfect amount of time. And where do we see this broken mirror? We see it on the scarred hearts of youth. Over and over again we see and hear stories that show how humanity's sins result in suffering children, children whose innocence has been shaken, torn, scarred. The abusive alcoholic father, or the parents who abandon their young, the children carrying "guns and sharp swords" in war-torn Nigeria, the children of Sarajevo, and on and on, the children cited in "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall."

In the last stanza, Dylan hears again the ancient footsteps, like the motion of the sea, swelling and receding, and in this ambiguous encounter he realizes that he is "hanging in the balance of the reality of man." This is our human situation. We're "hanging in the balance." In what way? "Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand."

Dylan again references a parable that Jesus told in Matthew 10:29-31. "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."

Every Grain Of Sand

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There’s a dyin’ voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair

Don’t have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay

I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer’s dream, in the chill of a wintry light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand

Copyright © 1981 by Special Rider Music

* * * *

The album began with its title plea "I need a shot of love" while detailing all the reasons we can end up in this place of need. "I seen the kingdoms of this world and it's making me feel afraid." It ends with this song of consolation.

In need of further consolation? Try this passage from the Sermon on the Mount.

Bad Break

Many, if not most, poems have a story behind them, an occasion or emotion or trigger event. The poem Bad Break originated as a response to the unsettling sensation of growing up in a world where nuclear winter was an ever-present danger.

I’m not sure how much fear fire drills create, but there was something ominous about the widespread practice of air raid drills and what to do in the event of a nuclear war. Just as today’s Homeland Security processes for travelers keep evolving, so did our air raid drill instructions. I remember at one point we were all lined up and marched to nearby houses so we could hide in basements around the neighborhood. Evidently this was deemed time consuming and our later air raid drills involved getting seated in the hallways with our backs to the lockers, heads down between our knees, hands folded behind our necks. The place you did not want to be was in a room with large plate glass windows.

Either the threat of war diminished or the fears instilled by all this preparation resulted in our not needing to go through with these exercises. Or someone somewhere determined that it was all foolish futility anyways should those death bombs fly.

To be honest I still worry a bit about the bombs, knowing how many missiles are still out there, aiming here, there and everywhere.

Bad Break

agitation
face white
deep breath
hold tight
run down
look round
hope hard
underground

ten seconds
ten years
dull moans
shrieked fears
wild thoughts
no tears
eyes wide
all ears
push shove
hide fast
screen view
whole past

breathe deep
make haste
taste death
bad taste
sky tear
bright light
no air
stomach tight

flame flash
all ash

e. 1975

This poem originally appeared in print in Zenith City Arts in 1987.
Photo: Ed Newman Lightwerx Series

Wordless Wednesday: Steampunk Style

Featured eBook of the Day: Newmanesque

Wordless Wednesday: Let There Be Lights

Sherwood Wirt, R.I.P.

“If you have been ordained to write, woe to you if you put everything else first.” ~ Sherwood Wirt

I was reading the Passages section of Christianity Today last night and came across the following notation:

Died >> Sherwood Eliot Wirt, Christian journalist and author, on November 8 in Seattle. ‘Woody Wirt’ was a longtime associate of Billy Graham and founding editor of Decision magazine.

He was also an author of 28 books, including one that in 1983 pretty much changed my life. That book was You Can Tell the World, subtitled New Directions for Christian Writers.

Wirt had been, among other things, a journalist. One great feature of being a journalist is getting the opportunity to throw a lot of questions at some fairly significant people. Wirt, for example, had encounters with heavies such as H. G. Wells and Albert Einstein. He also did C. S. Lewis’ last interview.

In the interview with Lewis he asked, "Will you tell young writers something about style?" Lewis said, "Style? Say exactly what you mean, and when you have said it, be sure you have said exactly that. That is style."

Wirt’s style was direct. His hefty serving of advice for young writers, with no mincing, had me hooked from the first punch. My frame of mind was such that Wirt's advice had the authority of the word of God. This was not just another book for me. At that time I truly felt writing to be a calling. I had "failed" as a missionary and my interpersonal skills and circumstances did not suit me for pastoral work. During a weeklong vacation at a private cabin in Portage, Wisconsin, I had an epiphanal moment in which, for me, writing became a calling.

My first published article six years earlier resulted in letters from three continents thanking me for what I had written. Only five hundred words, but these letters claimed their lives were changed. I experienced first hand the power of the written word.

I was only too aware of my limitations and lack of experience. Thus, when I picked up Wirt's book, I knew he was dead on. His message resonated because he passionately believed that what he was saying needed to be said. If we're to produce great work, we must know what great work looks like. The only way is to be a reader of great works.

“Darwin’s Origin of Species, Marx’ and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, Kierkegaard’s attacks on Hegel, Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Kafka’s The Trial, Camus’ The Plague and others.

“These books, the most influential of our time, deal primarily with the scientific challenge and loss of meaning in a mechanistic society. There has been no Christian work written since the novels of Dostoevsky that can honestly be said to match them in boldness, in documentation, in breadth and scope, in vision, in appeal to the human spirit, or in grasp of truth. C.S. Lewis is the only Christian entry in the field. The opportunities are wide open, and there is plenty of room at the top.”

A little further along, Wirt again urged serious young writers to read the classics. “The author of the 70’s who will really influence his day will be a person who knows the English language and the writers who have mastered it. Journalism courses are no substitute for a grasp of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Bunyan, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Robert Browning, or even Ernest Hemingway. To live in the twentieth century and to understand it, one must also know Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. There is no easy way to master such men; if we haven’t read them, sooner or later our bluff will be called. And may I add that there is very little God can do with a lazy Christian writer.”

I'd been given my marching orders. With this admonition I was pushed into the literature, listening to classics while painting apartments, while commuting, whenever I was not able to sit at a typewriter and pour myself out. I considered myself a serious young writer, and took these admonitions to heart. For better or for worse, though I may not have significantly changed the world, the skills I developed help me provide for my family. And the rest of my story is as yet unwritten...

One takeaway from Wirt's book bears repeating: If you want to change the world, and I earnestly desired it, you begin by changing yourself.

As for Mr. Wirt, thank you for helping light my torch that I might in some small way give light to another generation of young writers seeking to hold back tomorrow's darkness with courage and truth.

Between This and That

“The boundary is the best place for acquiring knowledge.” ~ Paul Tillich

Life has many challenges. Transitions are always fraught with challenge, for example. Whether from adolescence to adulthood, employment to retirement, or geographic relocation, every transition stirs up things within us that can cause emotional upheavals.

There are many other kinds of challenges, of course. The struggle against temptation (a word one hardly seldom hears in a post-Christian culture) is ever with us, simply because we live in a broken world and none of us is exempt from its influence.

There are also matters that do not pertain to ethics per se. Year in and year out complications beset us as we strive to understand who we are and how we fit together with others who are often so different from us. In many respects we even get caught in the middle between polarities that divide our own selves. If it is a challenge knowing ourselves, no wonder we occasionally scratch our heads when we try to read others, and are in turn misread.

Theologian Paul Tillich’s book On the Boundary is an autobiographical exploration of the polarities that were at war within himself. In his attempt to understand his life he discovered that there were many parts of himself that were at odds with other parts of himself. One chapter describes the tension that he experienced between the temperaments of his two ancestral heritages. Each of his parents came from different kinds of backgrounds. As a result one part of himself tended toward the melancholy, contemplation and consciousness of personal duty. His counter-temperament tended toward a zest for life that was at odds with that other part of himself which sought composure and harmony.

Another chapter addressed his struggle between city and country. City life has a different character than rural. He found a part of himself in each, but occasionally they were at odds with each other.

Social classes also present issues. The family of humankind flows through all walks of life, from doctors to beggars to everything in between. Often we find tensions created by these differing backgrounds and experiences. Tillich experienced this within himself, but churches and communities can likewise experience it.

Another area of conflict is the tension between idealism and realism. It is good when young people are idealistic. Such idealism makes us discontent with the status quo and can motivate us to try to change the world, to make it a better place, to bring it into conformity with higher values. Idealism empowers us to take action. But realism does not mean we have abandon ideals. As we get older we see that there are more variables than we initially recognized, and perhaps that the world's brokenness is more serious than we could initially comprehend. Yes, it is possible to overcome, but are we willing to pay the price to get there? It might be a higher price than we originally expected and, perhaps flippantly, paid lip service to.

In another chapter Tillich wrestles with autonomy and conformity to an imposed dogmatism. It is very difficult to think for ourselves. It takes courage to question what we have been told we should believe and to discover for ourselves the truth through honest inquiry. For many, who grew up being “told” what to believe, it is almost feels like sin to question, to break free from the safety of acquiescence. Once free from imposed systems of belief, such persons react strongly against being corralled.

My mother used to always say, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” Truth emerges from within and cannot be imposed from without.

From my earliest days I have always pictured God like an enormous chandelier of cut jewels. God, who is light, is in the middle of the chandelier, but we do not see Him because He is “immortal, invisible… in light inaccessible from our eyes,” to quote the hymn writer. What people see are the jewels and diadems, each of us different, and in different locations on the chandelier. We each reflect God in a different way, yet contribute to the whole in a unique and beautiful way. What we forget is that those jewels began as rough stones that needed chiseling and polishing. They did not “just happen.”

Paul Tillich affirms that the places where he has grown most are in those places where he experienced conflict and upheaval, often within himself. This is the chiseling that turns us into diamonds. Our suffering is not in vain.

It's normal to try to avoid conflict. It feels dangerous, but is often essential to growth. As the psalmist once wrote, “weeping may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”

Restless Pilgrim

“I’m not a spokesman for anybody’s generation. Far from it. I want to emphatically deny being the spokesman for our generation. Fame is just having your name known by a lot of strangers. People who are kind or good are the ones who ought to be famous.” ~ Bob Dylan, 1978

The decades-spanning career of Bob Dylan intersects nearly every major movement of our times.

For a short period beginning in 1979, he recorded three albums in what some call his “Gospel period.” Slow Train Coming, the first, was superbly produced and musically a first rate album. But the message was a departure in many peoples’ minds from what they expected Dylan to be, especially after the Rolling Thunder Review Tour which rumbled across the previous period.

I was in Bible school when the album came out. My connections to Dylan’s music were woven through the braided themes of my own life. And as a harmonica player I enjoyed the sweet riffs with which he’d accented much of his music. I had more than one friend at that time refer to him as “Brother Bob” because he was now a “brother in Christ.”

His second album, Saved, left nothing to the imagination with regard to where Dylan stood on matters of faith. “I’m pressing on, to the higher calling of my Lord,” with its black gospel feel and passionate delivery, is a perfectly clear snapshot of the Dylan's born again heart.

His third album of this period began to re-capture some of the venom-tinged power of songs like "Idiot Wind" and "Positively Fourth Street" of previous times, only the target this time -- in a song like "Dead Man" – was religion. The weaker production values in this album caused critics to pan it but there were some significant messages here and some songs with great poetry.

Shot of Love was followed by his Infidels album, which moved further away from explicit declarations of a Biblical Christianity and seemed to suggest that he was now identifying with his Jewish roots.

And so, many wondered where he was at with God and faith and religion. Careful readers of his interviews could see that he never denied the Bible as truth. But questions remained. The book Restless Pilgrim (Relevant Books, 2004) by Scott Marshall strives to put it all to rest. The genius troubadour, despite his various guises, has underneath always been a seeker, and when he found the truth in Christ, according to Marshall, he never ceased to embrace the revealed mercy he found at the Cross.

At the same time, Dylan is an artist. He used all his creative powers to produce the albums of that most intensely spiritual period. But rather than repeating the same things over and over, Dylan turned his eye back to the broader culture to offer his informed analysis, interpretations, unique ways of illuminating realities. Songs like “Everything Is Broken” and “Ring Them Bells” from his acclaimed Oh Mercy album are truthful and true, powerful and honest without sounding like some of the preaching from his Saved album. "Disease of Conceit" and “What Good Am I?” from side 2 are again Dylanesque versions of Old and New Testament truths, in a modern dialect.

Marshall’s book attempts to highlight the threads from Dylan’s various songs and interviews that show his faith remained vibrant, and is inseparable from the message of his life.

Though this is not the foremost Dylan book on my shelf, it was an insightful and important addition to my collection, adding new anecdotal material and understandings which followers of the artist should appreciate.

"Gotta Serve Somebody," the song Dylan opened his 1998 Duluth performance with, has been a favorite of his as an opener these past 28 years. I think that says something right there. Here are the lyrics from another of my favorite songs on that first album Slow Train Coming…

Precious Angel

Precious angel, under the sun

How was I to know you'd be the one

To show me I was blinded, to show me I was gone,

How weak was the foundation I was standing upon.

Now there's spiritual warfare, flesh and blood breaking down,

You either got faith or you got unbelief, and there ain't no neutral ground.

The enemy is subtle, how be it we’re deceived

When the truth’s in our hearts and we still don't believe?

Shine your light, shine your light on me

Shine your light, shine your light on me

Shine your light, shine your light on me

You know I just can't make it by myself

I'm a little too blind to see.

My so called friends have fallen under a spell

They look me squarely in the eye and they say, "Well, all is well'.

Can they imagine the darkness that will fall from on high

When men will beg God to kill them and they won't be able to die?

Sister, let me tell you about a vision that I saw,

You were drawing water for your husband, you were suffering under the law

You were telling him about Buddha, you were telling him ‘bout Mohammed in one breath,

You never mentioned one time the Man who came
and died a criminal's death.

Shine your light, shine your light on me

Shine your light, shine your light on me

Shine your light, shine your light on me

You know I just can't make it by myself

I'm a little too blind to see.

Precious angel, you believe me when I say

What God has given to us no man can take away

We are covered in blood girl, you know our forefathers were slaves

Let us hope they found mercy in their bone-filled graves.

You're the queen of my flesh, girl, you're my woman, you're my delight

You're the lamp of my soul, girl, and you torch up the night

But there's violence in the eyes, girl, so let us not be enticed

On the way out of Egypt, through Ethiopia, to the judgment hall of Christ.

Shine your light, shine your light on me

Shine your light, shine your light on me

Shine your light, shine your light on me

You know I just can't make it by myself
I'm a little too blind to see.

It's the way he sings this song that moves me, and if you would like to hear it, you can take it in here. The song never fails to connect.

Photo on left taken in May 2007, image on a wall in Haight Ashbury, SF

All other images created by ed newman, unless otherwise noted.

As always, click to enlarge.