Let There Be Lights?

Reflections by Brother Luke

This season, our local choral society, the Battenkill Chorale, is singing Haydn’s Creation. What a glorious setting of the scriptural creation texts! I remember singing in a performance of this work in Washington, DC, long before I entered monastic life. The opening sequence leads in hushed voices to a burst of sound with these words:

And God said: Let there be Light, and there was Light.

During the darker days of winter, when light is at a premium, we often find ways to illumine our surroundings. The most seasonally obvious example is Christmas lights. These may festoon trees in our homes and the shrubs, trees, and eaves outside. At New Skete we have had a long tradition of decorating a Christmas tree in our living areas, sometimes in our recreation room and sometimes in our dining area. But, after 2000, I took a leap into the dark and convinced the brothers to hang lights outside on some of our buildings and trees. So we began a new tradition. Some brothers playfully teased me by saying I must have some Italian blood in me. Not that I know of!

Of course, inaugurating this tradition is one thing; keeping it going is another! To begin with, nothing is without controversy. We started out with icicle lights on our Bell Tower and on the handrails into the Holy Wisdom Temple. It wasn’t until after the lights were hung on the three tiers of the Bell Tower and turned on that I discovered that they “twinkled.” One brother was adamant that they not twinkle. I wasn’t too excited about the prospect of climbing up on the Bell Tower a second time to locate and replace the lights that activated the twinkling. I argued that we could leave it this time and change it next year. Oh no, that wasn’t going to do. Fortunately for me, the brother who wanted it changed was willing to go up and replace the offending lights. So we managed to get over that hurdle.

The first few years I would be the one to turn on and turn off the lights. As the snow piled up, this became a bit of a trial, particularly as we added new locations for lights, such as the trees at the head of the walkway to the church from the parking area. Then one day our maintenance man said to me, “Why don’t you get timers?” Timers? What a thought! Too bad I never thought of it earlier! This made my life easier, since I no longer had to rush around before vespers turning on lights and then remember to turn them off before retiring for the evening. However, even to this day I have not managed to get the timers all to come on at the same time, so the lights go on in a cascading order. They also go off that way – reminding me of another Haydn composition, his Symphony No. 45 known as the Farewell, in which, at the end of the last movement, each player leaves the stage until only two violins remain.

In recent years we have added lights to a few more trees next to the walkway at the entrance to the monastery. We also have lights around the entrance to the two churches. I am still the one putting the lights up, but it is something I enjoy doing, and it really does make the dark nights brighter and I believe the season more festive. On winter nights it makes a difference for those of us who walk over to the puppy kennel to do our 9 pm chores. If my schedule permits and the weather holds, I try to get the lights up just before Thanksgiving, since for that feast the monks and nuns all gather at the monks’ monastery for the traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

If I am to become an honorary Italian for the Christmas season, that is fine with me, even though my family background is northern European. I take to heart the scripture admonition from God, with just a minor adjustment: Let there be lights!