“Our story begins in darkness: ‘the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep.'” (Genesis 1:2)
The Gospel of John ends in darkness: “‘I’m going out to fish,’ Simon Peter told them, and they said, ‘We’ll go with you.’ So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.” (John 21:3)
Out of the darkness a voice is heard: “Let there be light, and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3)
As night gives way to dawn, a voice is heard from alongside the charcoal fire: “Come and have breakfast.” (John 21:12)
In the Gospel for this Sunday, we read of a man who had been blind from birth. (John 9:1)
Again, a voice is heard: “Go and wash in the pool of Siloam” (John 9:7) — and “the blind man went off and washed himself and came away with his sight restored.” (John 9:6)
I cannot recall from personal experience; however, my understanding is that although it is dark inside the womb, human skin does allow light to pass through and provide some illumination for the developing foetus.
The American poet Wendell Berry wrote a poem titled “To Know the Dark”:
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings.
There is a small book read by many yet understood by few: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
In the book, a pilot is stranded in the midst of the Sahara, where he meets a tiny prince from another world travelling the universe in order to understand life.
One of the book’s most memorable lines — spoken by the fox — has stayed with me for years: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the human eye.”