蜜芽传媒

With news seeping in this week that the 鈥済reat pacific garbage patch鈥� now covers an area twice as big as France ... tonight鈥檚 Earth Hour seems to arrive not a moment too soon.

Cities across the world are participating by switching off the lights at iconic buildings like the Eiffel Tower, Sydney Opera House, Buckingham Palace, all at 8.30 local time. The idea is that we turn off our household lights too - and power down our devices, releasing if you like a Mexican Wave of awareness across the Earth! Last year over 9 million people joined in.

Of course, the darkness is partly symbolic lament, and partly a challenge to our lifestyles. How many lights might we otherwise leave on for that hour, unnecessarily? How many screens would we otherwise be running simultaneously as we鈥檙e entertained, distracted, numbed even, on a typical Saturday night?

But it鈥檚 also a very positive opportunity to reconnect, and to try something we might not have done for a long while. Light some candles. Get a board game out? Read a poem. Tell a story? Sit quietly in the darkness, to reflect or pray.

Or how about standing outside to watch the moon and stars, and to reconnect with the rhythms of Creation - especially if there鈥檚 less light pollution! By the way, it鈥檚 a waxing paschal moon, right now, which will signal, when full, that it鈥檚 time for Passover and Easter; so it鈥檚 the moon that counted down Jesus鈥� last days as he set his face so bravely to Jerusalem, for the passion.

If we鈥檙e honest, we probably flood our lives with so much artificial light because we are not a little fearful of what the darkness holds, when all distractions have been stripped away. But from a spiritual perspective, especially as we turn our face to Easter, we needn鈥檛 be afraid.

Sometimes it takes facing right in to the darkness to acknowledge how things are, before we can move on. Our relationship with the Earth, for example, is perilous, and it鈥檚 imperative we pause for long enough to assume responsibility.

And sometimes it takes facing in to our own personal darkness, to see the courageous way through it, one that we might otherwise have missed.

As Jesus prepared himself to face the darkness of Holy Week, underneath that paschal moon, he also reminded his followers that, within it all, he is the light.

It might be hard to spot such flickering luminescence, such spiritual life-light, amidst today's full-on cultural floodlit glare - but again, it鈥檚 worth looking, isn鈥檛 it? - as we power down, to see what we can see.

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