In August, Sanctus 1 ran a paired set of services - light & dark.
The light service was fittingly overrun by the dark events of the UK riots, so we had to cancel the Wednesday edition of the service. But here's what we covered in the Sunday edition...
The service opened with candle-lighting, with light-centric liturgy to accompany, followed by a word jumble - cut up the printed 27 words and rearrange to make 2 band names, 2 song lyrics and 2 novel titles, all containing the word 'light'.
The group split into two and went outside into the light (it was daytime, which helped) to find and photograph the borderlands of light and dark. This may have been physical (sunlight next to shadow), spiritual (dodgy shops in a serene space), or other inventive take on the notion.
There were some very interesting results, from cracks in walls to window reflections, lights illuminating a library, the glowing aura of bright light at the end of a dark alley too often used as a urinal, and so on. We uploaded & projected these for all to see and discussed what prompted the photos, what we looked for but didn't find, etc. The children really enjoyed this activity, prompting several good photos.
During this discussion time the children prepared our next activity, by colouring in some acetate circles in red, green and blue. These were overlaid on top of each other to illustrate the way RGB light overlaps to create new colours. On top of this were written 3 different bible verses referring to light.
Everyone left the service pondering nature of the overlaps - whether there was anything common between them and what aspects made them each different from the others.
It would be too obvious to say that light always equates to good, truth, vision or enlightenment. It would be too simple to say that light isn't always good for you (stay in the sun too long and you'll get sunburnt)...but where is the border between these two kingdoms? Isn't everything a form of shadow? You decide.
