Glorious Light
Amira S.
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My church's teen choir practices in the church's balcony. This stained-glass window is in a side nook of the balcony, and I discovered soon after joining that there's a particular few weeks each fall where at a certain time of late afternoon / early evening, the sunlight comes fully through that window and the colors become incredibly brilliant, glowing richly and so brightly that the passage is filled with the same colors as the window. The moment's peak never lasts very long, maybe fifteen to thirty minutes, but before the pandemic, that time just happened to land during our choir practices.
I was always wowed by the beauty of this seasonal occurrence, and after a couple years of forgetting to, I finally took a photo to preserve the moment. Through the lens, its appearance is even more emphatic because in the daytime the window is the main light source in that spot and so the camera saw everything around it as darkened.
Some notes on the window itself, which may or may not be of interest: It depicts the Dominican shield and honors two Dominican nuns who for many years served the Catholic school that's part of my parish. (This window faces it, though I don't know if that was intentional.) The Dominican Sisters of San Rafael founded the school in 1913 and ran it for many years, although this is no longer so (the last one involved with the school, the longtime principal, retired at the end of my kindergarten year). I attended there from K-8th grade, and the Dominican shield became the center of the school logo when I was in middle school.
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If I couldn't explore or express my creativity, I'd likely die of boredom or explode from pent-up emotions/ideas/etc. It lets me connect with others when regular words/behavior won’t suffice, handle my inner struggles, have fun - and it gives me a life purpose: to impact people with what I create.
