Light, Let There Be

The illuminated House of Blackheads with the stunning Peterbaznicas (St. Peters Cathedral) in the background. Not far from here is the site of the first ever decorated Christmas tree in recorded world history (circa 1510). The tree wasn't necessarily connected with Christmas, though, rather the Pagan traditional commemoration of the Winter Solstice.

Dear Friends,

On a Sunday morning, the city of Riga is an 800 year old ghost town, a vacant stage set of swinging doors and idle windows minus the characters from Saturday night's performance. Sunday morning Riga is as desolate and intriguing as three empty bottles of vodka haphazardly catching sunlight somewhere along Terbatas iela, the street I walk to church.

Not long ago on my solitary Sunday morning stroll through the somnolent city, I was startled by the rushing sound of a car whizzing past me -- excessive speed and cobble stone roads do not make for an inconspicuous escape -- followed by the siren wail and rushing zoom of a police car close behind whose driver proceeded to pull over the driver of the speeding car. Statistically, Latvia's roads are the second most dangerous in Europe after neighboring Lithuania's, so my first churchy reaction was one of gladness: One more speeder caught. One more standing pedestrian. Justice served!

As I continued my pious forward march, I watched the two men exit their cars, the cop wordlessly reaching into his coat pocket for a small black book which he opened and began to write in. The speeder stood motionless, leaning against his car like James Dean, until the cop did something unprecedented. Pausing from his writing for a moment, he pulled from his pants pocket two cigarettes, handed one to his prey, and set the other one in his own mouth. With his lighter, the policeman lit both cigarettes, first Andretti's, then his own, and silently, by rote, turned back to the business of issuing a ticket.

As the sole onlooker, I was touched by what appeared to be a random act of kindness. (Maybe I'm wrong and the two men actually roomed together at summer camp in Sigulda in 1987.) Good thing the first driver was a smoker, otherwise the surprise planting of a cigarette between his lips would not have been such a pleasant one after all. And while the gift of a stick of gum, or carrot, let's say, would have made for a much healthier treat, who am I to upset the smoke coming from a gift horse's mouth?

One minute you're being issued a ticket. Next minute you're puffing carelessly away on a cigarette, and, yes sir, there's still that darn ticket hanging over your head like a cloud, but maybe the world isn't so dark after all. Strange how light is handed out in the darkness when we least expect it.

As young brothers, one of the best ways Andrew and I could seek vengeance on the other was switching off the basement lights when the other had gone down to fetch something. Funny. Like most siblings, I imagine, we taunted and teased and hit and bullied each other, but what really scared us the most I think, what cut to the soul like no whop to the arm could do, was to summon darkness on the other brother in the infernal regions of our finished, otherwise quite pleasant basement.

"I'm going down to get my tennis shoes."

"All right... let's hope the lights stay on this time."

"Don't you dare, you piece of..."

And that's how it would begin. But, you know, we were both really scared of the dark. Maybe our mocking was a juvenile stab at demystifying the darkness below. And when we both went downstairs together, the darkness wasn't dark at all.

My friend Peter is an investment banker at Hansa Bank, Riga's sole skyscraper just across the Daugava River. He's not a regular church attender but finds himself in the sanctuary most often in the winter. "I need to get some light somehow," he told me.

I remember once being utterly floored by an adolescent girl's simple yet profound observation at a Presbyterian youth group meeting. We had been talking about Jesus being the light of the world. If you have light, you can give it to someone else at no cost to your own. Sharing light doesn't diminish your light at all. Brilliant. Just ask the cop.

In October, a couple friends sent me Yann Martel's exquisite novel, Life of Pi. I read it start to finish in the dim light of the tour bus en route to and from Slovakia. It's the story of an incredible, improbable journey one young man makes alone -- with a Bengal tiger -- in a small boat across the Pacific Ocean. When he's finally safe and recovering on dry land, two inquisitors come to him seeking to get to the bottom of his unbelievable story of survival.

"I'm sorry to say it so bluntly, we don't mean to hurt your feelings, but you don't really expect us to believe you, do you? Carnivorous trees? A fish-eating algae that produces fresh water? Tree-dwelling aquatic rodents? These things don't exist."

"Only because you've never seen them."

"That's right. We believe what we see."

"So did Columbus. What do you do when you're in the dark?"

What do you do when you're in the dark?

Last night was Christmas Eve and again the streets of Riga were shrouded in Dickensian duskiness and perceived emptiness. There was hardly anyone around, most everyone off somewhere with their families, I presumed. But the strobe lights at the entrance of Kalku iela were spasmodically blinking as on any other night. A girl was dancing on the bar inside of one of the clubs, and two times I was propositioned by a dark-headed barker, "Come in! Dancing girls! It's Christmas!" We're all looking for a little light.

In the darkened, candlelit sanctuary of St. Saviours the vicar read to us from the book of John. Those of us in the congregation, taught to be critical thinkers, accustomed to being incredulous believers, no longer so afraid of the dark, listened. Or tried to.

"In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."

Yours,

Tim

Candles on the water: Floating flames drift down the Pilsetas kanals on Independence Day, November 18. The canal is directly across from my school and serves as a sort of divide between Old Riga and the City Center.