Light is Good for Worship, Glare Not So Much
I find light to be a source for worshiping God, while glare is a source for the devil’s playground.
After worshiping in glaring sanctuaries, I finally found one with natural light. The large lights hanging from the ceiling were turned off. The windows were clear glass, allowing the sun to shower the room with light from Mother Nature. It was refreshing. Surprisingly, only about ten people were in attendance. Maybe that is why the lights were turned off.
No matter the reason, I found the natural lighting to be a profound enhancement to my spiritual experience of worship. I could commune with God in between the words of the speaker and the notes of the music.
The light of the moon illuminates a tree branch full of leaves, offering a natural sanctuary for quiet reflection. Photo by Rick McVicar.
In the past couple of months, I have worshiped in a variety of places. Having photo sensitive eyes, I am affected a lot by sanctuary lighting. Apparently, I am not alone. When I visited my eye doctor, I told a technician I had trouble with sanctuary lighting. The technician said she had heard that same complaint from others.
In years past, soft, warm lighting provided an atmosphere for prayer and reflection. Soft electric light and candles bouncing off stained glass ensured that sanctuaries encouraged quiet reflection. With the advent of LED lighting, I am afraid that a reflective atmosphere is hard to find.
With the addition of projector and video screens, quiet reflection becomes a difficult challenge, being replaced by distraction from multiple images. I have seen sanctuaries featuring six or more screens. Light that illuminates is replaced by glare that dominates and overwhelms.
Since I pay so much attention to light when I worship, I have noticed one style of lighting that seems to have monopoly power over sanctuaries. Long tubes are often found hanging from ceilings. I find that these tubes shoot light straight down and straight across to the sides. The tubes do not evenly distribute light across the room.
Besides delivering glare, electronic screens amid stained glass windows offer a clash of aesthetic styles from divergent historical periods that I find to be surrealistic and a bit disturbing. Worship can turn into a battle between reflection and distraction. If the sermon is about spiritual warfare, the sanctuary can turn into a vivid illustration.
However, I know that many people enjoy the glare of electronic lighting. For those accustomed to it, light from electronic screens may be comforting. Not everyone has photo sensitive eyes. So why not accommodate both types of people? Why not offer worship in two places, one with and another without modern lighting? Offer people a choice, I say.
Fortunately for me, the good Lord gives us the light of the moon with a cycle of phases, which I often find to be a good source for worship and reflection.