“Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.” – Albert Schweitzer
To the Norsemen of northern Europe, light – specifically sunlight – was the wheel that changed the seasons. The Quran, purportedly God’s own words to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, provides a striking parable of that god as light incarnate. In the aarti ceremony observed by Hindus, a lamp bearing five wicks is passed between believers who pass their hands over the flame and then over their forehead to feel closer to their deity. Genesis, in the Hebrew Bible, declares: ‘Then God commanded “Let there be light” – and light appeared. God was pleased with what he saw. Then he separated light from darkness to make Day and Night.’
From Christmas to Diwali and Hanukkah, via Kwanzaa, Lunar New Year, Santa Lucia Day and the magnificently named Zoroastrian Solstice Celebration, light is central to celebrations spanning the entire spectrum of human spirituality. And for good reason, for as Dutch Renaissance humanist Desiderius Erasmus once observed: “Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.”
As the Cambodian capital commences the Christmas countdown, creative arts therapy hub Ragamuffin House is launching its very own festival of light: an evening of song, dance, music, food and other impromptu bursts of creativity that should banish all shadows from even the darkest of existential nooks and crannies. Here, Ragamuffin’s resident light gurus Carrie Herbert and Kit Loring talk coded pictures, mirrors of the soul and how to survive the festive season.
Carrie: Christmas is such a big thing, but we didn’t want to restrict people from other faiths and beliefs – plus we’re in a Buddhist country. We looked at all the festivals from around this time of year: there’s the Jewish light festival, there’s Diwali, there’s the Hindu festival of light. We thought: how can we create something that’s really inclusive and focuses on this theme of light that seems to be present in all of these beliefs; a spiritual focus? It’s a very workshop-based experience, so it’s an event where people can come together and all take part in making creative artwork so that we can share, in a community sense, reflections and thoughts – from the perspective of art and music and poetry and dance – on what this theme means.
Kit: It’s personal. It’s not just ‘light’ per se. It’s what this means to you specifically. Artwork provides some kind of soul mirror to help you appreciate the degree to which you appreciate qualities of light, or whether light is obscured for you. When we say ‘inclusive’, we mean both inclusive of everyone and inclusive of what it is they bring, channelled into this creative work. Everyone’s got a story and it’s not a romanticised, fantasised version of light; it’s earthed in your realities. So it’s not just a neat little celebration, it’s very private and personal. The lovely thing about the artwork is that it codes something; it’s personal to you. People will perhaps see your dance or the picture you made or hear something of the song you wrote and they’re more explicit, a picture that’s coded – even if it’s a literal picture of a house and a tree; especially if it’s an abstract form of art. It’s a code for your truth. People are given the opportunity to sit together and share as much as they want to about what they’ve made, which makes it a very personal as well as collective experience.
Carrie: It’s already begun, because we have a choir here. They’ve been focusing on the theme of light and have written a new song as a result of exploring the word ‘light’ and what it means to people. It was interesting, in the choir, exploring people’s concepts of light. It was so diverse and so rich: the light within us, bringing light into darkness in other people’s lives and into the world and what that means, what it means to be together collectively around the theme of light. There has been a lot of preparation.
Kit: What’s interesting is that when you realise there’s some light within you, however fragile you may feel that is, when it meets someone else’s anguish or aloneness – loneliness is something that can be brought up at this time of year when we’re far away from home – you realise that your light brings light to my life and it shines all the brighter. You put them altogether and it makes a much brighter light. It provides a safe place, a sanctuary in which people can touch base, touch something essential, something meaningful.
Carrie: We’re going to design a little ritual around this theme of light and open up the creative sharing of everyone’s collective works. And we always have yummy food, of course! It’s an opportunity for people to share through food and make connections and network. Some things are already prepared, plus there will be some creative processes that happen on the day. Last year we did lantern making and a live multimedia using a combination of poetry, dance and movement. We created a whole story around the life of a Cambodian woman who’d come to the evening and wanted to create something around what this meant for her and her family and community, and it was all about managing the difficult times. For so many people in the world, this time of year can be very difficult. It’s supposed to be a lovely, happy, very light time, but actually sometimes it’s the very opposite. I was working with some homeless people while I was in the UK one Christmas time and that was the one thing that profoundly touched me: realising how people can so often have the extreme opposite experience of what society’s expectations are. These festivals – whether that’s Khmer New Year or Christmas – it’s about remembering in the ceremonies that, during celebrations, there are always going to be people who are, for whatever reason, not able to celebrate. How can we create opportunities and rituals to really be inclusive and enable those who perhaps don’t feel like celebrating, or don’t feel on Valentine’s Day that they’re in love? They can be held and have an opportunity to know that their voices are as important, perhaps even more important, and to give them a voice through this creative process.
Kit: We want to try our very best to make it an experience where no one feels pressured. Sometimes, people feel that ‘Dance? I can’t dance’ or ‘Draw? I can’t draw!’ But this is for the uninitiated. The more childlike our creation, the more congruent it often is – and you can’t get it wrong and you don’t ‘have’ to do anything.
Carrie: It was really interesting. We started these events and came in very gently with this opportunity for people to respond creatively. We were very gentle last year; we didn’t know if people would feel anxious or whatever, but people looked as though they’d been longing for the opportunity.
Kit: So we said: ‘If you want to, there’s some paper and card here. No pressure.’ Everyone just dived on the paper! There were about 50 people here and they all grabbed paper and everyone was creative. Then we said: ‘If you want to, you can share some of what you made with others.’ And people were really, really animated.
Carrie: There were people there from our community and people we’d never met before.
Kit: We had little ones and big ones.
Carrie: It’s different every time. There are core groups that are involved, but we always have people who have never been here before and that creates an opportunity for community and networking. Someone who came to one of our art events is now going to be working with us.
Kit: Wherever there’s a story of pain and at whatever level that is – sometimes it’s on a grand scale and a whole nation is impacted, as is the case here in Cambodia – it does result in some of the lights going out: the light of hope, the light of faith, the light of love, the light of compassion. But also it ignites those lights, too. There’s something intriguing about this. In the crisis, there are those who identify within them a resource that enables them to be symbols of hope and light to guide others. They then kindle light within those who are brave enough to come toward their light. Part of the issue with the trauma-related stuff that we deal with is that people fear the light, even going anywhere near stuff that’s been really quite overwhelming. Until they feel safe enough, they fabricate an identity that is ‘acceptable’; looks good enough and where they can fulfil the day-to-day tasks and split a little from the more painful aspects of their lives. Light in the context of darkness at those times becomes increasingly meaningful. Light where there’s light is great, but…
Carrie: People can sometimes feel that there is no light; that is has ‘gone out’. We’re working with therapists to look at what causes that and how you can ‘be’ light – embody that which someone else has lost sight of.
Kit: On the path to peace, we’re looking at really deep connections with one another – soul to soul, however we understand that notion. We’re talking about something deep within us, essential to us, almost like a life force within us: a place in which our deepest pains can find sanctuary, but also a place that has a life wish. Acceptance of all that we have suffered ourselves: love is made in these moments, when nothing is excluded or edited out of our story.
Carrie: It’s that sense of universality, even when you think of light as ‘fun’ light: it’s not restricting its borders. No one is putting it into a country and saying: ‘Only we can have it.’ You can’t control that.
Kit: What’s critically important to our work is that this festival of light isn’t going to be calling to those deep agonies. It’s a place of safety, a place where people won’t be rejected. They can bring what they bring but they need not feel alarmed that we’re going to say: ‘OK, tell us about your tragedy.’ With the art we make, people are in charge of what they do.
Carrie: And that reflects very deeply. It’s the kind of place where there’s a lot of permission and no pressure. There’s an ease to it; a naturalness. Maybe this is how communities are in some of the more traditional cultures, where creativity and art-making and storytelling in the community was normalised. It’s a channel through which communities can develop a sense of life. We’ve lost touch with that and there’s this thirst and hunger for it. That’s what we noticed when everyone just dived in.
WHO: Luminescent souls
WHAT: Festival Of Light (contact coordination@nullragamuffinproject.org or call 012 521032 to book tickets, $10 each)
WHERE: Ragamuffin House, #123a Street 12BT
WHEN: 4 – 7pm December 14
WHY: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
