I’ve been reading quite a few H.P. Lovecraft stories lately. Odd way to start one of these, I know – but bear with me.

A father of the ‘cosmic horror’ genre, Lovecraft’s works paint a collectively bleak picture – to say the least – one in which the entire human project is little more than a temporary, fragile moment in a universe ready to pull it asunder. Each grim tale is a snapshot of an ordinary human life, shattered by the completely irreversible revelation that, just out of sight, lie dark powers unknowably ancient and utterly unstoppable. There is no triumph over the darkness in Lovecraft’s universe. Life and love and happiness are the exception, not the rule.

I was a broody teenager and an even more cynical 20-something. For a long time, I’d held a seemingly Lovecraftian view of the world. The younger me would have seen the trials of 2020 – pandemic, climate emergency, tribal mentalities, toxic rhetoric – as testimony to the fact.

In spirituality, we often use the symbol of a candle or a lighthouse – light penetrating the dark. Effective imagery. But, all the same, Lovecraftian in its own way. See, in these cases the implication still remains – the light’s reach is limited. The darkness is still the greater of the two. What happens when the light goes out?

But I don’t hold to this view. Not anymore.

Because if there’s anything that love has taught me, it’s that under its light all horrors are little more than shadows under a blazing sun. Love, simplicity, patience, hope, faith… they expose those existential nightmares for the phantasmagoria that they are.

The Light wins. Love wins.

Three days beyond Calvary waits an empty tomb.

Bradley Fear

Attender at Wellington Quaker Meeting