I have always had a weakness for lighting stores – I suspect many people do. When I think of lights stores, my first association is the movie version of The Rats of NIMH. I don't know if you remember the part that I'm talking about – the scene where Mrs. Frisbee first goes down the rat hole. There are mysterious, glowing lights everywhere hidden among the brambles of the bush that the rats live in. For me, lighting stores hold this kind of mystery and this kind of promise. Although light stores may seem to be excessively lit by some, nonetheless each glowing ball seems somehow magical to a childish part of my mind that still survives.
When I was a kid, I would always love to go to the lighting store with my mom. She was always baffled by this. I always hated shopping with her. I would fight tooth and nail to get out of going on all of her other errands. Nonetheless, when we came to the lighting stores, I could not wait. After a while, my mom stopped puzzling over this and began to use it to her advantage. She would actually bribe me with a trip to the stores lighting after we were all done with the rest of the shopping! I would wait for the lighting fixture stores all day, and I would be overjoyed when we got there.
Nonetheless, the lighting stores were never quite as good as the promise that they held. When I was in them, they were always too brightly lit. Don't get me wrong – I loved the bright lights, and I loved all of the sparkling crystals in the chandeliers. Nevertheless, what I really liked about lights was how they illuminated the darkness. In lighting stores, there was no darkness. There was nothing to be illuminated at all – there were already too many lights for that.
That was the reason that I liked church even more than the lighting stores. To me, all the talk about God was kind of irrelevant. I thought of God like an imaginary friend, except I didn't really talk to him or believe in him. He was simply an imaginary friend for the adults present. I respected that, but what I really liked was to see all the candles on the tables, glowing row after row, and the sunlight coming in through the stained glass windows. That was more beautiful than all of the lighting stores combined.
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