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This is a very interesting comment. It begs for some more explanation. What is it about the place where black and brilliance meet that draws you? What is that intersection? What do you mean?

Well, it's the place where both have the most meaning. Speaking literally, if you completely eliminated darkness and shadow, would we be able to see anything? (I remember reading a book in which the main characters cross a glacier field that the locals refered to as a horrible place with no shadows. With the glare off the snow and the complete lack of shadows it was impossible to see crevaces until you fell into one.) Without any darkness at all, would light still be a good thing? Or would the whole light/dark continuum cease to mean anything? We fight literal darkness with fire. But that fire is at least as dangerous to us as the darkness it banishes. Humans exist on the boundry between them. I think if we were purely creatures of light or dark, we wouldn't've bothered naming it. You yourself talked about the advent candles blazing in the darkness. (Well, not in so many words, but that's the image that formed in my head as I read.) What is the boundry? Well, everyone is the center of their universe. The focal point through which they perceve creation. Everyone exists as their own marker, with all things darker than themselves to one side, and all things lighter to the other. And light/dark isn't the only boundry we live at. We are, after all, a mortal trinity of mind, body, and soul. To dismiss any one of them as unimportant is to deny part of what we are. The spark of creation that is our soul is no more or less part of what we are than the sack of meat and seawater that makes up our body. Each affects the others. We each have the capacity for divine compassion and forgiveness, just as we each have evolution-driven urges for survival at the expense of everyone else. Going back to the figurative, I'm not suggesting that people should seek a balance of good and evil. I think that the soul and our evolved bodies and minds all predate human concepts like good and evil. I think if they can find the right balance of themselves, averyone can be good. ... Re-reading this rambling stream of consiousness, it occurs to me that I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. I've got what feels like shards of understanding, and I'm not quite sure how they fit together. Another part of being human, I guess. Has this made any sense?
-Dave

Thinking about it some more, I wonder how relevant my comment was to the underlying message in your essay. It's just that you used the common analogy of light and dark. And that always loses me a little because one of my pet peeves is light pollution. There's something sacred about the woods at night that's just ruined by too many bright parking lots in the nearest town. And that always sets me on a train of thought of how we (or at least I) need night as well as day. And of course the sometimes spectacular boundry between the two. 8^)
-Dave

I think you are speaking of liminal spaces, Dave. The spaces that are "in between" are where most growth takes place and is where life exists. It made sense to me!
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And I've been reflecting about what my Dad told me -- that in war, darkness is your friend and that soliders would embrace the dark -- it's when the machine guns would stop and you could take some rest. It's interesting how we use the analogy of light/dark, eh?
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If God intended us to be vegatarian, why did He make His critters so dern tasty?

Interesting. I'd be fascinated to know how the dolphin brain interprets sound waves. For example, how does it distinguish objects that look the same but are different. We use color, often. I wonder how texture and density are "seen." Let's face it, they have an entire experience that we know nothing of.

I still think color would be interesting and stimulating for a dolphin. Just a guess though.