Glow
When children come in from a good afternoon of playing in the snow or on the ice, their cheeks are flushed with a healthy and merry glow, and all’s right with the world. We’ll say that there’s a light glistening in their eyes, and if you were a literalist, and you believed only in what you could measure with a ruler or a balance-scale, you’d say that was nonsense. “My light meter registers only such brightness in Billy’s eyes as was there before he strapped on his skates,” says Mr. Blind Man. The point is that we see as light what shines with intelligence and gladness. I don’t know that everything you see in the world will make you glad, but I do suspect that gladness opens the eyes, especially if it is that gladness that has known sorrow and not fled from it. Says the Psalmist, “I was glad when I heard them say, Let us go up to the house of the Lord.”
This is surely something the old glaziers understood, those who worked on the stained glass in the great cathedrals of Europe. If people wanted simple light, they would have instructed the glaziers to give them clear glass, and that would be that. If they wanted mere colors, they could have said, “Put a blue window here, and a gold window there, and a red window in front.” But they wanted the glow and the gladness: they wanted intelligence and a profound joy. And those, they believed, you get most profoundly from stories of salvation: of the light that shines in the darkness, with all the radiance of love. We still cannot replicate that blue you will see at Chartres Cathedral! I’ve read that it can’t be replicated by machine, just as you won’t get the soft shimmer of old glass by machine. It isn’t a mere object of manufacture. You can’t produce gladness on an assembly line. Your computer will not glimmer with understanding. Who knows what odd bits of dust got into the color to make it look less flat, and more alive? Who knows what sweet variations in the lapis-lazuli stone made Mary’s robe look like a robe a human being might wear, and not a cover over a piece of plastic? And when people stand below, and gaze all round them, with the light from the windows casting upon them its soft glow of many colors, they too, if they have the eyes to see and the heart to love, will glow. And no, you cannot register it on your photometer.
You’ll have noticed that we have quite a few words in English that begin with gl- and that have to do with light, wisdom, good cheer: glad, gleam, glimmer, glisten, glow. Even gloom is one of them, because it used to mean the gentle light of the time after sunset or before sunrise: in the gloaming, as the old song says. Sometimes people delight in bad things or in a bad way, as when there’s a malicious glare in your eye as you gloat over the quarterback you’ve just sacked for a ten-yard loss. Well, it’s as they say, all that glitters is not gold. But no reason to be glum over it. The good in God’s world triumphs in the end over all that is bad. Then may we sing with glee, as our eyes are struck with the million glints of light on the sea of faith. Yes, these words are all kin, and you can toss in with them glass and glide and glance and glimpse and a whole noisy family of cousins from the other languages in our big Indo-European family. For the same ancient root gives us Greek chloros, yellow-green, whence the scientists gave the name chlorophyll, literally green-leaf, for the miracle-working substance that turns sunlight into food. And it gives us the Slavic word behind the common name Zielensky, which basically means that you’re the son of Mr. Green. And the Hindi and Nepali given-name Heera, which means Diamond.
Ode to Stained Glass windows-- catechecisms in color.
I had wondered (not taking into memory your reference to "gloaming" in my first read of the article) whether "glome" and "globe" might be connected in some way to the "gl" phenomenon.
Even just the "trickling" formation of the sound in one's mouth with the flicker of the back and front tip of the tongue on the back and front of the roof (I don't know the technical terms for those actions in speaking) gives the sound an almost physical action that seems to mimic the "joy" of the "gl" words you mention above.
And in looking up "globe" I see (apparently) that it is from the Latin "globus" for "sphere." Aw well, it sounded good, and maybe there is something about spheres that induces joy :-) . You've mentioned elsewhere the warm periods of the Middle Ages making for economic, and agricultural and social activity of the period glow in comparison and contrast to the modern gloomy forecasts of modern predictions for "global warming." Perhaps we should start calling it "glowble warming" as a positive possibility?
When I looked up "glome" (before realizing you had already mentioned it in your column), I saw indeed that it is related to "gloom," so that fits in with your column of course. But I also saw that it means "a prominent rounded part of the frog of a horse's hoof on each side of the cleft." Huh? Is there any possible unexpected connection there by chance? Or is it just the "rounded" part of the definition that relates it to "globe" instead?
And I also had immediately thought (momentarily forgetting where I had seen it before) of the word "Aglarond" with its root "aglar," until I suddenly remembered that aglar is an elvish word in Lord of the Rings for "glitter," thus the name of "The Glittering Caves" or "Aglarond" that Gimli shows to doubting Legolas (who later, after the ring was destroyed, emerges after Gimli's tour, repenting of his doubt of its touted beauty). But that suggests that even Tolkien, in creating a fictional language, recognized the power of that flickering "gl" sound.
And it makes me wonder if, equally, a "cl" or "ckl" or "kl" sound induces or imparts that sort of sparkling meaning to words they appear in. So "clear," "clutter," and such seem to have that quality, but, say, "miracle" or "uncle," where the "l" seems to be an "add-on" sound, as opposed to a participating part of the conglomeration of the "cl" sound in, say, "sparkle" (is there a phonetic distinction between those two pronuncations of the pair?). And it seems that the same might be true for the "gl" sound, ie, to me, it seems to lose at least part of that playful trickling motion of the tongue when the "l" is not followed by a vowel "pulls" the tongue away from the front of the roof of the mouth. (Well, "trickle" and "wiggle" still retain that quality, I guess -- and, too, if there were a verb form of miracle as "miracling," so maybe not? And now I can't resist coining a word for what Napoleon Solo or Illya Kuryakin do to members of T.H.R.U.S.H. in the show as "uncling" their opponents -- that image certainly tickles my fancy a bit... :-) )
And as a side note, a facebook friend recently posted about the word "scumble" (with the fun comment "Why doesn't spell check know important words such as scumble?"). That word itself seems to have some of that "glowing" quality, and that makes me wonder about the "quality" that simply adding an "l" sound after a consonant induces. But that's probably a whole 'nother discussion...
Anyway delightful column and expresses something I've "felt" about that "gl" (and "cl") sound in the past without consciously connecting it to the sound itself. But when you described it in the column, I instantly thought "Of course! Why didn't I see that before?" Lovely -- and joyful! Thank you for my morning sprinkle of joy.