Yesterday, many Americans, and probably many more people around the world, celebrated Halloween.  Most of us know the story of Halloween.  It's a night traditionally viewed as a time when the ghouls, ghosts, and other macabre creatures escape their chthonic dungeons and roam freely across the earth, fomenting fright, horror, and panic.  Today, it is a day exceeded only by Christmas in the amount of money American consumers spend on it.
     However much one may wonder about Halloween's flirtation with the forces of darkness, we can observe that it is a night that might lead us to think about how we really see the world.  Do we see it as ruled by light or do we see it as ruled by darkness?  The tragedies of life seem to point to the latter; the joys, the former.  
     I suspect we all would like to say that light dominates.  And why not?  No one wants to walk in darkness.  In a fractured world, however, we will always have both.  How good it is to know, then, that ultimately, despite darkness's inroads into our experience, light will prevail, for it is the first thing God made.