The Spirituality of Sunset
by Jane St. Clair

As a young man, Abraham Lincoln took to walking around cemeteries at twilight. Now this sounds morbid to us, but back then, it was a very sexy thing to do. When you looked at a sunset in a vast horizon as you walked in a graveyard at twilight, you were in the sweet spot between day and night, life and death. If you wanted super romantic, you meditated in a cemetery at twilight when autumn leaves were falling. Then you went home and wrote poetry. Today people think Ryan Gosling in “LaLaLand” is sexy, but back then, it was Abraham Lincoln at sunset in a cemetery (especially in autumn).

Yet there is something about watching a setting sun that is highly spiritual and romantic. You see this out West here in Arizona where our sunsets are so fabulous.

I love Andrew Lloyd Webber’s words from “The Music of the Night” because they capture the feeling of the spirituality of sunset.

“Nighttime sharpens … heightens each sensation ..
Darkness stirs and wakes imagination…
“Slowly, gently, night unfurls its splendor…”

And that’s it, exactly. Webber is exactly right!

“Night unfurls its splendor ….”

Then Webber asks you to “Turn your face away from the garish light of day …” And boy, that’s true in Arizona where we have 360 days of strong sunlight! Sunlight so bright that by sunset, it is garish – so now we’re ready for something softer… But before night, the gorgeous splendor of sunset.

“Turn your thoughts away from cold, unfeeling light …
And listen to the music of the night…”

Webber is so right. Because you can see music in these colors, even sunset colors that don’t match at all but yet work together in such splendor —there is a spirituality of sunset, a time when “silently the senses abandon all defenses…”

It’s when “you start the journey to a strange new world…”

Perhaps Webber means the world of dreams, the place he says is “where you leave all thoughts of the world you knew before.”

I am watching a sunset now, thinking of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s beautiful lyrics and Abraham Lincoln’s soulful solitary walks.

It’s beautiful here in the mountains of Tucson. I don’t think you need the graveyard thing or autumn leaves to get the spirituality of sunset if you are within the power of now.

I don’t think you need operatic music because this sunset and this moment are enough.

It’s enough now to listen to the music of the night.

For a funny but beautiful tribute to our lovely Abraham Lincoln by artist Maira Kalman, go here.