The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.

~ Isaiah 9: 2b, NRSV

Wendell Berry writes, “To know the dark with a light is to know the light. / To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight.”

Unless and until a person has sat or walked in darkness, they have no reason to yearn for the light. Only after we have dwelt in darkness do we truly long for the light. When the light comes, it means more when we have, unavoidably or consciously, gone into the dark without a light, “with no sight.” Through the ages, wise ones tell us for those with no light to see, darkness enlightens.

A light that shines into a well-lighted room is less noticeable, less dramatic, and less appreciated than a light that shines in the darkness. The starfields are seen in the middle of the night not the middle of the day. Knowing the dark enables us to know the light, to really know the light. Only after we consciously honor the dark can we fully appreciate and rejoice in the light.

What is meant by honoring the dark? Am I being Pollyannaish? Idealistic? Unrealistic? Do we expect humans to be superhuman in the face of tragedy or trauma? What about innocent victims who did nothing to bring on the darkness?

It is important to distinguish between honoring the darkness and other various responses to it, such as, too quickly condoning, accepting, or demonizing the dark. There are many kinds of darkness. Some darkness conceals and some reveals. Some hurts and some heals. Some darkness is to be passionately resisted, some continually exposed, some bravely embraced, but all are to be faced.

There is the darkness of war, poverty, homelessness, violence, loneliness – human-caused and capable of being human-resolved if we lived the dream of God “on earth as it is in heaven.” There is the darkness that ensues as a result of natural disasters – a tsunami wipes out entire villages, a volcano erupts, a fire rages across forestland, a hurricane blows in and eviscerates a major city and an entire coastal region sits in darkness. There is the darkness that is a part of life, leading to, exacerbated or evaded by anxiety, depression, grief, anger, guilt, loss, angst, betrayal, loneliness, fear, addictions, deprivation, terror, or change.

There are many types of darkness and it is not my intent here to go into the various connotations and history of the word or symbol. Suffice it to say that there is a plethora of spiritual and psychological literature that thinks of darkness not as synonymous with bad or evil but rather view it as a given if not a necessary or essential dimension of reality and human living. Each type of darkness requires a specific response. In any case, the first response to darkness is to bring it into consciousness.

The second response is to seek to discover, discern, and understand to what is the particular darkness in service. So, for example, violation, marginalization, exploitation, violence, poverty, and war almost always serve power, greed, self-interest, and/or fear. Here the appropriate response, the work of Christmas, is to resist these types of darknesses by doing our part to bring light into the world.

Not all darkness serves a malicious master. Some does. Some darkness destroys and diminishes, but some transforms and enlarges. What the darkness serves is what reveals and determines what the response should be. During Advent especially, the third response is to honor the dark appropriately, responsibly. When it holds transformational potential, the response is to stay put and embrace the dark until, like a pregnancy, something good and of God is born from it. But like Mary’s labor of love, this is no passive waiting. We too must play our part.

Advent is a season of dwelling in darkness – AND a season of intense yearning, a time of waiting, hoping, and longing for the light. Longing (or yearning) is one of the great but overlooked virtues of the spiritual life. Great because it alludes to that self-transcendence which makes us human and holy and point toward the Unnamable One for whom our hearts stretch forth. Yearning and longing are deep and constitutive mysteries of human becoming and cultural transformation. They are true for all time: archetypal, universal, and eternal. They are full of pathos, full of both love and suffering, heartsong and heartache.

The great tendency and contemporary temptation is to reduce Advent and Christmas to something that happened once upon a time in a town called Bethlehem, turning it into a day of quaint nostalgia or a game of Remember When. It is our yearning today for the coming of the cosmic Christ, elicited from our full awareness of the turmoil and suffering that pain and plague us and our world that prevents Advent and Christmas from becoming nothing more than another cute nativity pageant.

So, instead of pretending this is merely a mock-up of a historical event that occurred once-in-time in a stable and of which we know the end of the story like the battle at Antietam or landing on the moon — we are invited and are given the opportunity this Advent and Christmas to embody again the yearning and longing and hoping that reside in that same dark place, in that same sacred womb-like space where light and love and peace and goodwill and life itself have been gestating and waiting to be born in us, in this time, and in this world, as it was two thousand years ago in and through Mary’s consent and courage.♦

Peace,
Dan