“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” ~ Theodore Roethke

The people who walked in darkness . . .
~ Isaiah 9:2b

Perhaps due to one too many eggnogs last night, today the earth tilts (not me) giving us the shortest day and the longest night of the year. The world loiters in darkness. So too, we are invited to dwell in the dark a littler longer and most consciously ourselves.

Biblically literate or not, how ready we are to complete the sentence that begins “The people who walked in darkness____________________” with the words, “have seen a great light” (Is. 9:2b, NRSV). It is worth noting that, most often, the accent seems to be on the second clause while we mumble the first.

And yet, the first way we celebrate Advent and Christmas is by honoring the dark. We honor it by giving it its just due. We notice the natural world, the ways of winter with its accompanying movements of loss and barreness, its seasonal rhythm of storm and struggle and stillness, and the long deep darkness that is pulled like a blanket over the earth. .

We honor the darkness by acknowledging that we live in a world where people will sleep tonight not only in the dark but in the cold, curled up outside near heating vents or under a doorway trying to stay dry or inside a shelter on a cot or on the couches and floor of a friend’s house after their house foreclosed. Or in a refugee camp with a dirt floor, having no house to foreclose, home having become unsafe, sleep rare.

We honor the darkness by recognizing we live in a world wed to war, addicted to war, and where for many that unchosen war is not safely on the evening news but precariously in their country, in their neighborhood, in their nightmares where they dream of anything but sugarplums.

We honor the darkness by never forgetting that people -– that man in front of us at the checkout line, the umbrellaless woman pushing her baby across the street in the stroller in the rain, that friend who lost her job or that friend of a friend who lost his — are lonely, hurting, afraid, confused, or grieving. We honor these types of darkness by working to alleviate any amount of it that is unnecessary, unjust, or destructive and by being with others who are the victims of it.

In the realm of the soul, in the summons to become human and holy, in the invitation not of the Army but of the divine to be all that we can be, in the effort to celebrate not only Advent and Christmas responsibly but also to live lives commensurate with being an image of God, we honor the darkness by acknowledging that the outer conditions are reflected at times by a winter gloominess or starkness within ourselves that often pulls us toward fear or false security or loneliness or defensiveness or bitterness or despair.

We honor this darkness too by acknowledging it, paying attention to it, respecting it by looking for what it might be able to show us or by listening for what hidden treasures it might hold for us like an unplowed field. In courage (and, if fortunate, in community), we listen to what it might be asking of us. We honor it by trusting that, however horrific or unjust, it hides the holy and, even when involving death, ultimately it is the place of new possibility, of rebirth, of transformation. As Theodore Roethke writes, “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”

In contemporary America, for those with the time and the means to do so, we have a phenomenon that would have been rare a century ago, namely, wintering in warmer climates great distances from one’s home. We even have a name for those who, sensibly, gratefully, or nonchalantly, flee wintry lands for Palm Springs or Phoenix or Palm Beach: snow-birds.

Unfortunately, what has become a common and conscious geographical strategy for people of means in order to avoid physically the cold and dark of winter has also in our time become a psycho-spiritual analogue for our less conscious strategy to avoid the dark realities of life around us and within us. Many Churches that go by the name Christian– maybe Our Lady of the Snowbird parish or First United Methodist Head South for Winter Church– as well as many New Age spiritualities, attempt to tilt the spiritual axis permanently the other way so that everything is sunny and light, or ascending and up toward blue-skies, thus consciously or unconsciously avoiding, denying, or fleeing altogether the dark and wintry realities of life.

However, what seems physically sensible or desirable to many – fleeing the bleak midwinter for the light – in the realm of the soul is not a recommended strategy. Throughout history, those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith and courage say that when we move too quickly out of the dark, or try to do so, we risk losing something invaluable, even transformative, something that can only be given and received in the dark. Not to stay put and face into the dark is to forfeit what the darkness alone can bestow.

To the degree that we are willing to dwell consciously in the darkness, to that degree we will long for the light– for ourselves, for others we know, for people we don’t know, and for the earth community. Advent is the time of year when we long for the light. Yes. But first we intentionally sit and prayerfully enter into darkness. This is a much neglected, much misunderstood, much fled from, and much needed spiritual practice. It is what Wendell Berry recommends when he counsels us to “go dark.”

To Know the Dark

To know the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

Each Advent we sing “O come, O come, Emmanuel.” Come, O Holy One, and be with us. And part of the mystery of Christmas, part of the good news is that “for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned (Mt. 4:16b).” God, in Jesus, comes among us, as the light of the world.

But the other part of the mystery, the part that is harder to fathom and frequently overlooked, the part that alone makes it worth identifying oneself as a Christ-one, the part that makes the light shine brightest and is inseparable from it, is that before God comes into the dark as light, God comes darkly into the darkness. Before God overcomes the dark with light as the light, God knows the dark darkly by traveling it with us. In the darkness of our lives, God goes dark. Jesus, the light of the world, is Jesus the darkness of God with us.

To be continued . . .