Dropping into the Darkness

I've been reflecting on "darkness" and "light" during this season of the year. One way to think about Christmas and Hanukkah is as festivals of light. Solstice celebrations are also ancient reminders of the season when the darkness reaches its peak and the light begins to come into being again.

We are often afraid of the darkness. Do you still use a nightlight? As a teenager, I remember that my older brother sent me on an errand into the basement of our house as he worked on his car on the street. It was after dark. I moved slowly into the darkness of the basement, a place where I had been many, many times before, as if it were a place with which I was completely unfamiliar. When I found what my brother wanted, I rushed safely outside into the darkness of the city street, lit by street lights! We often hear of children who take a special toy to bed to protect them from the darkness.

"I said some words to the close and holy darkness," Dylan Thomas writes in "A Child's Christmas in Wales." Culturally, we associate darkness with something bad, or perhaps evil. But darkness is often a gift: at the end of a long and tiring day, at the end of a long illness that inspires others to say: "she's not suffering anymore," and even times in our lives that seem to be dark but actually hold a change or transition that will be life-giving for us. While we may still be afraid of the dark times in our lives, the darkness is simply another place where new life begins, like the seed in the cold and dark earth during the winter.

Say some words yourself to the close and holy darkness this season. Maybe you can even say "thank you" for the things in your life that seem the darkest. What gift is there in those places?

Warmly,
meb