Leaning into the Dark

 Welcome to another Spiritual Journey Thursday, a group that gathers monthly to share insights into our spiritual lives.  Thanks to Jone Rush MacCulloch for hosting this month, and for offering these prompts:

How do you honor/embrace this time of darkness?

Where do you find the points of light in your life?

Find Jone's thoughts and links HERE.

In many ways, darkness is my friend. I have been avoiding direct sunlight for a number of years, and I've come to value the night for its quiet shroud of mystery and beauty. I'm relieved at the summer solstice, when days begin to grow shorter. The hardest time of the year for me is late spring and summer. It's become a joke that I'm always in these clunky dark glasses, so in a moment of solidarity my grands and I made this photo. It always makes me smile.

Recently we rented a house on a quiet lake in the Adirondacks. The first night it rained, but the next two nights were beautiful: the clear deep blue allowed me to see the Milky Way. Have you seen it?  What overwhelming beauty and depth! Its great clusters of stars are both inspiring and humbling. Who am I in comparison? I think we lose this perspective under city lights.  I was so drawn to the dark world that I slept on a couch on the screen porch, looking at the stars and listening to loons and owls. Temperatures dipped into the 40s, but still it felt glorious. Restorative.

It's ironic that the dark allows us to see more stars, and it also points to another truth. We need a time of shadow or darkness in order to appreciate and filter the barrage of the day's events. We need to mull, to let our minds go dark and see what surfaces. Times of dark can facilitate that.

In Genesis there are two days of creation dedicated to appointing and separating the dark and the light. Two days! And God saw that it was good. Night is provided for rest, prayer, mulling and creating. 

Before the onset of industry and electricity, the darker seasons offered extended time to rest and reflect. Like a seed in the earth, these times were good for germination. At night people gathered around a fire as they mended nets, laughed, hugged and told stories. 

Nighttime is still story time, still the weaver of dreams. Many of our favorites feature the night, all the way from Good Night Moon and Owl Babies to Little House in the Big Woods and Something Wicked This Way Comes, stories help us address the challenge and fear of darkness and find a way to endure it.  

Professor A. Roger Ekirch wrote At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, which I've started but not finished. One interesting claim is that the "oldest occupation" is not prostitution, as we've often been told, but instead is night watchman. We have to admit that night demands precautions and can be a trial for many of us. I'm not immune.

Whether you light a candle in the dark or go out to look at the moon, I hope you will find some way to be comfortable in the darkness. Maybe we should practice night vision, searching for night's beauty. If we allow our eyes to adjust and our spirits to be willing, who knows what we will find?

Finally, no matter our attitude, some nights can seem too long. Remember that Christ declared, "I am Light of the World." Remember the Gospel of John reassures us with this powerful statement:

John 1:5  The light shined in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. 

May it be so.