Embrace the Darkness
How sitting in the dark sometimes can help you shine in the light
In a dark night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest.
In darkness and in safety,
By the secret ladder, disguised,
O, happy lot!
In darkness and concealment,
My house being now at rest.
In that happy night,
In secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought myself,
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning
That light guided me
More surely than the noonday sun
To the place where He was waiting for me,
Whom I knew well,
And where none appeared.
O, guiding night;
O, night more lovely than the dawn;
O, night that hast united
The lover with His beloved,
And changed her into her love.
On my flowery bosom,
Kept whole for Him alone,
There He reposed and slept;
And I cherished Him, and the waving
Of the cedars fanned Him.
As His hair floated in the breeze
That from the turret blew,
He struck me on the neck
With His gentle hand,
And all sensation left me.
I continued in oblivion lost,
My head was resting on my love;
Lost to all things and myself,
And, amid the lilies forgotten,
Threw all my cares away.
(The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross, 1577-1599)
Today is the Winter Solstice.
It is the shortest day of the year.
It is the longest night of the year.
Maybe this year you have felt like you have fallen short in all kinds of ways. Perhaps you had a goal that you wanted to accomplish that did not exactly go the way you wanted it to. Sometimes our expectations can be so high that we experience intense disappointment when they are unmet.
Do you feel like you are in the middle of one of the longest nights you have ever felt or a series of long nights with no end in sight? Is the darkness all around you or does it seem like it is growing inside your soul?
It could be all of the above and that can be very disorienting. We as humans like to have things make sense and have good outcomes. We enjoy movies and television shows that wrap up all of the conflict and tie a beautiful bow on the ending with a happily ever after. Especially in our western culture, we seek to avoid pain and numb the difficult or dark parts of ourselves.
We don’t know how to sit in the darkness.
This morning, a friend sent me these words and they have been comforting as I have contemplated the darkness in my own life today.
The darkest day but what is dark? Dark is an opportunity for the light to pierce Dark is also a place to rest
The light and the dark are beautiful The light and the dark are our human reality Can I hold the tension? Can I find life in both?
So pierce me, light Pierce my darkness Enfold me, dark And let me rest
May I surrender to the full experience of life this midwinter day Amen
What if the dark can be a good place to rest? to refresh and reset? Can we hold the tension and not have to have everything be in nice neat categories?
We are usually taught to love the light and hate the darkness, this is something I grew up with in my evangelical circles. Everything in the light was “good” and everything in the dark was “bad.”
In the Narnia books, the White Witch is bright and pretty. She is the one that makes it “always winter and never Christmas.” Imagine! How horrible that would be. In the Bible, the enemy of God is described as once being “an angel of light.” Maybe we are looking at things poorly. Maybe we need to rethink the darkness and see it as a companion and not an enemy.
When you think of the image of a tomb - what words come to your mind?
Death. Finality. Sadness. Grief. Loss. Pain. Biting Wind.
We are so quick to look at a tomb as the end of a dream, the end of our story, the end of hope. Maybe the tomb can be a womb for something new to grow in you today.
What is being birthed in you today on the shortest day of the year and the longest night?
“Sometimes it feels like everything has to be okay and there’s no room left for our pain. Other times, it seems like nothing will ever be okay and there’s no room left for our hope. What if we welcomed this tiny revolutionary idea of being okay just for now.”
-Emily P. Freeman
The darkness of Calton Hill in Edinburgh, Scotland was a gift to me recently when I was there in November. This structure that you see in the center of the picture is popularly called, “Edinburgh’s Shame” and is a beautiful monument that overlooks the city.
Maybe the dark and shameful parts of you can be seen as beautiful because your journey is not over and the painful seasons of your life are an invitation to be curious. What can the darkness teach me about myself? What can shame teach me about God?
GOD IS WILDLY FOR YOU DESPITE YOUR PAIN AND SHAME.
GOD IS WITH YOU IN EVERY DARK MOMENT OF YOUR LIFE.
When Jesus of Nazareth begins his public ministry, one of the first things he does is turn jars of water into wine at a wedding feast. To run out of wine during the feast would have caused great shame to the host and Jesus knows this. He took what could have been a shameful moment and poured out a miracle. A few days later he came to the Synagogue and stood up to teach. He reached for the Isaiah scroll (yes it was a papyrus scroll and not a leather bound book) and these are the words he read…
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
When these words were originally written, the people were in chaos and oppression. More than a thousand years later, when Jesus read them that day in the Synagogue, the people were in chaos and oppression. Not much had changed.
Today we are in chaos and oppression. Today we have the hope of Christmas as well.
We can hold these in tension and see the invitation to sit in the darkness and sing a new song!
Merry Christmas Dear Ones.
Grace and Peace
Matt Nash