Blessed Darkness

Martha Hodges - 2005-12-18

"Blessed Darkness"
December 18 2005

I don’t need to tell you about darkness. You know darkness. We live in dark times, we hear it said. Has there ever been a time that was not a dark time, I wonder? Heaven knows, there is plenty of reason to look back over the past year and wonder how -- and if -- our human family will recover from earthquake, tsunami and hurricane -- let alone the growing threats of global warming, species extinction, and deforestation. Let alone tribal and international conflict, the use of officially sanctioned torture, the continuing use of child soldiers around the world. Let alone the devastation of AIDS, slavery and hopeless poverty. Yes, these are dark times. You know this darkness.

You also know a more intimate darkness. You know loneliness, self-doubt and boredom. You know, we all know, those times of life when nothing good appears to lighten our days and hope eludes us. Sometimes, circumstances seem to conspire against us. You know the old saying that misfortunes come in threes? I’m not sure about threes, but I certainly have seen how hard times seem to feed on themselves, how miseries multiply at certain periods of our lives: Death, illness, poverty and divorce give birth to whole new sets of problems to deal with, challenges we may never have dreamed we would have to meet. They call for survival skills that we never learned in school. For strengths we never knew we possessed. And yet we do.

For some us, myself included, darkness may have less to do with external circumstances than with an internal predisposition. For those of us who have experienced clinical depression, darkness is a metaphor we are painfully familiar with. In the darkest days of depression, we are convinced that the light will never return. The possibility that the emotional numbness that weighs us down, that makes our bodies and our spirits ache with exhaustion -- the possibility that this suffering contains the seeds of hope seems absurd. And yet it is so.

For those of us grieving the end of a loved one’s life, the end of a loving relationship, the end of a career, the loss of possibilities that comes with the passing of health and youth, it may seem equally absurd --- unthinkable -- that hope and energy may reemerge with the passage of time. It may seem impossible that loss may bring its own special gifts. To suggest such a thing may even strike us as an insult to the pain we feel -- a foolish denial of suffering or a truly annoying and inane insistence that we “cheer up” and “look on the bright side.” And yet it is so.

What can we say of these strange gifts, these pregnant negativities? Can we say that there is value in suffering? I personally find this argument rather repulsive. I cannot agree that suffering necessarily makes us strong or virtuous, or “better people.” I cannot agree that suffering is necessarily redemptive. No. Suffering is to be resisted -- especially that suffering that we humans cause one another and the rest of the natural world. It may be inevitable, but it is no less unacceptable for that.

The suffering that is not the product of human cruelty or indifference, though... What about the personal experience of darkness that is no one’s fault? This, too, is inarguably part of life. What should be our attitude toward this -- this suffering of losses that cannot be avoided? Does this kind of pain hold redemptive value? I think it may, yes. But it is not honest to pretend it is necessarily good for us. To the saying, “What does not kill you will make you stronger,” I am always tempted to reply “Yes ... or else it will just leave you really twisted.” Let us not sentimentalize suffering.

But darkness implies so much more than this. Darkness is not a simple thing, as a natural phenomenon or as a metaphor. There is something more to darkness. It is more than fear, danger, and death.

Darkness is also the time of rest and renewal. We turn off the lights and close our eyes because our bodies long for the dark and our minds demand it. The daylight insists on clarity of vision. Such clarity cannot be sustained without respite. We need to have the hard edges of reality softened so that we may find refuge from its harshness -- the day’s demands that we take action and make decisions and assert ourselves. We cannot bear to look on the suffering of the world without escaping regularly into oblivion -- the forgetfulness of sleep. We need the sightlessness of the dark. The dark restores our ability to see the good, the hopeful, and the joyous.

Darkness gives birth to dreams. In darkness we connect to the unconscious and its creative power. The dark restores our ability to feel deeply and to know intuitively. We need the dark to remind us of the presence of mystery in our lives. The dark is home to the sacred.

The darkness is beautiful. Its tones are subtle and complex, soft and warm and deep.

The dark is silent and peaceful. The dark is comforting. It is our home for the first nine months of our existence. Within the safe, warm darkness of the womb, we grow until we are big enough to face life in the vast, brilliant world outside our mother’s body. We need the softness of the dark. The dark restores us and reminds us of our first home.

And finally, the darkness is not endless. We need more than rest and dreams, more than softness and comfort to be fully alive. In this way, we reflect the natural world of which we are a part. Night is a refuge from the day; the day from night. Neither is sufficient for survival and at this time of the year they are in balance.

Winter and summer, rest and growth, alternate in nature, in our lives and within our souls. Without faith that the sun will return, winter would be unbearable and without faith that joy and pleasure will return, grief and sadness would defeat us. But the fallow times of our lives when we find ourselves incapable of creative work or of making key decisions have a purpose of their own. Inside us, the seeds of creativity and insight are preparing to send out the tentative shoots of new life. We need only wait with an attitude of expectation and be ready to welcome them when they appear.

Most of us in this postindustrial age no longer believe that the sun depends on our rituals to be reborn. We have only to wait. The world will turn without our assistance. We need only wait with an attitude of expectation and readiness to welcome the longer days when they reappear.

This is why we honor the wisdom inherent in the old ways. We acknowledge the beauty of the dark and the beauty of the light and we welcome the change from one to the other. We reaffirm the necessary role in our lives of waiting. And so we wait.

We wait with an attitude of expectation and prepare to celebrate the mystery and miracle of renewed life and light arising out of the mystery and miracle of darkness. Let us celebrate these. May it be so.