The Power of Darkness

"In a dark time, the eye begins to see. . . ."

-Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time"

". . .even the darkness is not dark to you. . ."

-Psalm 137: 12

The Christian mystics have always said as much. It was St. John of the Cross, the great 15th century Spanish mystic, who coined the phrase "dark night of the soul" to describe the sense of separation and despair which often follows the mystical experience of union with God. The paradox, however, is that it is only through the dark night of the soul and even the loss of self that the sense of ecstasy and Oneness is or can be restored.

This seems to be the conclusion of Roethke’s poem, as well:

            Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

It is, as Roethke claims, only in the dark that one begins to see.

This is metaphor, of course, but we are all used to mostly negative images of darkness. We say that we are "afraid of the dark" and of "things that go bump in the night." The dark, the coming of night, is commonly associated with death. What Roethke and the mystics seem to be saying, however, is that the darkness is necessary. The darkness is good, even. This flies in the face of much that we have been taught to believe in the typology of light and darkness.

Here in the northern hemisphere, we know a bit about darkness. Perhaps not quite as much as the Laplanders and the Eskimos and the Icelanders, but we know the days shortened down to a bare minimum. We know the darkness coming early, and staying late. Some of us--and I count myself among them--dread the shortening and darkening days of winter far more than we dread the cold. We dread the darkness coming down.

Yet I believe that this solstice time of short days and long nights is an important time, a special opportunity for inwardness. If we let it, it can be a time of rest when we wait to see what will emerge, or what will happen next. We need it, I would argue, just as much as we need the long, bright days of summer. Indeed, it is the contrast which helps us to see more clearly.

We live in a dark time, too, in the sense of living in a muddled time, of living in a time when it is often difficult to make sense of things. We live in a time when lies are called truth, when language and information are manipulated and "spin" is king, when the pursuit of "freedom" sometimes smacks of selfishness and greed and tyranny, and patriotism is cheapened to mean following the party line. We live in a time when life and death are cheap.

It is a hard time, but as I said in my sermon two weeks ago, this is the only time we have, and we need to make the best of it. And often it is at times like these--times when all around us the world seems to be falling apart--that things begin to clarify. My colleague Wesley Hromatko has written,

What we expect is not what we find. In the midst of darkness in the midnight hours of life when we can only expect the worst, we often find that paradoxically we have been granted greater gifts of strength, love, and hope than we expected.

Some of us know the sense that those times will never end. Depression, grief, the sense of meaninglessness or failure, the feeling of being off the path, these can seem to be endless at times. Sometimes they can hint at a deeper pathology, and signal the need for us to reach out for help. I hope that you will reach out if this is the place you find yourself.

But in their less severe manifestations, these feelings can also signal that there is soul work we need to do. This is the work of seeing that can only happen in those dark night times of life, when things stand out, when we are acutely aware that all is not well with us, or that we need to change. There are times when we must simply sit and wait in the dark for what is to come. As my colleague Wesley writes, "For the great gifts of life, we can in some sense only prepare. What we find just around the corner, in the next room, the next morning, the next day, is far different than we had expected." He continues,

While perfect peace of mind, perfect joy, perfect fulfillment of our dreams is not found, we find in this imperfect world even greater gifts. We know joy because we have known its lack. We know the light of hope because we have known the shadow of despair. We know the sun still shines when the sky is darkened. The very darkness of despair tells us that somewhere the light of laughter and joy still shines.

Would that those who claim to know the mind of God, and who spout their certainties at this season or in any other, would come to appreciate this insight. As the great 20th century Roman Catholic religious writer Thomas Merton came to recognize, "no idea or sensible image could contain God" [Walter Conn]. "To find God," Merton said, "we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness."

Merton came to understand that for this reason religious exclusivism was impossible. Still another great 20th century religious figure, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, came to a similar understanding during the Nazi tyranny of the 1930’s and 40’s which ultimately claimed his life. For Bonhoeffer, God came to seem knowable only through other suffering human beings, those who are our immediate neighbors, whether we like them or not; and then only in part, never fully. God did not belong to any particular faith, but was present everywhere in the world.

For these and others who embrace a dark night spirituality, the darkness is not to be feared, but entered into freely and even joyously. It is also, as Roethke suggests, to embrace a "death of the self." For it is, as the Buddha recognized, only as we relinquish the self, only as we let go of our own egos, that enlightenment finally comes.

We know that many plants and animals need this dark time of year in which to rest and lie dormant before the season of new growth. Why should it not be so for us?

An anonymous poet has written in a little prayer,

God of owls and of all night creatures,
both great and small, walk also with us
who fear the dark. Accustom our eyes
to that part of the world which turns away
from the sun; prevent us from being blind
to what we’re afraid to see.

Whenever our spirit is sleepless,
share us stars to outline a landmark tree
or to see the sheltering hills.
Teach our feet to feel for the ground
where brave men have walked before us.

As the winter solstice turns our earth and early twilight closes down the day . . . we come together as people have done from earliest times to celebrate with flame the waning winter and rejoice that our globe now swings once more toward the light. As our burning candles bespeak this ancient faith, so may it express our prayer that the power that directs our planet in its path will set such a solstice for our hopes for the future. From the dark hours of perversity and wrath, we pray that sad humanity may be guided in the path of peace, that like our earth we may emerge from darkness to a brighter day.

We will turn again to the world with all its needs, for rest assured, the world needs us. It is not a permanent withdrawal from the world that I am speaking of, nor is it a withdrawal into what James Luther Adams once called "sham spirituality," but rather it is a temporary respite so that we might recover our energies and continue to fight the good fight with a renewed sense of hopefulness. For we must never give up our hope for a better world and a better life for all. As Fra Giovanni wrote in a Christmas message in 1613,

      I salute you. There is nothing I can give that you have not, but there is much that, while I cannot give you, you can take.
      No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven.
      No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in the present. Take peace.
      The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. Take joy.
      And so at this Christmas time I greet you, with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock