The Night, The Dark...and The Light

Mid-Winter here, here in the Northern hemisphere. We are surrounded by the dark nights, broken but a little by short, short days.

Sometimes, when in the dark, it can be difficult to see other than...the dark. Whether that is the darkness of night, or a darkness that makes days, as well as nights, difficult to navigate.

The days when the Nature we struggle through mirrors the struggle to just get through.

Not easy to appreciate that the light doesn't leave permanently. It can, it will, it does, take time to reach us again. But reach us it will.

It was the reality of the dark and the belief in the reality of the light returning that caused those who went before us to create reminders. Reminders made of stone. Reminders made of festival. Reminders made of belief.

The reminders didn't, and don't, change the darkness. Without or within. But they align our perception with reality.

The light can, will, and does, return.

We need to give it, to give ourselves, the time it will take.

But these beliefs are foundational to us, this wildly hopeful and flawed species that we are.

And so we reach out, reach across, reach through, to others, to ourselves, to who we are. Irresponsibly hopeful, even when it we can see nothing but the dark.

As was said so very long ago, "On those living in the shadow of death, a light has shone."

To those looking to the light, to those needing the light, to those providing light for others, I wish you well in this holy night.

Out of darkness unto light

The days, at least here in the northern hemisphere, grow longer. The nights, at this late stage of the year, have begun to be shorter, the light returning earlier and earlier.

In the depths of this dark night I lift my eyes to the sky and face the steady sheen of a full moon. The darkness—lessened, leavened, lightened.

Unbidden, though unsurprising, the words—old even before being written down—sound in my head, out in the world:

"The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined."

Whether those words were actually said in that form, they state a truth that resonates deep within us. That can resonate across our lives, across our world.

With each of us reflecting that "great light" or shining with that light that lives within us, our world can be leavened, lightened.

And the darkness in whatever form lessened.

"Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night."