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.

For the night is...

...dark and full of terrors. So they say on Game of Thrones.

I'll not patronize and say these terrors are just our own fear of the dark, a fear that seems to spring from our very DNA.

For there are real terrors, and there is real darkness, and to fear such is an adaptive trait.

And yet the same DNA seems to drive us to hope, to seek the light, to remind one another of its return. This capacity to hope, to believe that which cannot in that moment be seen, has fueled the festivals, the celebrations that mark this Mid-Winter time here in the Northern Hemisphere for as long as we can remember.

Our species has left its mark on the stone, the land, the oral and written record of our peoples, talking of the darkness, the terrors, and the light driving out the darkness. Twenty-six and more centuries ago a voice was raised saying:

"The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light..."

Yet the odd thing, the salient thing for me, is the speaker/writer is not talking of the past. He spoke of the future. I have written before that we are a hopeful species. That seems to be as much part of our makeup as our fear of the dark.

So, look up. Look past the terrors. Look past the dark. On they who dwell in shadow...a light will shine.

Our truths tell us this.

*Image from: http://switched.deviantart.com/art/light-through-trees-20221042

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."

Oh Holy Night...

My religious tradition, building on an earlier tradition, speaks of the night of Christmas as one in which "...a light shone in the darkness..."

As always I am struck by how powerfully these images of light and dark resonate with our experience of the world around us in these brief Winter days. They serve as a reminder that the light returns. The darkness is not the end, or the all.

A reminder, for we are a forgetful people. If not forgetful, absent-minded.

For it is easy to forget that the light returns. That what presents as unending darkness gives way to light. It always has, even at the times it seemed it could not. And it always will, at least until that last great burst of light our sun will deliver before life on this bauble of a planet we call home goes the way of all things.

Yet the up-to-the-minute disaster services, our modern Cassandras, would have us tune our minds to one bleak perspective after another, barely comprehending the first before switching to contemplate the next.

This leads to absent-mindedness. Unthinking, unblinking, staring into the dark. As if the dark is all there is.

Whatever your tradition, there is a deep belief, gifted to us from the genes of our ancestors, based upon memory carried in those same genes, that the light returns.

When we had nothing like the understanding we do today, we yet built mechanisms that would show us that the light was returning. Millenia later, these mechanisms still work!

We are creatures of light. Look into the smile of a baby and tell me otherwise.

And when night comes...

"…And when night comes
     …as come it will"

Words of a poem written now more than thirty-five years ago.

The coming of night, the gathering darkness, endless night, all images that we find in stories, myths, tales we humans tell ourselves when confronting those things we fear, those things too terrible for words.

Yet in those stories, myths, tales, we humans also speak of great light, lights, enlightenment.

Tonight as night again turns to day, as darkness again gives way to light, my wish for you, for me, for all of us, is that we might be bathed in light—however we might perceive it.

That we, should we walk in darkness, find it lifting, find it lessening, find our way to light once more.

In the depth, in the cold, in the dark of the night...

Standing outside at night, even here in sunny Northern California, at this time of the year something reaches me across all the time that has gone before.

The cold reaches me. The darkness reaches me. The silence reaches me.

The nights may be getting shorter, but I lack the markers used five thousand years ago in Ireland to let the people know the light was returning.

And so I am left with the dark.

But I have the stories. The stories told in so many lands, in so many tongues, of darkness driven out by returning light. The stories of my own religious tradition of the heralding of a new era by a blazing light in the sky.

The stories from the traditions of my race of the light returning after its absence, of new life being possible.

The stories that are true, in the truest sense of the term. For they tell us what has been told in so many ways, in so many places, in so many traditions — Light has shone in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

And even in our darkest days, we, this hopeful we that we are, know this to be true.

The blessings of this holy, healing, wholesome time of year be with you.

Darkest before the dawn

The phrase entitling this post set me thinking.

Such phrases litter our language, hinting at a hopefulness I believe is at the core of us as humans.

Deep in Winters long ago (fadó, fadó - the Gaelic equivalent of 'once upon a time...')... So, long long ago in the depths of Winter, we sat through the long nights and remembered, told stories, of the warmth, the light, the bounty that flowed from the sun in Summer. We consoled ourselves that the sun had returned before, that new life had sprung from the cold earth, that we had seen other Summers before, and would again. That the people, the tribe, the group would again be saved.

Later, as knowledge grew, we learned to measure the change in the course of the heavens so it could be seen that there would come an end to seeming endless nights.

Celebrations sprang up, for we are a celebratory species - perhaps a little too pleased with ourselves when we think we understand something, but the celebrations were warranted.

So, little surprise that my own religious tradition builds upon this celebration, borrowing from older traditions, beliefs. "...people that walked in darkness...seen a great light"...the thought of new life born to us...that we would be safe.

It calls to something deep within us as a species. There can be but one answer - hope.

So, whatever your tradition at this celebratory time of the year, I wish you joy. I wish you peace and, most of all, hope.

Solstice

Yes, I know. A day late - and likely a dollar short.

I blame the travel. Yesterday we flew across half the country, racing away from the sun. We took off in full sunshine and landed in full dark. In the land of my birth, it would have been full dark for more than an hour of the clock by the time we landed. It was dark enough for me not to feel homesick.

So, 'twas the solstice. The depth of Winter. The year's longest night. The year's shortest day - at least up here in the Northern hemisphere.

Yet the very word 'solstice' contains within it the name of our star, the sun. One can argue which came first - word or name. It doesn't matter.

The word looks forward. Therein is contained hope. In the depth of the night, the promise of light.

At the very least, the hope of light.

What a resilient species we are. Hopeful, despite our best efforts. Despite the darkness around, and within, us.

And therin lies the glory that we are.

Fiat lux...

...et lux erat.

"The people...have seen a great light. On those...a light has shone."

The celebration of light returning, bringing with it the promise of new life in a few short months, was a feature of Mid-Winter celebrations even before we began recording it in other than oral tradition.

And, in the Southern Hemisphere, people have just celebrated the longest day of the year.

May light, in whatever form, touch and transform the lives of each of us.