Molded in the Darkness

1 Corinthians 1:3-9     Isaiah 64:1-9

November 30, 2008    First Sunday of Advent

Enter now into this deep, dark time

Feel the damp touch of earth

Breath in the musk of night

Let your heart slow its beat to mirror the dormant world

Enter now into this dark, quiet time

Listen to the voice of silence

Speaking so strong and clear

Awakening slumbering wisdom to this mysterious present

Enter now into this dark, fertile time

This is the dark time of the year, when days grow short and the thick nights extend their reach further and further.  For some of us, the darkness is a welcome gift because it gives us permission to relax a bit more, to take it easier than we might usually.  When the sun goes down, we can no longer be out and about working in the yard, so we come inside to the warmth and light.  The darkness outside can serve to remind us to go deeper within, and provides us with ample time and opportunity to pray, meditate and just plain old cogitate, which can be a welcome respite from our more active periods.  For others among us, the darkness is a challenge to their equilibrium.  Shorter daylight hours can bring on depression or at least feelings of melancholy.  And while it can be helpful and even healthy for us to turn within once in awhile, self-reflection can also become too much if that is all we focus on.

The darkness also speaks to those of us who are in the depths of grief.  Losses throughout the year somehow mount up and can come crashing in on us now.  The holidays, with their family gatherings, seasonal celebrations and the requisite joyful outlook, are difficult to navigate when you have suffered loss in your life.  The expectations that accompany all of the holiday activities can feel pretty overwhelming if you are not feeling up to entering into them.

Advent, coming as it does in this dark season, is a time of preparation for the return of the light.  In the church's way of being during this time of year, we reflect on what life feels like when we are immersed in the darkness.  Scriptures often focus on apocalyptic images such as this morning's reading from Isaiah where the prophet begs God to "tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence." The mood is one of being in the absolute center of darkness and aloneness, far from God, far from all that might possibly offer comfort or direction.  There is an emptiness at the heart of this season, with which those who grieve are all too familiar.  Underneath all of the hustle and bustle, below the frantic activity surge, there is a dark quiet that awaits us.  It can be a welcoming place in its simplicity, sort of like a cozy cabin heated by wood fire and lit by candles.  We often long for just such a place in which to find refreshment and rest for our weariness, and yet if we find ourselves in this dark place unprepared, it may very well bring us face to face with the things we fear most of all.

There is good news here in the midst of this darkness however, and that is that the coming of Christ, the coming of light, means so much more to those who have actually spent some time in the darkness.  If we dare to go deep within and touch our pain; if we are willing to truly enter into this dark season, then we will find that the light that comes at its end is brilliant, dazzling beyond measure.  If we allow our hearts to be broken and emptied, then we will find that the Christ enters in in a wholly different manner than we have ever experienced before.  When we allow the emptiness to become a part of our experience, then when the Christ is ready to be born, there is room within us for this to happen.  In metaphorical terms, there is room in the Inn.

Indigenous people who follow the calendar of the year are perhaps better equipped to deal with the darkness than we.  They allow themselves to be drawn into the ebb and flow of the year, and it becomes almost a body knowledge to them.  Spring is the birth of the year and of all forms of life breaking free from whatever ties might have bound them.  Summer and its rambunctiousness calls forth the heat that brings fields to flower.  Autumn turns the wheel of the year toward cooler temperatures and a time of grateful harvest.  Winter invites us to come in, hibernating in the dark caves of earth or of our own psychology.  If we allow ourselves to be a part of this movement season after season and year after year, then we grow accustomed to the ebb and flow of our emotions as well as of the universe all around us.  We become a part of the movement of the whole, and so we feel less out of place than we might otherwise.  Melancholy and grief are accepted as simply a part of the landscape of entering into Winter.  Darkness within echoes the darkness without.  There is no judgement, simply a reflection of what is.

My sense is that we need to give ourselves permission to allow ourselves to feel what we feel.  This can be a challenge when everyone else, or so it might seem, is geared up for parties and celebrations.  But what if we each paid a little closer attention to what is really true for us in any given moment?  What if we allowed ourselves to be sad when we feel sad even if we couldn't point to an exact cause of the sadness.   What if we allowed ourselves to grieve when a loss felt present to us - no matter how long ago that loss might have been experienced for the first time.  What if we took time during this Advent season of turning within to allow ourselves to be present with whatever emotion washes over us, and were just simply a part of the movement of that emotion in this time and place.  Would we be taken over by sadness or grief if we gave them a place in our lives, or would our willingness to participate in these dark emotions give us more flexibility in the long run? 

I sense that sometimes we fear entering the dark.  We walk into a place where grief dwells and rush to turn on all of the lights so that we don't have to deal with it.  We skim over sadness and avoid letting it touch our hearts by staying on the surface of our emotions, refusing to go deep into any feelings.  This is no way to live.  Life requires depth.  Life asks us to enter in with our whole selves.  Life requires darkness just as much as it requires light in order to see the patterns that make up the whole of it; in order to see the patterns that reside within us and make us who we are.  Joys and sorrows shape one another.  Beginnings and endings define our experiences, often giving us fresh starts when we need them.  I want to leave you with Midwinter Prayer by Rachel Mann followed by a few lines that I added to complete our journey together:

God of all creation

of bare forest and low northern skies

of paths unknown and never to be taken

of bramble, sparrow and damp, dark earth.

We thank you for loss, for the breaking of the dimming year

We thank you for light even in its seeming midwinter failing

We thank you for life for its hope and resistance

like a seed dying and living

God of all creation, may we open ourselves to be participants in this world of which we are a part.  May we enter boldly into the dark that stretches out before us and that which lies within us, knowing that you go with us.  In Christ who is our Light we pray, Amen.