Darkness

Typically, this time of year includes well lit marketplaces, holiday lights, parties, and shining decorations. Therefore, it may easily evade us that our celebration occurs as we approach the winter solstice (this year on December 22), the longest and (conceivably) the darkest night of the year.

Acknowledging the darkness in the dead of winter can give deeper meaning to our fascination with light during the holiday season. This is the purpose for Advent in the Christian calendar. Advent is a time for intentional stillness and quiet reflection during this dark season; it is an annual time for making ready, preparing ourselves, waiting quietly, expecting the Christ, the hope of new life, the light of the world.

It is important to remember that the darkness always comes first. Before God said "Let there be light", the earth was formless and void. In traditions where collective memories don't begin with Genesis, the same is also true. "Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning", says a Creation Hymn in the Rig Veda. Remembering our place in relation to this primal darkness can help better align our perspectives to some ancient, primordial, universal wisdom.

Darkness is often associated in the West with evil, suffering, and death; it is the shadow of goodness. Yet this is only one layer of the archetype. The more primal sense of darkness, East and West, designates the original mysterious nothingness from which life and being emerge. It is the substratum of all that is. Darkness is to light what silence is to sound: the eternal precedent. According to ancient and medieval mystics, God is darkness, unknowable, mysterious. Currently, of course, science is telling us similar things about the universe itself (e.g., "dark matter"). There is much that is unknown to us. Reality is dark and mysterious.

What we may describe in our lives as 'darkness' often involves loss, confusion or hopelessness. Finding ourselves repeating the same old relationship patterns that we thought we had left behind in our families of origin; waking up lonely and depressed, unable to envision as we once did ever truly being able to connect with another person, even with our children or a spouse; realizing everything we must give up and how hard we must work just to maintain our projected course toward the good life; questioning our systems of meaning; enduring physical or emotional suffering. When these moments come, there is darkness. Although some of us may revel in them somewhat (for the sake of art, authenticity, or our sincerely Nietzschean sensibilities), most of us want a little bit of light during these times, a way forward, some hope, a renewed vision for life and wellness in our future.

So, what is involved in this recurring process of moving from darkness to light? What is this darkness, exactly? How do we come to terms with it? Where does light come from? Where does our hope come from? What practices and what imagery (what traditions and what beliefs) might help us better expect light to emerge on our horizons in our darkest moments?

These are the questions we are here to ask each other in Alternative. Our best answers will involve telling each other our own stories, telling each other about our own experiences of darkness, telling each other where our hope comes from. Maybe in this process we can help each other to appreciate the darkness in life while also seeing that in our common experience as humans, while darkness is our cosmic substratum, the recurrence of light is just as real. If we pay attention and look around for it a bit during this holiday season, we are likely to see it.