It is happening. We are creeping into the shortest of days and the longest of nights. Though Solstice, Chanukah, and Christmas are all about the return of light, they also give us a chance to enter the dark. To wrap the dark around us like a huge cloak that will keep us warm and safe, bundled up into a comfortable invisibility.
Let your eyes adjust to the dark. Look at how much you can see. Shadows and silhouettes. The silent winging of an owl in flight. The movement of leaves and grasses and bushes as the wind lifts them. A whole world revealed that light blinds. The dark sets its own boundaries. A world only available in the dark.
In this season that celebrates light and that is filled with electrical strings of light and the burning of candles, I find myself yearning to settle into the gifts of the darkness. Silence and quiet can be found here. As well as sleep. And stars and all of their attendant stories. To stare at them is to time travel. The dark calls to us to rest from the constancy of motion and movement. “Find a stillness, hold a stillness, let the stillness carry me…” Where will the stillness of dark carry us? What imagination will it ignite? What stories will tumble from it? What gift will we emerge from it with?
In this season of the celebration of light, take time to celebrate the darkness. Not as something sinister or to be feared. But as a gentle offering of something that enfold and hold you. Let us be present to the darkness as well as the light.
Peace to you all,
Rev. Lo