Darkness and light

I have been thinking a lot lately about darkness and light. About how this is the darkest season, the darkest month, and yet, somehow, lately it is lit for me by an unmistakable light. I was talking to a friend about this yesterday. The days are so dark now, at least where I live, and I remember that I used to find this suffocating. But in the last few years somehow a faint but growing sense of light has crept in for me.

The optimist in me feels a wild surge of hope about this: perhaps I am witnessing the birth of my own faith. This is a holy month, after all, full of imagery of light, regardless of your religion. Perhaps it is the flickering, nascent light of my own belief that illuminates these dark days. The candles in windows and the holiday lights strung on trees and in windows everywhere I look both reflect and contribute to that internal flickering.

My parents co-host an annual party on the winter solstice. They have been doing this for years and I’ve been attending since I was very small. Late in the evening, as midnight nears, the crowd is led in a Mayan ritual that involves lighting candles and chanting. The Mayan chant is one that invokes the return of the sun. I’ve been thinking about it, lately, and wondering if that is happening in some small way each day of this month. It’s no secret that the solstice is a meaningful day for me, and I wonder if just the promise of its arrival, the clear evidence that the world will turn again towards the light, is enough to buoy me through the darkness.

I’ve been turning these ideas over in my head for the last few days, seeing echoes of my thoughts in things like the huge, luminous full moon in the pitch-black December 1st sky. And this morning, as I got dressed in a morning so black I thought when my alarm went off there must have been a mistake, I read Meg Casey’s words. Once in a great while I read a piece of writing that makes me want to kneel and press my head to the ground, saluting its gorgeousness and ability to evoke emotion. This is one such piece. Please read it.

I considered not even writing anything myself, just linking to Meg, since she articulates the thoughts I’m trying to share so much more beautifull than I can:

December is a holy month. Maybe it is the dark silky silence that descends so early, that speaks to me of reverence. Maybe it is the promise that December holds–that no matter how dark, how cold, how empty it can get, the light is coming back. Something always shifts in me when December arrives–I embrace the darkness and am eager for the coming solstice when the whole world is still and holds its breath, waiting to be reborn again. December whispers to me of midnight mass, of ancient choirs, of stained glass windows turned into gems by candle light.

And Meg then goes on to talk about the connection between holiness and wholeness, using the image of a stained glass window: Broken, jagged, sharp pieces of glass held together magically, transformed into one perfect design not by gold or silver but by something as mundane as lead. Oh, how glorious this is. There is more to Meg’s post, of course, and it reminds me of an Anne Lamott line that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about lately: “Love is sovereign.” Yes. As Meg says, Love is the transformative power that turns our brokenness into something beautiful.

Perhaps the sense of lightness that I feel in the midst of such complete darkness is love. I don’t know. Probably it’s some combination of faith, hope, love, and white Christmas lights. I care less about the source, frankly, than I do about honoring that light, about celebrating the mystery of its arrival and the glory of its radiance.