Leaning Into the Darkness
Listen: “The Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel
“Hello darkness, my old—or new—friend?” “Friend” might be way too strong of a description for my experience with darkness. Maybe a reluctant acquaintance to whom I am warming up. Darkness would not have described my life experience for the best part of five decades, but in 2019 I had my first true experience with darkness and it almost took me out. For days, weeks, and months, I had no desire to wake up and face the daylight. I didn’t care if I lived or died. Death felt like a better option.
The darkness doesn’t cut so deeply today, but I am still haunted by the darkest of those days. They still rise up on occasion and visit me. I am grateful for two books I read in 2019 which challenged me to lean into the darkness. In effect, listen to the darkness; learn from it; and embrace it. (The two books were Falling Upward by Richard Rohr and Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer.)
Parker Palmer describes a season of deep darkness and depression in which he felt his true self stalked him: “When I was finally able to turn around and ask, ‘What do you want?’ The answer was clear: I want you to embrace this descent into hell as a journey toward selfhood—and a journey toward God.” This concept struck me deeply. It was enormously scary. It felt like the darkness would engulf me and snuff me out. But I tried it. I started leaning into the darkness, not isolated and alone, but through therapy, recovery groups, reading, journaling, and meditation.
I started hunting down other resources for exploring the darkness from a philosophical and theological perspective. I found Walter Brueggemann’s work on the “Hiddenness of Yahweh” and the Psalms of Lament (Theology of the Old Testament, The Message of the Psalms, and Spirituality of the Psalms), Matthew Fox’s chapters on “Befriending Darkness” (Original Blessing), Jurgen Moltmann’s The Crucified God, and Dante’s legendary midlife crises in the Inferno to be trustworthy guides.
I have by no means mastered the art of embracing the darkness. Sometimes I just curse at it. But I am learning and growing. Recently, I was in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, and I did some cross country snow skiing at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. After a few hours of skiing, I browsed the bookstore in the Visitor Center. I ran across a section of books dealing with the topic of “Dark Sky.” I’m a book junkie, so I was mesmerized. They had an assortment of books for children and adults teaching people to cherish the darkness of the night sky: Wild Nights Out, The End of Night, and Let There Be Night are a few of the titles.
I love nature and have spent countless nights falling asleep in my goose down sleeping bag starring at the stars in the high Rocky Mountains. It’s spectacular. But I never realized that there is a nonprofit organization which strives to educate and protect the night skies until my recent trip to the Visitor Center at Black Canyon of the Gunnison.
It’s called the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA; darksky.org). The website speaks of how artificial light at night has revolutionized the way we live and work outdoors, but it has come at a price. “When used indiscriminately, outdoor lighting can disrupt wildlife, impact human health, waste money and energy, contribute to climate change, and block our view of the universe.” Since 1988, IDA has led a movement to protect night from light pollution.
Light pollution. I’ve heard the term. I’ve flown around the planet at night and seen the patches of artificial city lights which bespeckle the earth. I have also enjoyed seeing the brilliance of the night sky while sleeping under the stars at 10,000 feet elevation far away from artificial light—a night sky which is alive with shooting stars, constellations, and galaxies.
The dark sky collection of books got me thinking about my own experience with emotional darkness. It’s easy to be afraid of the dark, but it can be exhilarating to explore the dark as well. I can think of hikes I have done in the dark with only the secondary light of a full moon. It’s beautiful. Then I got to thinking about “light pollution.” How much of our emotional landscape is polluted by artificial light in the form of fear, anxiety, avoidance, addiction, numbing, false identities, and illusions? How attached have we become to artificial light? Maybe we need the darkness to speak to us. Maybe that’s why there is a Saturday in Holy Week. What does the darkness of the grave say to us? What does it reveal to us about who we are in this vast universe of light and darkness?
Sometimes descent is the way to God. Dante’s epic, mythical journey began with the darkness of midlife crisis:
Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
About the woods is hard—so tangled and rough
And savage that thinking of it now, I feel
The old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter
And yet, to treat the good I found there as well
I’ll tell you what I saw…
(From the Inferno of Dante, Robert Pinsky trans.)
Shalom
©realfredherron, 2023
