Darkness

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own.
There you can be sure you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb tonight.
The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.
You must learn one thing: the world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness
to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

~ David Whyte ~

In our world, and especially in places like Minnesota where the winter brings a harsh bite of cold, shorter days, and the darkest of nights, it is common to hear people talk about “Seasonal Affective Disorder”. This is a fancy phrase for a sadness, a tiredness, maybe even a depression that seems to sink into people as the darkness enfolds. Once you have experienced it, you start to prepare for it. You know that as the winter comes, so will the sorrow, faint at first and then ever more present and substantial as the darkness increases, the light fades. You settle in, hold on tight, prepare for the darkness just as you prepare for a plane to take off or the immanent death of one you love.

These feelings resonate with me, especially as I get older. I too seem to seep into an unusual melancholy, accompanied by a slight distrust for the world, as the temperature begins to drop and the day gives way to night.

I am beginning to wonder, however, how much of these feelings are of our own making? How much of this “seasonal affective disorder” is merely another example of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Most definitely sunlight contains Vitamin D and that has been proven good for the Spirit. But, still, when did we decide that darkness was bad? Instead, why can’t darkness merely be a time for quiet, rest, deeper reflection maybe?

Tonight there is supposed to be a meteor shower. Lasting for several hours, there are supposed to be up to 100 shooting stars each hour. Amazing things happen in the dark. Beautiful, mysterious, breathtaking things happen while the rest of the world is asleep.

“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”

As we stand in the dark, as we marvel at the stars, as we breathe in the quietness of our own presence, may we find the courage to trust that we are enough for ourselves.

May we believe that darkness can bring us joy and hope, just as much as lightness can do the same.

Most of all, may we stop blaming the darkness for our sorrow. May we realize, instead, that whatever or whoever it is that is truly keeping us from being fully alive this season or ever, is indeed, too small for us.