Joanne Cahoon, D.Min. holds a bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies, master’s degree in Religion/Pastoral Ministry, graduate certificates in spiritual direction and in spirituality studies, and a Doctor of Ministry degree from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, where her specialization was spirituality and practical theology. She has graced us with today’s post on Dark & Light – Live All Fully.
“To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark, go without sight.”
(excerpt from poem To Know the Dark by Wendell Berry)
In late November and early December we go into the dark – enter the winter – with a light in hand. We are Advent candlelit and then brightened by Christmas tree beauty, fires and décor, and the quiet-noisy-rambunctious-riotous-colorful-aromatic-playful-holy days of angels and Good News and Incarnation and shepherds and stars and donkeys and kings and Glorias. And we walk into a cave – a stable – where we find an intimate new family we remember and recreate in Nativities and cards and carols we sing or send or visit in the season. We know the light. We taste it, sense it, lean on it, and we know indeed that we are the people who walked in darkness but have seen a great light. Christ is Born!
Still, it seems that somehow as we move past Christmas and into the middle of January to the end of February, in the deeper weeks of winter’s dark, our outer world echoes this second line quoted from Berry. The sun is still more in hiding than visibly present, the sunsets still so early, the outside still too cold for much of walks and wanderings. And our utter inability to see, to understand, to grasp, to make meaning, to travel, to strike matches and brighten whatever inner and outer abysses we know – these can seem much more real in the gloom of grayer days. And, let’s face it, we don’t generally love being clueless or blind. Cold or without light.
There is value though in learning how to be in the dark, and not just in learning how to light it. There is a value in not just living through to mid-March and lengthening days and spring — yes, they WILL come — but in courageously living here too, with whatever the dark is that speaks to us, tutors us, terrifies us, leaves us sightless and without clear direction. It is not easy. But it is part of the rhythm of fully entering our unique human lives.
“Having life to the full” “abundantly” – the Johannine Jesus tells us that’s what he came that we might have [John 10:10]. Given December’s celebration of the Incarnation, we could say that’s what the Word made Flesh entered into himself – this life to the full/being fully human thing, while always the Beloved of God. He came into the dark with a candle, and then he went into the dark and was without sight. Jesus – and each of us in our turn, in our living – know dark and light, vulnerability and cold, flickering hope and comfort, seemingly long stretches of gray, questions, abysses, beauty, grief, love, and all the seasons and rhythms of living. We keep company with each other, and with Jesus, walking with him and learning from him how to be in whatever inner and outer season fully, embracing all of what it is to be human, graced and Beloved. Not ducking darkness or holding onto it, not judging all by our abilities to understand or hold with clarity – just living it all fully, freely, and in step with a vision beyond our dreaming or naming. And maybe the mid-late winter season invites us to hunker into this commitment to be with it all.
And P.S.
It matters that we each choose to do so. Our unique fully lived lives matter to the whole, and we give them to each other in ways beyond our knowing, and beyond our measuring. (I know I receive from lives lived long before mine, and lived fully. It matters that we gain the courage and confidence to do the same.)
Wendell Berry’s poem To Know the Dark in its entirety reads:
“To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark, go without sight.
And find that that dark too blooms and sings.
And is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.”
For the dark too blooms and sings, yet is still dark. But there is life and movement, and mayhap angels and guides there too.
Blessed winter, all!
Join us for Friends Day of Prayer which will invite us to actively enter our human experience with hope — even February times — because of what is really real, truly true — about God, us, life. Guided by Joanne Cahoon.
https://bonsecoursrcc.org/event/friends-day-of-prayer-joanne-cahoon/