Archive for the ‘Darkness’ Tag
Today marks the winter solstice when darkness reaches its full power, chasing daylight into retreat. This looming darkness and cold is SAD for many (an apt acronym for Seasonal Affective Disorder), especially after the holiday season blinks out, especially in the dreary Northwest, overcast from September to May. In the past I put my head down and trudged through the darkness, holding my breath until spring buds. I have seen winter darkness as a killjoy, sucking the life out of all the earth. Last week Kimberly told me hope highlights the misery of the present. We hope for the good that we now lack. I have often used hope to give me stamina in the dark, as though the goal is simply to hang on until something better comes. But what if the dark is full of its own unique blessing, like dark chocolate, then I miss it by wishing it gone and pushing it away.
Please don’t equate my new perspective with the toxic forced happiness which tries to shout down misery. That is just another way of rejecting the darkness rather than receiving it. Telling myself “this isn’t so bad” or “others have it worse” or “be grateful for what you do have” is just another way to stifle and reject the blessing of winter. Sadly I have been blind to the goodness that darkness brings. Darkness is a safe womb, a quiet rest after tough days, a calming from excess stimulation, an invitation to turn inward. Darkness is an invitation to self-care and inner growth.
I was raised to believe work was the good, so rest curtailed the good–it was necessary, like pooping, but just as useless. Resting was unproductive and usually a sign of self-indulgence or weakness that should be overcome as much as possible. It was cousin to laziness. But what if rest, like the space between musical notes, was an equal partner in creating good? What if rest was just as blessed? “Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work.” The one day that was blessed and sanctified was the rest day!
Darkness was part of creation itself, part of what God called “very good,” and not only because it invited rejuvenating rest. I think of the many ways I might welcome the blessing of the cold, dark, wet, drab months ahead, possibilities start churning. I want to partner with the winter, not fight it. Instead of trying to create color out of greyish hues, I want to find the unique beauty in black-and-white. Instead of just sheltering against the cold, I want to lean into the delights of coziness–hot drinks, fuzzy pajamas and cuddling up are so pleasurable in winter. I want my indoor life in winter to be as rich as my outdoor life in summer and to enjoy the outdoors in ways that embrace the season. If you don’t have a ball you can’t play soccer, but you could play tag… or invent a new game entirely. In fact the absence of a ball stimulates greater creativity! Winter is not a season of deprivation, but of new possibilities.
Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains within the sound of silence
For weeks I have been trying to fight off the soul-sucking depression that envelopes me. When I can work through the darkness–uncover the reasons and respond with healthy steps–my depression turns into an instrument of growth, but for now my insight is deaf and blind, and so, blocked from any resolution, I try to distract myself with work or entertainment, naps or walks or cuddling with my pooches, just to keep the misery at bay. That fixes nothing, simply postpones the falling night, but at least it makes life manageable for a while longer. Still somewhere underneath, the darkness gathers strength pushing more often and irresistibly passed my efforts to block it. The muddled mutterings of discouragement and hopelessness become louder, more insistent, and having nothing to counter the assault, I find each day a little more of my emotional footing crumbling.
Matthew 1:4 And Nahshon fathered Salmon.
The name Salmon appears only once in the Old Testament, at the end of Ruth in a four-verse genealogy. (He appears one other time as Salma in a mirror genealogy of Chronicles).
In the town of Bethlehem, Salmon’s son Boaz plays supporting actor in the romance play Ruth. As a historical introduction to Ruth, the book of Judges tells of the steep moral decline in Israel, ending with a 3-day civil war in which tens of thousands of Israelis are killed. Bethlehem was at the epicenter of this huge national crisis for it all began with one of their own daughters being brutally gang-raped and dismembered. Without a timeline we do not know whether Salmon was a soldier in this battle, but he certainly struggled against the corruption that engulfed his country.
Salmon lived in the days of the Judges, and that book finishes ominously, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” But springing up from this maelstrom of evil is Ruth, a book of hope, whose last verse reads: “To Boaz was born Obed, and to Obed, Jesse, and to Jesse was born David.” That is to say, King David, forefather of the promised Messiah. Yet Salmon had no glimpse of this hope. He died in the night that swallowed his nation.
In spite of this, Salmon (according to Matthew’s genealogy) was in the center of the world’s great channel of redemption. Without knowing it, he was the father from whom the Christ was to be born. His life and history and progeny were surrounded by God’s richest outpouring of grace, the giving of His very Self to the world. How might this realization have lit up his darkness with hope, his trials with patience, his life with purpose? And amazingly, we are each in that very place of Salmon… in a far better place, actually.
We are not simply in a long line of succession through whom God’s grace will eventually come, but we are today channels of God’s grace to the world. The Messiah has come. He is here. If Christ is in us, then He is shining out from us to the world, despite how troubled and confused and pointless our lives may seem or how foreboding the shadows. I am his candlestick, and it is mine to burn, however feebly. It is His to shine that light where He sees fit, and He always makes the best use of every flicker. I am His vital partner in this bedraggled world’s salvation.
Janathan Grace Reflections 