Reveling in the Darkness
In a poem, we sometimes read on Christmas Eve, Carl Sandburg asks
Shall we look up now at stars in Winter
And call them always sweeter friends
Because this story of a Mother and a Child
Never is told with the stars left out?
It’s a question that points to the power of presence in the story of the Nativity–the presence of the star. The star appears in the Gospel of Matthew, in the verses that recount the journey and arrival of the magi. They stop in Jerusalem asking for the one born king of the Jews, saying they observed his star in the east. After a conversation with Herod, they continue their journey, following the star until it stops over the place where the child is–the storied stable in the condensed timeline of the narrative. The presence of the star in this part of the story has meant that it has appeared in song and poetry and visual images of the season ever after, and still does today, nearly two millennia after the setting of the story (for the story wasn’t immediately written down and gathered into the canon of Christianity). This year I'm taking a cue from Sandburg but, cherished and lovely as the star is, I’m asking a different question or maybe it's the same question from a different perspective: shouldn’t we also always call the darkness a sweeter friend because this story of a Mother and a Child/Never is told with the dark night left out? What, to take it a step further, if we were to consider darkness holy because this story takes place at night?
Well, to a degree, we do consider the night holy. At least that night. We sing, “O holy night,” and “silent night, holy night.” And all the countless poetic, musical and visual representations of the Star of Bethlehem or the Christmas Star, of necessity, also mention or depict the darkness of a night sky–because as that prominent American theologian Arlo Guthrie is said to have said, “you can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in.”
But despite this complementary relationship between darkness and stars, we more often honor the stars–not simply in our poetry and song, and in our artwork, but also with our lived and spontaneous awe–than we do the dark night. This is true regardless of the season. We wish upon stars. We drive away from city light pollution whenever a meteor shower is expected in order to better see the light show. We call our celebrities stars. We use a star rating system for restaurants and movies and mobile apps. The night is usually only a foil. Just a place to stick the light of the star.
Yet, darkness, particularly the darkness of night, is as much a presence in the story of the Nativity as the star, and even as the human characters, the angels, the animals gathered around the manger, and the sheep in the field. The night, the darkness, adds depth and poignancy to the tale. The night makes “no room at the inn” even less friendly, less hospitable, less welcoming of the couple who have traveled to Bethlehem as required by law and are expecting a birth imminently. But the night, the darkness, also makes the stable cozier, more protective, more intimate. We imagine, at least I do, (having seen hundreds of Nativity scenes) the small family, the animals, the visitors, in a golden glow, not threatened by darkness but wrapped in it as in a protective clock. Rather than endangering the new life and those who witnessed and paid homage to it, the dark night cradles them all.
Many years ago a Unitarian Universalist minister wrote in a December newsletter column, “if you can’t be the star this year, be the night.” I didn't understand that admonition at the time. I understood that darkness was, and is, necessary for the star to be visible, that it is in that regard an integral part of the story, but what did it mean for a person to be the night?
This was decades before the recent, widespread in some circles, holy-justice shift toward reclaiming and acknowledging the blessings of darkness. So the only way I could understand “be the night, be the dark”, was as an invitation to be grumpy, if one couldn't be jolly. To be sullen, if one couldn't be joyful. To be angry or resentful, if one couldn't be loving. I had an inkling that this invitation to be what and who one is in the moment, rather than striving to achieve or pretend some expected sparkly, brilliant, seasonal gaiety – I had a sort of half understanding that this invitation was itself a not insignificant blessing proffered to a congregation some of whom certainly could not be the star that Christmas season. Still, I felt uneasy at the thought of an active, deliberate choice to turn away from all this season is supposed to be–a celebration of light, the birth of love, the joy of believing in goodness in the hearts of all. I was unsettled by what I read, but I remembered it.
Fast forward through college and divinity school and thirty years of minister and the cultural shift I mentioned toward celebrating the gifts and blessings of darkness, and I’ve come to understand that minister’s invitation more fully, and without reservation. For one thing, I’ve come to recognize, over those same years, that I cannot sleep deeply and restfully without almost complete darkness. For most of us, the quiet embrace of night creates optimal conditions for sleep. It also–though the digital revolution of 24 hour availability has changed this–night can also offer respite from the busyness and motion and noise of daytime–especially as we prepare for the perfect or mediocre but quite acceptable Yule/Christmas/Hanukkah. My fuller understanding of what it might mean to be the night, and why we might want to be, has been also been informed by the wisdom of poets such as Berry and Rilke in this morning’s readings, who teach us that “the dark, too, blooms and sings”. And that the darkness pulls everything in, gathers in all of life, creating the possibility “that a great presence is moving near [us].”
If we can’t be the star, glittering, dazzling, casting light upon all, we can be the night, manifesting quiet, calm, comfort in our being to such a degree that not only are we blessed by the relief of it, but those around us are blessed too–as they are pulled in by the gravity and song of our holy darkness, perhaps to sense some great presence there, cradled in embrace of our holy darkness and offered respite there from frenetic holly, jollying even if they enjoy frenetic holly, jollying most of the time.
I almost didn’t go to the Coastal Interfaith Green Team Solstice event at Wesley Gardens yesterday afternoon. While I told Kevin that it might be an unfinished sermon that would keep me away, the truth is the event just sounded too … well, tame for me. I mean, I have attended pagan winter solstice celebrations at which a section of the previous spring’s maypole was burned in the bonfire, and the drumming and singing and dancing and feasting went on for hours. I have presided over some Winter Solstice celebrations during which everyone was invited to dip a pine bough in a bowl full of water and gold glitter, and then doused themselves with liquid light. And I’ve led other Winter Solstice celebrations at which we rang every jingle bell, handbell, and souvenir china bell we could get our hands on at the local thrift store to scare away the darkness, and during which we have wrote the things we want to leave behind in the old year and the things we want to welcome in the new year on scraps of flash paper, so that when we tossed them into the fire, they would instantly burst spectacularly into flame. How could the solitary pursuit of labyrinth walking and the contemplative practice journaling possibly compare with glitter and flash, potluck feasting, and wild ringing and drumming?
But to revel can mean both to enjoy oneself in a lively, noisy way and to take pleasure in, often quietly or privately. And yesterday I remembered that I intended all along to talk this morning about how we might revel in the darkness in these two distinct yet equally soul satisfying and spirit nourishing ways: one a kinesthetic kind of revelry that darkness evokes from us as a response to ancient fears about the disappearance of the sun, and for which darkness also creates the perfect backdrop; the second is a quieter, more interior reveling in the pleasures that darkness brings. The first a singing, dancing, drumming, bellringing, flashes of light kind of reveling in the darkness; the second an exhaling, stretching with satisfaction, cozying in, snuggling down kind of reveling in the darkness.
If I’m going to preach about very different ways of reveling in the darkness, I said to myself, what can it hurt to take part in a different, quieter, more solitary kind of Solstice celebration? So I put on my red tunic and got into the car.
It was a heartening two hours in a lovely setting among good company–including almost a dozen members of this congregation. There were no drums. No dancing. No feasting (though I was offered a tender, tasty sugar cookie). No bursts of flash paper flaring wishes and releases into nothingness. And there was too much daylight for my taste–though it was the kind of daylight that most feeds my soul–the long, golden rays of late afternoon in the days just on either side of the solstice. Despite all this, or because of it, those hours were, after all, an opportunity to revel in the nighttime of the year, if the year were twenty-four hours long–even though it was neither dark nor night night. That was the gift that came to me from Kevin’s invitation and my reluctant acceptance of it–the revelation that we can claim the blessings of darkness even in the light of day: slowing down, listening deeply for what is unseen, drawing near to kin and kindred spirits.
We talk a lot this time of year (and in difficult times such as we’ve had so often in recent years), about finding or being or making light in the midst of darkness. That’s an important skill, a holy endeavor. What an epiphany it was for me to awaken to the knowledge that the opposite may be just as important and holy–to find, create or be the darkness in the midst of light, if the gifts of darkness are needed. I think my understanding of that minister’s invitation to be the night came into fullness at Wesley Gardens yesterday afternoon: be who and what you are, yes; embody the gifts of darkness to your own benefit and the benefit of those around you, yes; and help transform the light of the season from tinsel to holy fire by the presence of your sacred darkness. That’s what makes the story whole (whatever story we’re telling): the light and the dark both sacred. The light of the star and the dark of the night. The holy light of human souls and the holy darkness of human souls. The light of day and the darkness of night. The light and dark of earth’s seasons.
The shortest day and the longest night, here in the northern hemisphere, have come and gone for another year, but plenty of celestial darkness still lies before us between now and the Vernal Equinox in March. May you revel in it with song and silence; dance and stillness; solitude and companionship; reaching out and drawing in. Amen.
