An Illuminated Place

An early retreat by candle light on this Winter Solstice Day

The longest night has arrived. Here in the Northern Hemisphere where I write, the day has been spent. It’s nearly the year’s end, and we find ourselves sitting with the darkness on this Winter Solstice.

I am writing and sending this a day early, watching the dawn arrive with sweet pastel colors this morning, and preparing to press into the longest night with an annual event that reminds me how the darkness is an illuminated place.

Tonight will mark the 11th Winter Solstice event that I’ve orchestrated, with the hands and hearts of many in the Shepherdstown community, where we come together to breathe, move, feast on food and companionship. Some arrive carrying a heavier load than the year before; some arrive able to hold the heavy with their presence. Each year, I remember the words of the Psalmist: “Even the darkness is not dark to thee.” And though I may not have eyes to see it right away, there shines always on this night the possibility for more love, joy, hope, and wonder than I knew possible before the darkness arrived.

I am contemplating darkness this morning and all that arrives in it, and I agree with the mystical theologian poet and meditation teacher, Fred Lamotte, who writes:

“In the North we enter the longest night. It feels like early evening all afternoon. For many these holidays are not bright with the Christ-all radiance of the newborn sun, but fraught with inward midnights…

Yet the mystics of all our wisdom traditions share one message about this fierce quiet onslaught of night. If we have the courage to embrace our unlit places with no resistance, they deepen into boundless Being, softening like bruises, until they seep a mysterious glow…

Darkness is not the opposite of light, darkness is the womb of light.”

I have found myself aware of the ways that darkness allows me to welcome light, hunger to welcome being fed, sadness to welcome joy. They are not opposites; indeed, light is held in the womb of darkness, hunger in the womb of nourishment, joy in that of sorrow. Each one held together, not opposite but bound around and within one another.

Once, I ached for a way of life filled with all the brightness and busy and frills I could think up. Now, I ache for the quiet to show me another kind of beautiful illumination, for the winter to teach me the truth of what it means to slow, to still, to trust that spring’s bud is in the bulb I can not see. Like a strand of lights, now I know that too much brightness means I miss the twinkling of wonder that shimmers more so in the dark night. Maybe there’s less for me to do, and more for me to allow to unfold.

In this season, friends, I pray that the darknesses in each of us—you and me—are held, cradled, and that this holding is enough for us to trust, to be led toward illumination, to wonder, to hope, and perhaps even to joy.

Here is a final moment for you to spend with the music and tradition of honoring St. Lucia and the bringing of light: Lucia: A Tradition of Light