Embrace the dark ...

 'This the season. For the last few days, our little Christmas lights adorning the front and back aspects of the house have turned on around three in the afternoon. They switch off well after nine in the morning. The timer is set "dusk to dawn." During the day, with overcast skies, it has hardly been light. We are in the darkest part of the year. 

Brisk walks, warm lights, hot drinks, log fires—I love this time of year. Of all the seasons the darkest is also the most magical.

Yet in our culture darkness is something to be feared. Horrible things live in the dark. Unspeakable deed's happen in the dark. The "Dark Lord" is to be feared above all. Who wants to experience the "dark night of the soul"? In a misunderstood universe, the binary of either/or means that we must choose one and only one. One is good, one is bad. One is to be nourished, the other staved. Choose one and vilify the other; embrace one, reject the other.

And darkness is always to be rejected. "Put away the deeds of darkness. Live as children of light," an early Christian apologist urged. The ancient trope has played into humanity's worse impulses—to exalt the light is to reject the dark.Transfer light and darkness, and hence goodness and badness, to the color of people's skin and you have a cultural and religious legitimation of racism. 

Contemplate the yin/yang symbol. Allow its meanings to emerge. Neither black nor white is prominent. As black recedes so white strengthens, as white decreases so black increases. White contains black and black white. There is no either/or, only both/and.

Darkness and light are complementary opposites. We only know light because we experience dark. Neither is better than the other. To keep prisoners in constant light 24 hours a day is a cruel form of torture. Utter darkness for long periods deprives the body of nourishment. Most living things starved of light ultimately die. Light and dark are both essential, for we wither away if we lose either. Light follows dark, and dark follows light. Even the dark night of the soul contains the mystery of hidden transformation. The dark night is the prelude to the morning light.

The cultural trope of dark as "bad" is so deeply embedded that I doubt we will ever be free from it. But the divine is found both in inapproachable light and in impenetrable darkness. 

With a different perspective the darkness is nothing to be feared. At Christmas and Epiphany, embrace the light. But for now, snuggle under a favorite blanket. Read a beloved book. Enjoy the magic. Embrace the dark.

+Ab. Andy