When You Can Endure the Dark

WHEN YOU CAN ENDURE

When the words stop

And you can endure the silence

That reveals your heart's pain

Of emptiness or that great wrenching-sweet longing,

That is the time to try and listen to what the Beloved's eyes

Most want to say.

We have not come here to take prisoners, 

But to surrender ever more deeply 

To freedom and love.

~ Hafiz

Beautiful image taken from Dr David G Benner's FB page

“I can’t even see my hands in front of my face!” My younger sister exclaimed as we lay side by side on a dusty old mattress. I reached over in the pitch blackness, found her shoulder with my fingers and followed her arm up to touch her hands wiggling in the air. 

“I can’t see them either.”  I replied nervously, the darkness set off tiny acrobats in my stomach. We listened to our staccato breathing, throwing our hands out and drawing them close to our faces stopping only when our skin sensed their nearness. Then we took turns feeling each other’s hands to discover how close we got to our face. Giggles escaped into the blackness. Then outright laughter; hilarity is easier on the psyche than fear. We huddled close and repeated our dare to spend a whole night in the dark attic without a light.

If I was around ten, that night, my sister would have been eight. I don’t remember if we spent the whole night in the dark, if we slept at all, but I’m pretty sure her eight was braver than my ten. 

Kids are often afraid of the dark. Even as adults, most of us depend heavily on our sense of sight. Unless we are blind or become blind and get used to permanent dark, we feel safer with enough light to see. This blog post is different that what I usually write. My soul has been experiencing a season of darkness, obscurity, unseeing, some sadness that usually doesn't exist in the spring. More typical for the season of autumn and preparing for winter, feeling this way when the rest of the country is growing and blooming and sunny, has me pondering what such darkness is about.  

Yesterday, my grandson, Jude, lay quietly on the floor while I changed his diaper.  I hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights; suddenly he proclaimed, “Dere’s a dragon in here!”  

Was he afraid of the dark or was his imagination coming into play?  I calmly asked him to tell me the dragon’s color. Not knowing his color names or not getting the reaction he wanted, he pulled his arms in tight around his torso and whispered, “I’m scared.”  

Stephanie Landis photography

“Well, we better get out of here then!” I whispered back, tickled him while pulling him to a stand then grabbed his hand. He repeated, bedder get out of here, and joyfully shrieked as we ran away from the dragon. I’m sure his sacredness was part game, yet I do notice how we don’t give kids much chance to develop their courage in darkness. Lights are just too accessible.  

Perhaps this is symbolic of our spiritual development too. We often don't take the time to practice being awake in the dark. How well do we handle not seeing, not being in control, not knowing the future, not being able to see or sense God, not seeing our interior growth or developing insight until the ‘aha moment’ is ready to be revealed?  Are we stuck in black and white answers to the questions: what is light and what is dark?  Is dark evil, is light good? How do we develop our spiritual muscles of handling despair, sadness, depression, loss of the sense of God’s presence, desolation when culture norms are all about happiness, positivism, control, God is Light and sunshine, buck up be courageous, don’t air your dirty laundry and
 keep your act together?

shutterstock.com  -full moon moving across night sky

As a child, I was very aware of my bent towards melancholy. And how little such a personality is tolerated or encouraged. I grew up believing my empathy and sadness was wrong, dark, maybe even letting the devil get a foothold in me.  Religious language was strong on assigning good and bad to light and dark. Even today, spiritual leaders spin their whole approach to life and faith on the axis of feel good positive thinking and sunshiny beliefs.  I’ve struggled at times to understand my ability to hold darkness, sadness, and the waxing and waning of both joy and sorrow.  Is my capacity to hold sadness for myself and others a gift or a lack of faith? I’m leaning towards seeing it as a gift.  

under our pine tree

Even in this strange season for me, opposite of spring energy, I'm learning to trust obscurity, and the dark. I'm sure I'd still fear being in pitch blackness, or deep physiological-psychological depression, or hiding in a dark storm cellar waiting for a tornado to pass, but I like ordinary dark. When my family can’t find me at night, they go outside and look for the moon; I’m usually found under a canopy of tree and night sky, gazing up...

The night feels refreshing, a break from the brightness of day. 

I’ve also come to trust the way the Spirit moves below our surface, the way the soul goes through darkness in preparation for shedding what is no longer necessary. In this odd season of my sadness in the midst of spring flowers, I recognize the end of a very busy winter of book writing, dachshund fostering, babysitting, birthdays and holidays, the need for rest and rejuvenation, the melancholy that always comes after I've given myself completely to a project and now it's completed - a natural rhythm for me. (my co-authored book, A Spacious Heart: Room for Spiritual Awakening is coming out in September!) This season of completion and wondering what comes next, along with different times of sorrow or uncertainty and melancholy for other reasons has taught me to hold and respect what is happening in my soul as I wait for the next season, the next drawing of Spirit, the next direction.

my camera going all wonky- interesting result

While I have nothing against positive belief systems, my own spiritual gifts to not seem to include constant up-beatness, bright inner sunshine, bubbly joy and cosmic happiness. I’m not talking about pessimism or optimism.  I’m referring to our cultural repugnance for anyone telling raw, un-prettied up stories, having emotional displays that go on too long or are less than victorious, messy spirituality, messy living, or just not having it all together.  

 I’ve noticed that as my capacity for holding mystery, obscurity, sadness and sorrow expands, so does my willingness to celebrate and see life as good. No matter what is occurring, in my inner or outer landscape, I find safety and rest in the Beloved's gaze. I've noticed this expansion in others who are improving their walking in the dark. 

Pretending to not have dark times, painful times, inner or outer chaos damages our spirits. Keeping secrets kill our souls. I hope our culture is moving toward more safety in telling our pain, of sharing our messiness as we journey toward healing and greater loving. We all need to listen more, to encourage and hold each other in our unpolished life stories. And, we need to be gentle with our own becoming, so we can then extend gentleness to the process in others.

Macbeth Motifs by meganlui | Publish with Glogster! ww.glogster.com

When, I had cancer, I was often surprised by the battle and sunshine imagery sent to me in cards, emails, spoken advice: ‘you’re a trouper and you can fight this’ - God won’t give you more than you can handle - this is a test to see if you will stay positive and fight. Sometimes, I felt such talk eased their fears more than ministered to mine.  Who of us hasn’t uttered trite platitudes in the face of something uncontrollable?  While I was so grateful for everyone supporting me, and appreciated any comment given, I realized I mostly sensed God sitting there in the dark with me, feeling sad to over my loss of health, sharing my melancholy. 

I often wonder if it is ever okay in our culture to collapse in a heap and just be sad?  Is it ever okay to give up, or choose not to overcome?  Is our faith only good when we’re winning? What is winning, anyway?  Who is to say dying or giving up isn’t winning?  How do we know that sadness and lamenting doesn't increase our capacity to bear other’s pain or thrive even when life is not all sunshine? 

Barbara Brown Taylor gives me hope in her newest book Learning to Walk in the Dark:  She describes “solar spirituality” – bright and full of light and happy- in comparison to lunar spirituality of those who often find God in the darkness.  She writes, “My spiritual gifts do not seem to include the gift of solar spirituality. Instead, I have been given the gift of lunar spirituality, in which the divine light available to me waxes and wanes with the season.”

another crazy camera shot of the full moon

I love Taylor’s lunar metaphor. It helps me accept my own gifts.  Such gifts make it possible for me to sit with a friend, listening to her ragged, raw sobs over the loss of her son, and carry some of her despair. It definitely helped when I held another friend’s hand in the car after a fun evening of dining and laughter, listening to the story of abuse pouring out of her. I remember how dark it was in that corner of the restaurant parking lot, how safe the dark cocoon of the car felt, safe enough to spill secret horrors. I had no words, couldn't say one thing about God and light and a fighting spirit.  I could only hold her hand and dwell in the presence of God who sat in the darkness with us.

Even as I am aware of deep emotions, deep seasons in me, I've had a lifetime of compartmentalizing them since my stoic culture judged emotion and melancholy as untrustworthy and spiritual immaturity. So, life  presents continual challenges for me to be present to all my own emotions, moods, and seasons as I listen deeply to my own and others' life experiences, and not shelve or put anxiety,sorrow or sadness in a compartment over here or over there in a blind attempt to make life easier. I notice my gift of lunar spirituality, and I notice it's false twin: the sinking into a funk that is more about avoidance than wholeness. I must always find ways of expression and release or my body will express my emotions for me, sometimes to the point of illness. I'm grateful to Barbara Brown Taylor for saying so exquisitely what I have struggled to articulate.  For writing such an encouraging book, helping us all learn to walk in the dark, to share our secrets in safe places so we can stretch towards wholeness.  For showing all of us how to listen to what the Beloved's eyes most want to say.....

Joyfully, 

Sharon

"When I listen to college students talk about faith, beliefs are what interest them most: Do you believe in the virgin birth? Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins? Do you believe that only Christians go to heaven? No one asks, “On what is your heart set?” No one asks, “What powers do you most rely on? What is the hope that gives meaning to your life? Those are the questions of faith, not belief. The answers to them are not written down in any book, and they have a way of shifting in the dark. " 

~ Barbara Brown Taylor  Learning to Walk in the Dark