I have come to love the darkness. I don't mean darkness as evil. You might have assumed that I did, which is understandable. Darkness and evil have long been conflated. The idea that the two are one and the same is infused into our language, thus our meanings and perspectives of reality. We understand darkness to connote evil when we hear phrases like dark magic, dark forces, dark humor, or the dark side because these terms refer to something scary, sad, wicked, deviant, ominous, demonic, dying, destructive, damning, negative, unconventional, or generally undesirable.
I used to call the winter solstice "the turning of the tides." As the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice marks the imminent return of the light. To my former self, it was a day of hope. The increasing light certainly was better than decreasing light, as most would assume. The days would start to get longer. Warmth would eventually return. Things will get better. Difficulty will subside. The saying, "It's always darkest before the dawn" holds a similar tone. Hold on to hope. Just when you feel you can’t take any more sorrow, things will get better. Light will come. This same message is told as the meaning of Christmas, the light’s birth. Christmas brings a light shining in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it (John 1:5). Most interpretations I’ve heard of this verse suggest that goodness will triumph over evil, as if light means good.
Sure, that’s a nice idea. Wouldn’t it be great if the light of Jesus coming into the dark world meant that the good actually did overtake the bad? If that idea had actually come true, maybe then we wouldn’t have experienced horrific atrocities over the past two millennia. Maybe then wars wouldn’t have happened. Maybe we wouldn’t have witnessed the horrors of the holocaust or currently be witnessing the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. Maybe then six million Congolese people wouldn’t have lost their lives and another 6.5 million wouldn’t have lost their homes. Maybe men wouldn’t try to colonize lands and torment everyone within their occupation. Maybe then terrorist groups like Hamas wouldn’t exist. Maybe then Israel wouldn’t have bombed 20,000 Palestinian lives into oblivion. Maybe then political parties wouldn’t cater to the wealthy and powerful to increase their own sense of power and control. Maybe then cops wouldn’t kill Black people. Maybe people wouldn’t get sexually assaulted. Maybe then gay and trans youth wouldn’t go homeless. Maybe then people wouldn’t kill themselves.
Speakers of English use the word dark to describe that which is bad or evil, so darkness does mean bad or evil. Words mean whatever people use them to mean. White supremacy certainly had a hand in this. What could life be like if we imagined darkness to mean something else? Dr. Cynthia B. Dillard encourages endarkened perspectives of reality, ones that expose the power structures that have long suppressed the Black feminist experience - of oppression, genius, resistance, magic, joy, and wholeness. No one group (ahem, white men) gets to dictate how others experience their lives or how their knowledge is produced. Endarkened epistemologies examine every person’s realities as socially and culturally situated. They view the individual as emerging only from the community, while every person becomes their own unique self as a responsibility to the community.
Perhaps we can use the terms darkness and light to mean something entirely different than evil and good, respectively. What if we started to use the word light as both good and bad? What if we talked about darkness as both good and bad?
After all,
Darkness brings rest.
Darkness invites stillness.
Darkness holds mystery.
In the darkness we see the cosmos.
In the darkness the seedling germinates.
In the darkness the womb asks her vast questions.
Over the past several years, I have come use the word dark to describe that which is unseen.
Sometimes that which is unseen, or unknown, is a “good” thing: the wrapped, hidden gift just for you, the wonder of the unseen cosmos, anticipation during pregnancy, excitement about adventures yet to happen, the awe of the unknown inner workings of a system, the curiosity of the learner who wants to see and know more, or the faith in the seed’s movement underground.
And of course, sometimes that which is unseen, or unknown, is a “bad” thing. There’s a reason people keep a truth hidden. It’s scary or uncomfortable, so we don’t want to see it. It’s easier to pretend it’s not our reality. It's easy for fear to creep into that which we cannot see or know. It's easy for shame to compel people into hiding and into lies, into that which is hidden, into darkness. It’s easy for people to talk in ways that hide their true intentions so they can remain in control of what is known. It’s easy to self-delude in order to stay comfortable. In other words, it’s easy to keep the truth hidden from yourself.
So of course people assign negativity to that which is unseen, or in the dark. But that which is seen, or in the light, can be negative, too. We’ve tipped the scales too far when talking about the value of light and dark, as though dark is only evil and as though light is only good. That association is a lie. Dark also bears good. Light also bears evil.
My coming to love the darkness resulted from a long, arduous process of exploring my darkness, my mystery, my unseen. For nearly 40 years of life, I had hidden much of myself from myself and thus from others, too. Hiding resulted in destruction, which comes from complete imbalance. I had learned to place many truths in the darkness, never revealing them even to myself, which only caused them to grow out of my awareness and gain control. They weren’t supposed to be true, you see. So I acted as though they weren't.
But after diving headfirst into that darkness and swimming in it for six years, I have come to love the adventure of discovering the once-hidden truths of myself and the world. Is it a painful process? Absolutely. Am I relieved to finally, hopefully, be coming out of my 6-year Dark Night? Without a doubt. I’m exhausted. That time in the dark was terrifying, exhilarating, wondrous, horrific, magical, and purifying. I was alive. And I learned to love. The truth requires it.
The only way I could fully explore both the Leviathans and treasure chests within my dark, unknown waters and bring them up into the revelatory light was with love and compassion. The dark uncertainties are certainly scary, but perfect love casts out all fear, and love is what allows one to exist in the truth. They say that you feel immeasurable love in the moments of your death, and of course, our births are made possible by oxytocin, the love hormone. During my Dark Night, much died and much was born. And born again. Because I now understand that integrating and birthing the truth requires love for oneself, I can now face the unseens, unknowns, and uncertainties with a greater confidence that I will survive every kind of death.
The darkness does not only harbor the evils of death. It also harbors the wonders of the mystery, where the void brims with every question, every gestation, every transformation, and every possibility of the truths that exist in our cosmic whole.
Happy Winter Solstice.
Powerful words to ponder as the light grows from the Solstice...