The Luminous Darkness
(edited for length)
It is dark and getting darker. Times are as challenging as they have ever been. As we wait and walk through Advent together, let us wrestle with the myths and metaphors that work to keep us locked away from the gifts buried in the luminous darkness. Keep awake.
When God made the heavens and the earth, the light was not born as a correction to the darkness. The light was spoken into existence out of blackness, and there is no inherent evil attributed to the dark. The vast and nurturing embrace of blackness birthed the light. I contend that the dark is where God begins God’s work with and in us. It is but the inside of the chalice where the sacrament of communion with God occurs.
As we stand in the darkness of Advent, stand in the liminal space that is the longing and waiting for the new thing God in covenant has promised, we are called to welcome the darkness.
I write today as one born in the dark, who enjoys the sound of Blackness. I speak as one who watched the beautiful, dark fingers of her grandmother weave magic in her love, in a pot of collard greens, making something out of nothing. She was called “Black Beauty” as a youth because her skin was so dark, it reflected all the light around her. Luminous darkness, indeed. Because of her, I see well in the shadows, in dim circumstances, and I am not afraid of the dark. I am utterly convinced that God is up to something in the pitch black nights of our lives, in the womb of our own souls and being. There is something gossamer and brilliant about the night in God, and in the promises that only come in the dark. We are being born!
This Advent season asks questions of us. We are missing something when we spend our time longing for the light while missing the treasure in this darkness. Why do so many linger immobilized, counting down to the lighter days? Advent reminds us to value every state in which we find ourselves, especially as we stand waiting in the dark.
We are in a time in history where the suffering is great, where it seems the sun is less radiant, and the moon will not give its light; a time where day by day the very stars are falling from heaven, and the powers are shaken. And yet, in the journey of Advent, because of the darkness, the sleeping are awakening, equity and wholeness is being required, by any means necessary. Moments are pushed aside for movements, and the voices of the most vulnerable are rising. We are recovering our moral selves. I declare this is a result of the transforming creation of the dark that positions us to do what we often are unwilling to do in the light.
When we welcome the gifts of the dark in Advent, we become like writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston who understood the gift of her life to be immersed in luminous darkness. She wrote in her book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, “It is so easy to be hopeful in the daytime when you can see the things you wish on. But it was night, it stayed night. Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in [God’s] hands . . . They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against cruel walls and their souls asking if [God] meant to measure their puny might against [God’s]. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”
Let us watch and wait for God in this dark night. May we refuse to rush through this time, filling our lives with distraction and artificial light—or we can use these long, dark nights to heal, to dream, to love, to imagine, to carve and create ourselves into a better likeness of who God created us to be. This Advent season, be reconciled to the gift of the luminous darkness.
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