The Gifts of Darkness

This morning I watched the full moon set in the western horizon.

As a sun-worshiper, I don’t normally do this- share my loyalty and attention with the moon I mean.

But I was inspired by a story told by Episcopal Priest Barbara Brown Taylor in her book Learning to Walk in the Dark in which she and her husband, Ed, intentionally sat outside on their land in rural Georgia to watch the full moon rise just as others might witness a sun rise.

Like Reverand Taylor, I like the idea of challenging myself in what I think I know and believe about the dark.

As a psychotherapist by day, who primarily helps individuals try to embrace and accept the dualistic nature of emotions (e.g. joy & suffering, calm & restless, love & hate), I’ve noticed I am remarkably close-minded to the possibilities of the dark.

This awareness came to a head for me last year on November 8^th, the day I learned Donald Trump was going to be the next president of the United States.

The insight did not come in the election result itself.  No, it came after listening to a meditation teacher say on that very same day in a soft and almost dreamy voice, “what a wonderful day to practice.”

Words to which I promptly (internally) responded with a version of “WTF!”

Since then though, I have been purposefully exploring the potential gifts of darkness and the night- particularly as I reckon with these transitioning political times.

This process has been an enlightening one, to say the least, and it has been followed closely by a quotation by 20^th Century American PoetTheodore Huebner Roethke (1908-1963) 

that serendipitously keeps appearing before me:

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”

As a lemonade-out-of-lemons kind of girl and a psychotherapist, I love the possibility of insight and wisdom being drawn from a time of sorrow, and at first read of this quotation, I thought that was all it was about- as if it could only be interpreted one way.

But this morning, as I watched that gorgeous full moon set over the winter New England hills where I live, a whole new meaning of Mr. Roethke’s words occurred to me that has more to do with a reflection on faith, evolution and progress.

Hear me out.

As a mother with 2 children under the age of 8, I watch a lot of Disney, Pixar, you name it, animated movies.

One favorite in our household is the 2013 movie: The Croods.

This film tells the tale of how the unforeseen cataclysmic shifts in the earth’s contruct propels one very stuck individual, in this case the caveman father, into a dark night of the soul in which he must confront his own faith, evolution and dare I say progress, as a matter of life and death survival. 

I found this image on a website called PaeloPam.com that captures this theme perfectly:

Watching this movie again (for the 100^th time per my children’s delight!), I began to wonder, might this possibility of faith, evolution and progress be available to us too, when (for some of us) this particular moment in history feels like a nightfall?

I believe it is.

But first, we will be required to look and reflect deeply into the shadows of our humanity; areas of ourselves that we have been unwilling to investigate and repair for centuries.

For some people, this idea can be terrifying. 

Lifting up all those old rugs and opening up all those closet doors that have been pratically cemented shut to start to sort through our, at times, painful and cruel history.

In The Croods, the character of the caveman father (played by the voice of actor Nicolas Cage) has a famous line he keeps repeating until the very end of the film which is “Never Not Be Afraid!” that I think has been the sentiment of  many individuals who cannot imagaine what an inclusive, just, democracy would even look like.

But like the reflective full moon in the night sky, a gift of the darkness may be our own deep, compassionate contemplation of ourselves, our communities and our history that may be a catalyst for the type of generative human growth that has been unprecedanted thus far. 

May it be so.