“If you have ever had occasion to be out early in the morning before the dawn breaks, you will have noticed that the darkest time of night is immediately before dawn. The darkness deepens and becomes more anonymous. If you had never been to the world and never known what a day was, you couldn’t possibly imagine how the darkness breaks, how the mystery and color of a day arrive. Light is incredibly generous, but also gentle. When you attend to the way the dawn comes, you learn how light can coax the dark. The first fingers of light appear on the horizon, and ever so deftly and gradually, they pull the mantle of darkness away from the world. Quietly before you is the mystery of a new dawn, the new day.”
~John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

At a meeting I attended last night, our convener began the meeting with this reading. Afterwards I headed home and went straight for this book to reread these beautiful and evocative sentences. I was so struck with them, not only for their poetry, but because I had spent the hour or so before the meeting sitting in a cafe watching this very movement of light and darkness. I had watched the seemingly quick descending of the darkness of the day. I had watched the sky go from pale blue to shades of crimson and orange(where does that come from?) as it moved into a deep, velvety blue. The only contrast was the brilliant white of the waxing moon. The whole process had seemed like an experience of watching an enormous painting being created before my very eyes.

‘If I had never been to the world and had not known what a day was’, what might I have thought was happening? This is a concept that is nearly impossible to get your head around. And yet, in my observation, I was as clueless to the miracle of beauty that was happening as I might have been if I had never been to the world. All I could do is what humans, I believe, were created to do: observe, gasp, wonder, praise. It is the work of psalmists from the beginning of our walking-upright position in the world.

In this northern hemisphere we are walking in the darkest days. We may try to ward it off or enhance its beauty with colorful light displays that adorn homes and buildings everywhere. These holiday displays only make the darkness more pronounced. But the profound darkness also makes the lights more magical. Light and darkness are indeed strange, yet imperative, dance partners.

John O’Donohue also points out the very mysterious way in which the arrival of light in the morning is preceded by the very darkest time of the night. It is as if the Universe is saying: “Watch this. This is how dark it can really get.” All this to make us even more appreciative of the light’s arrival.

Of course, light is both reality and metaphor. We speak of people who bring light to our lives. In this season of Advent we speak of the Christ Child who will come to bring light to the world. What might we learn about the light and darkness of our days by remembering how light and dark actually work and dance with one another? Is there comfort in our knowing, in our understanding? Or does this knowledge bring on a greater fear of darkness, a more desperate longing for light?

My sense is that the answers to these questions are shaped by individual experience more than a common one. But for those who are in what they feel are the darkest days, my prayer is for a memory of the miraculous working of light. The ‘darkest before the dawn’ knowledge. And for those who are standing in the light, my prayer is for an appreciation of the gifts of both darkness and light. Those dancing partners which surround us at all times, pulling us in, spinning us, moving us gracefully and often with fits and starts. All the while holding us in the gentle and gracious Light of Holy Presence.

May it always be so. Blessed be.