“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.”~Og Mandino

We are always looking, I believe, for mountain top experiences in life. Of course, this means different things to different people. For some it is literally climbing a mountain they had set as a bucket list goal and finally achieve by reaching its summit. For others it is seeing a famous person, a celebrity or political figure they admire, someone whose presence makes them feel more than what they believe to be their ‘ordinary’ self. These mountaintop experiences can be planned but most often they are ‘caught’, they simply happen and are gift of serendipity. One minute you are walking around in the ordinary minutiae of your day and…boom…something happens that lifts you up. Call it magic. Call it miracle. It depends on the lens with which a person sees the world.

Still steeped in these dark days which seem to be getting even darker with the rain and clouds that are our constant companion, I have been remembering the times when I have been surprised by light, enfolded in the gifts of dark. One such time that always bubbles to the top for me happened several summers ago. My husband and younger son and I were driving across some roads in northern Wisconsin just shy of the Michigan border. It was dark, pitch black dark. The kind of dark that keeps your eyes scanning the road wildly because you can’t guess the moment a deer will jump out of the darkness and into the path of your light beams. No street lights or even houses brought any light to our path.

Because we were feeling brave…or wise…at one point we stopped the car and stood along the side of the road. Looking up we shared an audible collective gasp. Stars! More stars than seemed imaginable. The constellations learned in some elementary classroom in a by-gone day danced their night dance. The Milky Way swirled and confounded our eyes..you are HERE the twinkling shouted into the deep, blue sky. 

We were speechless and rightly so. Awe has a way of doing that. It rips the words from the human’s lips and shoves our bodies into the place of silence, that language of Mystery. Our minds lose all ability to form a word that would seem useless in the Face of such wonder. It was a mountain top experience for me. I have thought of it so many times and am filled with such gratitude for having shared it with two of my beloved ones.

Any one who has spent any time away from the lights of the city knows the power of the darkness that allows us to see the stars. It is not chance, I believe, that the night sky plays such a central place in the story of Christmas. Stars signal the birth. Stars guide the way to the stable. Stars kept the shepherds company as they watched their flocks. Stars help the wise ones navigate their way home by another way.

Oh, yes, I do love the light. It helps me find the path and makes my going easier in the world. But the darkness…oh, the darkness. It is mirror for stars…and the bringer of awe.

The night sky might be cloudy where you are. But continue to look up. You just never know when the stars might be leading you to someplace you had not expected to go. This is another gift of Advent. Accept it with open hands and a willing heart.