Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor
Description
Follow Barbara Brown Taylor on her journey into darkness, which takes her into wild caves, underground nightclubs, subterranean chapels, and unlit cabins in the woods on nights with no moon. Taylor is our guide through a spirituality of nighttime, teaching us how to find God--or let God find us--even when it is dark, and giving us a way to let darkness teach us what we most need to know.
"When, despite all my best efforts, the lights have gone off in my life, plunging me into the kind of darkness that turns my knees to water...I have learned things that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion: I need darkness as much as I need light."
Reflection
If anyone has encountered grief then they are familiar with the experience of living out your day to day existence in fog-like conditions. You live moment to moment, waiting for breaks in the fog long enough to discern your surroundings and next moves. Often times, forward movement is completely an act of faith, like driving into the blinding sun. You are fairly confident that your progress will be safe, but you cannot be 100% certain because your sight has been compromised. Of course, many have learned the hard lesson that even when our sight is not compromised by barriers, that we are still vulnerable to running into things--things that we swear were not there, but were and we did not know it.
Barbara Brown Taylor's book is a really interesting exploration of darkness, inviting the reader into her experiential findings of what she terms endarkenment. "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light," Carl Jung wrote, "but by making the darkness conscious." Reading this, I realize that in a whole lifetime spent with seekers of enlightenment, I have never once heard anyone speak in hushed tones about the value of endarkenment.
Instead of avoiding the dark, damp and enclosed spaces of caves and graves, I think these are often some of the best places to think and become anew. In a world that cherishes sounds, lights and constant 24/7 accessibility to anything and everything we could possibly "need" moment to moment, it is good to be still in the dark of the night. That's when we truly listen. It is not easy, but the quiet, dark times are the most fertile and productive--just ask any farmer or gardener. Anything we seek to become, any change that is just around the bend, any resurrection or transformation of mind, body or soul will most likely not come to us in sunshine, but in the dark of night.
If you've ever tried to walk to the bathroom in an unfamiliar place in the middle of the night, chances are you learned a few things about your path the first time that you adjusted every night after. Light is not the solution, but courage. For all the years when things have not gone as planned, when I have been blindsided by change or devastated by loss, I have never gotten to the other side and regretted what each of those experiences have taught me about life. Darkness, while scary, maddening and full of heartache at times, is not the enemy, rather the realm of transformation. So it is with each new grief--another opportunity to wonder and cultivate growth.
That said, I still wish I had just a few more years of daylight with my Dad.
Easter blessings to you as you grieve your loved ones and begin again in fruitful endarkenment.
"Resurrection is always announced with Easter lilies, the sound of trumpets, bright streaming light. But it did not happen that way. If it happened in a cave, it happened in complete silence, in absolute darkness, with the smell of damp stone and dug earth in the air. Sitting deep in the heart of Organ Cave, I let this sink in: new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark." Barbara Brown Taylor pg. 129
Description
Follow Barbara Brown Taylor on her journey into darkness, which takes her into wild caves, underground nightclubs, subterranean chapels, and unlit cabins in the woods on nights with no moon. Taylor is our guide through a spirituality of nighttime, teaching us how to find God--or let God find us--even when it is dark, and giving us a way to let darkness teach us what we most need to know.
"When, despite all my best efforts, the lights have gone off in my life, plunging me into the kind of darkness that turns my knees to water...I have learned things that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion: I need darkness as much as I need light."
Reflection
If anyone has encountered grief then they are familiar with the experience of living out your day to day existence in fog-like conditions. You live moment to moment, waiting for breaks in the fog long enough to discern your surroundings and next moves. Often times, forward movement is completely an act of faith, like driving into the blinding sun. You are fairly confident that your progress will be safe, but you cannot be 100% certain because your sight has been compromised. Of course, many have learned the hard lesson that even when our sight is not compromised by barriers, that we are still vulnerable to running into things--things that we swear were not there, but were and we did not know it.
Barbara Brown Taylor's book is a really interesting exploration of darkness, inviting the reader into her experiential findings of what she terms endarkenment. "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light," Carl Jung wrote, "but by making the darkness conscious." Reading this, I realize that in a whole lifetime spent with seekers of enlightenment, I have never once heard anyone speak in hushed tones about the value of endarkenment.
Instead of avoiding the dark, damp and enclosed spaces of caves and graves, I think these are often some of the best places to think and become anew. In a world that cherishes sounds, lights and constant 24/7 accessibility to anything and everything we could possibly "need" moment to moment, it is good to be still in the dark of the night. That's when we truly listen. It is not easy, but the quiet, dark times are the most fertile and productive--just ask any farmer or gardener. Anything we seek to become, any change that is just around the bend, any resurrection or transformation of mind, body or soul will most likely not come to us in sunshine, but in the dark of night.
If you've ever tried to walk to the bathroom in an unfamiliar place in the middle of the night, chances are you learned a few things about your path the first time that you adjusted every night after. Light is not the solution, but courage. For all the years when things have not gone as planned, when I have been blindsided by change or devastated by loss, I have never gotten to the other side and regretted what each of those experiences have taught me about life. Darkness, while scary, maddening and full of heartache at times, is not the enemy, rather the realm of transformation. So it is with each new grief--another opportunity to wonder and cultivate growth.
That said, I still wish I had just a few more years of daylight with my Dad.
Easter blessings to you as you grieve your loved ones and begin again in fruitful endarkenment.
"Resurrection is always announced with Easter lilies, the sound of trumpets, bright streaming light. But it did not happen that way. If it happened in a cave, it happened in complete silence, in absolute darkness, with the smell of damp stone and dug earth in the air. Sitting deep in the heart of Organ Cave, I let this sink in: new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark." Barbara Brown Taylor pg. 129
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