Wintering

The Gift of Darkness

I am looking at a cobweb dangling from a light in the ceiling which speaks both of neglect and the altered shadows in the room. They’ve changed the clocks again ushering in two weeks of circadian chaos. (Before going further, I would like to go on record as stating that I wish they would leave the bloody clocks alone.)

We enter a time of darkening days. The ancient Celts and modern day descendants celebrate the feast of Samhain (“sow-en”) which marks the dark half of the year. Samhain is traditionally associated with the remembrance of the ancestors. Even today, it is considered a “thin place” when we experience the overlap of this world and the other world. This is liminal time and space when the past, present, and future come together in a Sacred Now. The ancestors and, in my Catholic tradition, the Communion of Saints, remind us that we are part of a mystery much larger than we ever imagined and that we are held in the arms of those gone before us and those yet to come.

As a very young woman, I worked as a secretary in an agency for the blind. Our offices were on the 16th floor of a building in downtown Philadelphia. One afternoon, near closing time, storms ripped through the sky, tearing down the power. The elevators didn’t work and there was no emergency lighting in the stairwells. “I can’t see!” I panicked as I entered the pitch black stairwell. A colleague, who was one of the caseworkers and blind himself, impatiently took me by the arm - “Oh come on now!” - and deftly led me down all those stairs. Roland knew how to navigate darkness.

As time marched onward and my own life unfolded, I learned how to navigate the darkness that everyone experiences. Whether our experience of darkness is a long slow-in-the-making slog like the unravelling of a marriage or the witnessing of a child’s growing addiction, or whether it is a deep plunge into the unexpected world of job loss, a serious health diagnosis, or death, we generally engage darkness with great reluctance. At least I do. I often call into the ports of denial or repression along the way seeking refuge. Richard Rohr writes: “We must learn to stay with the pain of life, without answers, without conclusions, and some days without meaning. That is the path, the perilous dark path of true prayer.”¹

Over time, I have come to see darkness - when embraced - as a gift. As I look back on a full life, I notice that it was the dark days that taught me the most. Like those nocturnal creatures whose sight has evolved in unique ways, I learned how to see differently, to notice what can never be seen or learned in the easy times. Not immediately, of course; darkness is a place where we must dwell for a time until it reveals its wisdom. With distance, perspective, and the invisible Divine Hand, I experienced mercy and forgiveness, and discovered wisdom, insight, resilience, perseverance, and a voice I never knew I possessed. These were the gifts of dwelling in the dark and allowing it to teach me.

A beautiful book by a Benedictine and Celtic soulmate is one I would recommend for these approaching winter days: A Midwinter God: Encountering the Divine in the Seasons of Darkness.² Christine is a wise and gentle guide for those walking the path of grief, loss, uncertainty, or any other experience that depletes the spirit.

So, it is time to light fires and candles, to sip warm chocolate or brandy in the evening, to take up knitting, or to be wrapped in a cozy blanket and finally read those books that have accumulated. Mostly its is time to invite the darkness to teach us and to be comforted by the season’s gifts.

Blessings on the journey,

Joanne

1. Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (New York: Crossroad, 2003), pp.45-46

2. Christine Valters Paintner, A Midwinter God; Encountering the Divine in the Seasons of Darkness (Notre Dame, IN: Sorin Books, 2024)