Darkness and Light

The closer we get to the light the closer we get to the darkness.

Parker Palmer

 

This is the light of hope, joy, and belovedness that comes during the dark journey of grief.  It is the light that comes through the kindness of a stranger, a healer’s touch, a friend’s attention. Light is brightest in the darkness because it comes unexpectedly, when it feels as if there may never be joy again.     

 

This kind of darkness that I am writing about is not the darkness of depression.  In depression, there is numbness, a lack of feeling, a lack of vitality.  In this darkness of grief, there is a feeling of the possibility for Spring, of moving through the dark woods alone but not unaccompanied, a feeling of being chosen for this moment to grow.  Whereas in depression there is a dark fog that no light can penetrate, in this darkness the tiniest sliver of light shines so brightly.  This dark night of the soul is like the darkness of the womb where there is possibility. 

 

Darkness and the light accompany each other throughout our lives. In love, there is the drop of sadness inside the anticipation of the loss of love.  In the loss of love, there is a drop of hope for a deepening of intimacy with one’s own heart and with the beloved.  Today my daughter returns to college after a year of being home for the pandemic and a hard to treat illness.  After three surgeries – the last only two weeks ago – she is eager to be out in the world again but this time free from the burden of illness.  After a long time of not being well, it is a joy to see her entering her life with the promise of health.  And inside my joy is sorrow for all she has had to endure in her young life, the space between us, the longing for closeness during this necessary separating. 

 

The snow fell steadily but lightly through this grey day as my daughter packed for school. I went to the trail by the river where I go to pray, weep, and find renewal along the black rippling waters, the field rimmed with trees, the view of the distant mountain.  The sky was thick and low, lavender between the naked red brown weave of branches, a picture in sepia.  All was muffled, quiet, and still under the newly fallen snow. My heart was breaking open and held in the simple beauty of the paths I have walked for many years as familiar and strange to me as my daughter’s new freedom.  I am emptiness with that black river running through it hollowed out by longing and tenderness.  At another time in my life I would not be able to withstand this much emptiness, would have had to fill it with food, TV, gossip, rage. Now, the white fields like my long white hair are an offering of wild beauty and light.