I’ve been voraciously reading about darkness since the solstice. No, not just the news. Did you know Jesus was born in a cave, not a stable? I long pictured The Birth taking place in the cozy straw and bamboo 1960’s structure that sat atop my Grammy and Papa’s tv in their den in December. I have a lot to learn about darkness and given our current environment, there is no time like the present.
When I talk about the darkness I primarily mean things that are hidden, unconscious, or neglected. I also mean that time of day when the sun finally goes away and we get to notice all the things that light conceals: the moon, the stars, nocturnal plants and animals, the thoughts we don’t want to think. When we own our darkness, we get to experience a more full and rich aliveness, and one of my goals is to live everything.
Carl Jung said1 that knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people. If you feel these days are dark, for whatever reason (globally, nationally, personally), an exploration could be a good project. Notice that we are not looking to eliminate the darkness, but investigate it. Come on, we’re going scuba diving at night and the first rule is that you always have a dive buddy.
As I reflect on this journey, I see that true healing requires integration, not rejection. The path to becoming more open doesn’t lie in casting aside the versions of ourselves we no longer wish to be. It lies in honoring them, thanking them, and embracing them with tenderness. Each version of us is a stepping stone, a necessary chapter in the unfolding story of who we are.
– Andrea Gibson in The Key to Making a Resolution Stick
A great way to dip a toe into becoming comfortable with darkness is to listen to people talk about things they struggle with and just be there for them without fixing, saving, or advising. I get to do this in spiritual direction, UU Wellspring, and increasingly for my kids as my input becomes less appreciated. It is also my attraction to the podcast Glamorous Trash, which beautifully recaps female celebrity memoirs. I didn’t think I had too much celebrity worship, but it exists somewhere within me because I was truly shocked at the amount of abuse, pain, and misery that these women have almost universally gone through prior to becoming super successful (and many times afterwards, too). Welcome to being a human, particularly a female version.
One of the things that darkness allows is contrast. If it was all light, all we would know is light. I found that I relate to these celebrity women, not because I’m shiny and famous (on the contrary, I have the old fashioned belief that privacy is the ultimate luxury) but because I have the spark in me that I recognize in them. This spark can only be found in the darkness and it says, despite all the crap, you are absolutely worthy of an incredible life. Over the years, I’ve learned that this is also my Universalist spark, since Universalists believe we are worthy of heaven just because we were born.
I think the spark carried me forward for a long time, but after a while, I realized I needed to reach out further into the darkness. Through therapy and particularly EMDR, when I first opened to the darkness in myself, to the parts of myself that felt most closed off, it felt like those past selves were returning to take me down with them. With work and time, I realized that they just wanted the attention and love and care that they never received in the first place. As Peter Levine said, “Trauma is not what happens to us but what we hold inside in absence of an empathetic witness.” Again, rely on those dive buddies.
I’ve found that practicing tarot allows me to play with the holding the light and the dark. Tarot asks us to be expansive and inclusive, to recognize that all of the 78 energies, those personalities, are in us. Tarot asks, where can you see this pattern in your life? This is all honestly quite tough for me. Ideally, I’d cast the “bad” things out, never to return. I once read about a talk J. Krishnamurti gave on the key to life. He apparently said, “Here is my secret. I don’t mind what happens.” I wanted to throw my book at the wall. I very much mind what happens. I feel better when I remember that wholeness was always supposed to mean entire, not unbroken.
Prophets are seers of big patterns; they see what is always and forever true. One of the big patterns is that God’s message always gets wider and more universal, despite our best attempts to limit it.
– Richard Rohr in Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent
I move toward global and national wholeness when I keep in mind Valerie Kaur’s powerful words: “You are a part of me that I do not yet know.” They ask us to have the spiritual discipline to be curious instead of casting out. I struggle with this curiosity because it feels like permission. However, this current brand of darkness is not going to go away on its own, and so we need to look directly at it. We need to understand what it is here to teach us. That doesn’t mean internalizing the lessons of extremists, like that minorities and women should remember their second class citizenship. “What this is here to teach us” means facing intent to do harm and accepting that it exists so that we can respond from our most whole selves.
On a personal level, owning my darkness involves diving deep and reclaiming all the selves or the parts that I thought shouldn’t see the light of day. It involves existing in the sometimes agonizing space between stimulus and response so that the wisest, most adult me can come into the room. It involves moving into 2025 not just with the acknowledgement that I did not get here alone and am not for myself alone and never have been (as we say at church) but that some of the people that helped me get here were past selves that I would so quickly shun and shut out. Let me include them, hear their wisdom, and allow them to come into the clearing and rest.
I usually feel a lot more clarity around my goals for the new year (which starts around the solstice for me). This year it hasn’t felt clear. I know I need to carry all of me into it, so I will keep up my practices and be patient. Do you have a word for the year, a resolution, or a perspective you are trying to adopt? I’d love to hear it!
- Start at page 267 of the PDF, not the original, for the letter in which this quote appears ↩︎
