Light Among Darkness

let us go on / though the sun be swinging east

I have spent 22 seasons experiencing the transition into shorter days, and yet still the 3 pm indigo sky catches me off guard. The trees were beautiful for only a moment. I’m afraid I didn’t savor it enough before the leaves fell. The earth is dying, as it does every year and everything is tinted grey. Its rebirth, though inevitable, seems so far away. I never know how to make it through, how to find my way without the sun.

On the days I have a lot of work, I finish around 4 or 5pm, after sunset. I try and sneak doses of sunlight into my days — going for a walk, getting a coffee, or meeting a friend for lunch. Sometimes I stay in all day, and open the blinds as far as they’ll go, refusing to turn the lights on until the last drop of light has dipped below the horizon. But mainly, I need to learn to reconcile with darkness. As more of my friends get traditional jobs, we have to find creative ways of meeting after work, when all the cafes and museums have closed and the parks are dark and quiet. Lately, this has meant lots of hosting, and visiting friends in the corners of London they have made home. I take the tube or the bus, sometimes apprehensive, and walk in the cold darkness, eventually stopping at a front door. I press the buzzer, and it’s quiet. But then, the door opens. The night air is flooded with warmth. I feel welcomed, and there is light, and all is right again.

Darkness is the absence of light, but is the light ever really gone? There is the moon, and streetlamps, and flashlights in our pockets. There are friends and their houses, full of lamps and fireplaces and string lights. There are strangers pouring out of pubs, bright buses full of commuters. Even in the northernmost regions of the earth, when the world is blanketed with darkness for weeks at a time, such lack of light brings the beauty of aurora borealis. Spring is inevitable, and there is always comfort in that, but in the meantime we must find ways to sustain ourselves until the breakthrough of daylight. We have to look at the things that are closer to us, the flowers that line the path to the glowing horizon.

Another perspective is highlighted in Mary Oliver’s poem “Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness”:

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends
into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing, as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say
it’s easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

I have been thinking of this poem a lot in these “days of growing darkness” — both in the physical and the metaphorical sense. Despite her difficult childhood, Mary Oliver, found a way to embrace darkness. I admire those who walk through a hard life with bright eyes. Through my observation (and advice from my father, who is the most resilient person I know) I have learned that perhaps the secret is trust: the knowledge that there is something good — not beyond the darkness, but in coexistence with it. Among the uneasiness I feel walking home at night, or through an unfamiliar neighborhood to get to a friend’s, I turn on an x-ray vision in my mind, trying to illuminate all the things that are happening at that moment. I imagine my friends together up the street, laughing and talking together. I think of the tea kettle in my kitchen, waiting to heat up upon my arrival. And sometimes, I picture my family, on the other side of the world, making dinner or driving down the highway or watching the news. Then, when I open the door, or turn on the light, or make the WhatsApp call, everything clicks into place. It’s neutral.

by Kristen Sims

When I was in Switzerland last month, my aunt and her family took me to the mountains. It was dark when we arrived, and I couldn’t see much. The next morning, I opened the curtains to a thick fog, completely covering the peaks. It was as if they weren’t there. We went hiking as planned, and I looked out into the clearings to find a slate-colored void. I was disappointed at first. Upon a moment of reflection I realised that regardless of whether I could see them or not, the mountains existed behind the fog, and I knew they must have been wonderful. How lucky I was to be hiking among them. My experience became far better when I leaned into that trust. The next day, when the clouds cleared, I felt they were far more beautiful than I could have imagined.

The moments of light, among days of darkness, feel far sweeter. I am grateful.

Here is a poem by Mark Strand, called “The Coming of Light”:

Even this late it happens: 
the coming of love, the coming of light.  
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, 
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,  
sending up warm bouquets of air. 
Even this late the bones of the body shine  
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

---

Living in one of the cloudiest, rainiest places on earth means that I have my fair share of winter blues. Some days are harder than others. But I am trying to say yes to more things, to wake up earlier and open the blinds, to take deeper breaths. I trust the earth and its cycle.

I hope you’re all doing well and taking care. Here is an updated Devotions playlist!

Thank you always.

<3

Tara