Embracing the Dark of Advent Time
The Rev. Joshua Mason Pawelek
December 24, 2005

When I was a child, my family celebrated Advent. I remember, every year, lighting the purple candles, one the first week, two the second week, three the third week, and on the fourth week lighting all three along with the fourth and final, pink candle. The purple candles symbolized royalty and the pink candle symbolized Jesus, the messiah, the rose, the king, the light—the anniversary of whose birth was immanent by that fourth week. The hope of Advent was about to be fulfilled.

Theologically it’s an odd memory. In my early years we were at best ambivalent about Jesus’ status as Christ and savior, and eventually we no longer thought of Jesus in this way. It was Jesus the human being, the teacher, the preacher, the healer, the prophet who loved God; but not the Christ, not the savior. We weren’t Christians. But we faithfully lit the Advent wreath every year. It was one of those family holiday traditions where the ritual act is more important than the long-forgotten theological meaning. Even without the theology, what anticipation those candles built up inside my brothers and me. What sense of Expectancy! What feelings of Hope! We waited with impatient glee for the coming of Christmas. At school our Christian friends, too, were giddy with excitement. At church there was increased activity—and so much music. The children’s choir practiced Christmas carols and Hanukkah songs. The adult choir prepared its holiday music service. We sang “Lo, How a Rose E’re Blooming” and “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” The anticipation was at times unbearable. These were magical days. Something was stirring inside us—something genuine and exciting.

I won’t deny it: we were excited because we couldn’t wait to open our Christmas presents. But there was more. Those days called us to be mindful and compassionate in ways that were somehow missing the rest of the year. Those days called us to be good, not because Santa was paying attention, but because it was right to be good. The story of the nativity was not so much a story of the incarnation of God, but of values and a vision of peace on earth and good will to all. Throughout my adult life I’ve held these values and this vision close. I’ve also become increasingly wary about the way our culture teaches these values and proclaims this vision at Advent time. I’ve grown increasingly concerned about the roles assigned to light and dark in relation to peace on earth and good will to all.

The lighting of Advent candles is often construed as creating a refuge of righteousness in the midst of darkness which is symbolic of evil. Looking through a book of old Unitarian and Universalist prayers, I find myself reacting strongly to language such as “O thou who has called us out of the darkness into the marvelous light of life and love.” Or, “Advent is a time of anticipation and as long as we expect, as long as we hope, someone will light a candle against the prevailing darkness—and neither the winds of hate nor the gales of evil will extinguish it.” Even in the hymns we sang, the darkness was always seen to give way in defeat to the glorious, holy light. The words to ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” which we sang earlier in edited form, used to call out: “O come, thou day-spring, come and cheer our spirits by thine advent here; disperse the gloomy shades of night, break through the clouds and bring us light.”

I’m wary, I’m concerned, and I react to the tyranny of polarities, to the tyranny that persists in oversimplifying our lives and the world into great cosmic conflicts with bright white heroes and dark evil villains. It’s too simple. Whenever we break life down into easy polarities, good vs. evil, light vs. dark, Christ vs. Anti-Christ, warning flags ought to go up. We’re leaving something out. We’re missing something. Our society takes this centuries-old polarity, us vs. them, good vs. evil way of thinking for granted. I remember a teacher I admired in junior high school English class explaining to us how dark or black images foreshadowed or symbolized evil; light images pointed to something good. We accepted this as truth. Nobody raised a hand to question. Light vs. dark, good vs. evil—the perennial struggle. “Star Wars,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “Harry Potter,” and the Book of Revelations all have this polarity in common. It’s one thing when it resides in the realm of fantasy and mythology, in books and movies and scriptures—it’s entertaining. It’s quite another thing when it bleeds into decisions about foreign policy, executing criminals, declaring war, committing acts of terror, ignoring or cutting aid to the poor and oppressed, or destroying the environment. And it does bleed in.

Jacqui James puts her finger on something very important in her meditation, “Dark and Light, Light and Dark.” “Imagine a world,” she writes, “that only had light—or dark. We need both. Dark and light. Light and dark.” Her insight is significant for re-imagining the Advent season. There is so much at stake for us in December 25th—the day of light—or in the Winter Solstice—the return of the sun—that we often fail to notice and to value the role darkness plays in our lives. It took me many years to notice this other, essential half of the Advent season, to notice how alienated I had become from this essential part of myself: the earth-centered part; the reflective part; the quiet part; the non-rational part; the mystical part; the sensual part; the spontaneous part; the dreaming part; the cyclical part; the feminine part, the searching part.

Once I began to discover how darkness holds us and what it holds for us—once I began to understand equating darkness with evil is a kind of denial, even a kind of blasphemy, I realized darkness had always fed me at Advent time, whether I knew it or not. Darkness was always there, unspoken, silent, yet always present, giving definition to the candle light on which we focused our attention. The room where my family ate dinner and lit the Advent candles was dark, the color of earth and unfinished wood, with no overhead light. December dark settles in about 4:30 in the afternoon. By dinner time, the time we lit our Advent wreath, it was black and quiet outside, a beautiful backdrop to the warm comfort of the dark room where we ate our dinner. Was darkness bad? Did evil lurk within? Did we really light our Advent candles to challenge the reign of darkness in our lives? No. No we didn’t. I search my memories, and I know now that the darkness was an equal part of the magic, it’s power simply unacknowledged.

My brothers and I used to play a game with our father in December. Dad would don an old rawhide mask he used to wear when he rode his motorcycle on cold days. There he stood in that dusky room, transformed, masked, six-foot-three, a truly terrifying monster. We would go bounding out of the house into the shadows of the back yard, into the snow, cold and blue of the dim winter evening; our hearts pounding, adrenaline rushing. The chase was on. Dad would sneak around behind us—we never quite knew how he did it—and with a quick snapping of branches and a loud roar, as if out of nowhere, scare us half to death like the fantastic demons of our worst nightmares. We would run screaming, terrified, scattering. Maybe if we split up, he would only catch one of us. But we never really did split up. And we never ran as fast as we could. Because, every year at Advent time, every night the chase was on, when our father finally did catch us, he gave us big, warm hugs in the snow. And we realized, amidst our screams of terror, that we were laughing with great joy, there in the darkness.

For me the color of expectation is the color of night. The shades of hope are shades of darkness. What do you remember about this season when you were a child? Did the darkness come slowly in the late afternoon, like a blanket, bringing calm, safety, calling you indoors to warmth? Sometimes it brought snow, sometimes cold, sometimes wind. And sometimes crisp, clear nights, when you would venture out—perhaps to walk the dog—reveling in the silence, the peace, the soothing, comforting mystery of the long, dark night. Didn’t the darkness touch your soul, just as much as the coming light?

Maybe not. I know not everybody responds to darkness this way. In fact, many people don’t. I know some people live with Seasonal Affective Disorder, or S-A-D, which can lead to depression and anxiety in the absence of sufficient sunlight. I know the darkness of any night can mean great danger. I have never been mugged, but I count my blessings, for I seem to know so many people who have been under the cover of night. The problem of safety after dark is particularly troubling for women. It is something about which my wife, Stephany, struggled tirelessly to educate me—and I did learn. I remember the “Take Back the Night” movement, popular on college campuses when I was a college student, a movement that challenged the violence against women that was and is still so prevalent in our society.

But let us be mindful; let us be wary of the cultural baggage we carry, those questions unasked in junior high school English class. There is nothing inherent in darkness that makes it unsafe. We live in a wounded society that uses the cover of darkness to express the more extreme symptoms of its brokenness. We live in a wounded society that oppresses whole groups of people, then labels them dark, then blames there oppression on their darkness, never acknowledging the pathological circularity of this practice. These social wounds distort the power of darkness, mis-use the power of darkness, abuse the power of darkness. Darkness has become full of demons that were never there before—demons that are real and dangerous, yes, but demons we have created out of our collective woundedness. Until there is healing we should not consider ourselves truly safe on any streets after dark. But can you see how we have lost something as a society? Safety is one of the many aspects of darkness that we cannot currently claim, and which therefore prevents us from experiencing the full range of our living, prevents us from being whole human beings. We should be mourning the loss of safety. Instead we are content with myths of light overcoming the dark. We do need to take back the night. What would it mean to make darkness safe again? To make darkness meaningful again? To make darkness comforting again?

Advent is a good time to explore these questions. Let us visit the darkness, discover its secrets, before we come into the light of Christmas and the Winter Solstice. As I see it, this is the task of the Advent Season: reclaiming and embracing, rather than defeating, the darkness in our lives. Consider this poem by Unitarian Universalist minister, Francis Anderson:

Christmas has no right
To burst upon us
Suddenly
And loudly
From afar
Lighting up
Right where we are
With nylon trees
And a long-life
Plastic
Star. . .
It is a lonely
Road
To Bethlehem
That must be walked
Slowly
And untalked . . .
Where no bright
Light
Or angel song
Intrudes
Ahead of cue
To wrongly claim
Arrival of the dawn
Before the night
Is walked
By each of us
On through.

There is great wisdom buried in these stanzas—wisdom I suspect the ancients knew, wisdom far older than Jesus of Nazareth, and all too often forgotten. Observe the earth and its seasons. Light does not defeat dark. Light and dark balance each other, weave in and out of one another, return to each other, make space for one another. There are tasks for us to complete in the darkness. Let us not claim arrival of the dawn before the night is walked by each of us on through. I like to imagine that the ancient celebrations of the return of the sun and the lengthening of days did not shun darkness but rather embraced it with respect and awe and made use of it. I like to imagine the ancients understood the dark days of the month we know as December to be a time of rest and recuperation, a time for reflection, for communion, for telling stories, for teaching the children the ways of their people, for teaching values, for walking that lonely road to Bethlehem. Ancient lives, tied to the land and the changing seasons, allowed them to understand in ways we can barely access, that the time of darkness was a time of death, but also a time before birth—a time of nurturing life—like seeds germinating below the surface of the earth. Darkness did not represent evil—it was simply part of life, a necessary part, a welcomed part. One was not whole if one denied the power and the gifts of darkness.

Oncologist and spiritual writer, Rachel Naomi Remen, suggests embracing the dark as a reliable path to healing and wholeness. She tells the story of a business man who was in denial of his cancer, and failing to take care of himself. He described his cancer as “‘This black hole in the middle of my life that keeps pulling me in.’ This choice of words” she writes, “suggested that he was using all of his strength to resist a pull, not to surrender to the force of the disease in his life. I asked him what was in the hole. ‘Just darkness.’ I invited him to explore this in his imagination, to allow himself to be pulled into the hole just to see what it was like. ‘There is darkness. Big darkness. I am floating. The darkness is very soft. Gentle. It supports me. I have no needs here. I am tired. I am at rest. Totally at rest. Every cell is resting, every cell is open. I am filling up, filling up with life. I could not fill up because I could not open up. I can open up in the darkness. Life is everywhere.’” Another patient with cancer who is confronted in her dreams on a street corner by a black cloaked figure, says: “I call out for help but there is no one. I am utterly alone with this dark figure. As I turn to flee, the cloak is thrown over me. I struggle but there is no one in the cloak, only darkness. It is black, totally black, but somehow I can see. Not with my eyes. The blackness goes on forever. It is very quiet. Completely silent. Velvety. Soft. I am not falling. I am floating in endless darkness. I am free. There is no gravity. My body does not hurt anymore. The darkness is like love. It’s very, very good here. It takes me in exactly as I am. There’s no judgment. I am not wrong. I just am.”

I challenge us to continually ask ourselves, what resources for healing and wholeness might we miss if we fail to embrace the darkness in our lives, if we fear darkness, if we always look to the light to defeat darkness? And perhaps this is the spiritual work we are called to do at Advent. Just as we must sit in darkness to see stars at night, perhaps we must embrace the darkness of Advent to comprehend the true meaning of Christmas and the return of the light. You may think you don’t know how to embrace the dark; I contend you already do. For is it not you who expresses awe at the waning light of the sun, and the various shades of the night sky? Or is it not you who remembers fondly the long winter nights of your childhood? Or is it not you who contemplates the vast darkness of the universe that is ever expanding? Is it not you who was born out of the darkness of the womb and who shall return to darkness in your time? Perhaps you are living with illness and searching for healing. Perhaps you are living with loss, with the death of a loved one or friend who has returned to the darkness of the earth. Perhaps it is you who seeks rest. Perhaps it is you who seeks guidance and direction from the elders of family and tribe? Is it not you who seeks recuperation from the heavy toll the world has taken on your body, on your mind, on your spirit? Is it not you who plant seeds? Is it not you who spends long overdue time with family or friends in warm, cozy rooms as the dark winter wind howls? Is it not you who closes your eyes in order to pray? Is it not you who quiets your mind for meditation? Is it not you who seeks the irrational from time to time? Is it not you who desires the sensual touch of a loved one? Is it not you who wants to be in deep relationship with the earth? Is it not you who seeks to understand and respond to suffering and oppression? Is it not you who struggles hard to do what is right? Is it not you who follows your dreams? Is it not you who believes the Sacred is a mystery yet you yearn to be in relationship with the Sacred nevertheless? Is it not you who follows the longing of your own soul deep into the night, in search of truths, in search of wisdom, in search of wholeness? Is it not you who wants to live a life of peace and good will to all? So many paths already lead us into the great nurturing darkness. When we pierce through the lies we tell ourselves about the dark, suddenly we realize how closely, how lovingly the dark has been embracing us all these years.

Let us, then, embrace the dark at Advent time. Let us be upon that lonely road to Bethlehem. Let us be with darkness and come to know better the meaning of light. Let us embrace the dark at Advent time, so that when Christmas comes, when the Sun returns, we will know what truly matters and what we truly need to celebrate.

Amen. Blessed Be.