Looking at Darkness and Light

This is the first year that I didn't write a post for Samhain (Halloween) and this post is a bit late for solstice and a bit early for Yule (Christmas).  Several years ago I wrote a post around this time of year entitled  The Darkness and the Light (12/21/10).  I nearly entitled this post that before I discovered I had already used the title.

Darkness and light are major themes for me around this time of year.  I'll admit, in spite of how horribly unsustainable they are, I'm a sucker for the holiday light displays, especially huge, multi-colored ones.  But, as I've written, the most gaudy, garish light display looks pretty pathetic in daylight, even as it looks so spectacular at night.  Candlelight is awesome in the darkness and barely noticeable in the light of the day and, of course, stars can't even be seen in daytime.  We need the darkness in order to appreciate the light.

This year, the darkness for me is confusion and uncertainty and potential.  The small, multicolored lights are the little things that I think I know, my few concrete plans for the upcoming year.  (Visiting Twin Oaks, Acorn, and my cousins in Virginia, and, at some point, getting into Ganas--and, hopefully, coming back to Boston to visit.)  Pema Chödrön writes about being Comfortable with Uncertainty.  I'm not sure that I'm actually comfortable with it, but at this point I am learning to cope with the confusion and uncertainty and potential in my life.  I feel like I've got all these things I need to do over the next week and then I get on the train south on New Year's Day--and then I just don't know.  I have nothing scheduled.

So I intend to enjoy Christmas, both the get together on Christmas eve with folks that I built community with so long ago and have been with each Christmas eve for eighteen some years, and then Christmas day with my family of origin, with loving sisters and brothers and nieces and a grand-nephew.  And then I chug off into the unknown.

I hope that whatever your holiday plans are (including fleeing the madness to a silent place or doing the traditional Chinese food and movies) you enjoy yourself, you enjoy this first taste of winter (assuming you're in the northern hemisphere), and that you enjoy the darkness and the little lights.  And may you find your way into the new year.


Quote of the Day: "I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light." ― Barbara Brown Taylor