The Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”  But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless?”  God brought Abram outside and said,

“Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then God said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And Abram believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.

– Genesis 15:1-6, edited

Beloved of God,

The week our family spent at Holden Village in August corresponded with the week of the Perseid meteor shower—an annual astronomic event which acquired that name because the point from which the meteors seem to radiate lies in the constellation Perseus in the northeastern sky.  So on a string of moonless nights, around 10pm, we joined others in the clearing at the basketball courts to gain an unobstructed view of the nighttime sky.  Another Villager, an amateur astronomer, brought his telescope with him, and as we lay on our backs, our eyes focused upward, our ears were pinned to his voice interpreting for us what we were seeing in the night sky above.  There was bright Vega, straight above us, and Ursus major, the Great Bear—what we call the Big Dipper—with its leading edge ever pointing toward to Polaris, the North Star.  And there was the constellation Cassiopeia, named after the vain queen and mother of Andromeda.  Jupiter and Saturn were rising in the southern sky, and the longer into the night we stayed the more visible they became.  And punctuating it all were those unpredictable outbursts of streaking light – the METEORS.  It can be addictive, meteor gazing.  Once you see that trail of light dart across the sky you can’t help but want for more.  Move your eyes away—even for a moment—and you may miss the BIG ONE you’ve been waiting for—the meteor whose track—hued in white, green, red or blue—extends halfway or more across the dome of the sky.

It’s December now and the season of Advent is upon us.  Coming as it does during the time of year (at least in the north)  when daylight wanes and nights grow long, ADVENT is often awash with metaphors of LIGHT and DARKNESS.  So often in these scenarios LIGHT is associated with all that is good and right and true, while DARKNESS is associated with all that is bad and wrong and false.  Yet from the beginning, as the first chapter of Genesis illustrates, darkness and light have com­plementary roles to play within God’s magnificently unfolding universe.  When God creates the light, the darkness is not extinguished or cursed, but is integrated into the rhythm of the daily round.  Light and darkness each have purpose in the created order.  Imagine, if you can, a world that lacked Daytime or lacked Nighttime.  Imagine Scripture’s saving story told without NIGHT, without DREAMING.

• No starlit sky toward which Abram gazes while God affirms the promise.
• No midnight vision for Jacob while fleeing his brother, no Jacob’s ladder.
• No divine – human wrestling match at the ford of the Jabbok; no new name given.
• No prison-borne dreaming that leads Joseph to ascendancy under Pharoah.
• No pillar of fire by night guiding and protecting Moses and the Hebrew children as they move out of slavery, through the Red Sea, and onto their wilderness journey to the Promised Land.
• And two millennia later, no Messenger in the dark whispering to another Joseph: FEAR NOT TO TAKE MARY AS YOUR WIFE, FOR THE CHILD SHE CARRIES IN HER DARK WOMB IS HOLY.

Every life form on this planet home—including our own—has evolved under the influence of night and day, darkness and light, and life as we know it could not exist without their DANCE.  Our Advent invitation this year is to stay alert to ways of imagining darkness and blackness NOT as attributes to be shunned, but rather as attributes to be hallowed.  The Wednesday evening gatherings our family is hosting December 1, 8, and 15 will further explore this theme.  On both Sundays and Wednes­days carefully chosen Scripture readings, hymns, and songs will build upon the theme that God’s presence is made manifest in light and dark and shadow.  Please consider joining us.  (You can read more about them below.)

“Hope begins in the dark,” writes Elizabeth Hunter.  “In deep, dark, winter soil little seeds nested underground are kept safe and nurtured.  When skies are dark, stars can be seen more clearly. In darkness, the natural sleep cycles of nocturnal animals and migratory patterns of birds are undisturbed.  Darkness has many benefits.”[1]

In the short story NIGHTFALL, Isaac Asimov tells the tale of the fictional planet Lagash, whose six suns keep it perpetually in light.  Residents of this fictional world experi­ence a star-filled nighttime sky only when astronomical factors perfectly align once every 2050 years.  For a brief period during this rare interlude all six suns fall away from view, exposing the inhabitants to the dark, starry sky.  The affect, however, is not awe and wonder but rather pandemonium.   Nyctophobia—irrational fear and foreboding  of the night—grip the populace of Lagash, unleashing internal forces so intense that the result is the complete destruction of the planet’s civilization. Survivors are left to build their lives—and their civilization—over from scratch.  Asimov’s tale is a fascinating take on the notion of perpetual light as a fiendishly potent enemy.  Might it also serve as a warning to a society which has elevated “whiteness” onto the pedestal superiority and consigned “blackness” to the dungeon of inferiority?

From the beginning darkness and light, day and night have been necessary components of the unfolding story God is telling.  Parts of a single whole, both are declared GOOD.  And both are seedbeds for our social and spiritual lives.  Absent one, the other suffers immeasurably.  Fourth century Cappadocian monk Gregory of Nyssa flipped the West’s social/ spiritual paradigm on its head when he wrote: “Moses’s vision began with light.  Afterwards God spoke to him in a cloud  But when Moses rose higher and became more perfect, he saw God in the darkness.”[2] What rich, new insights become available to us when we’re willing to explore the precincts of the night!

I leave with one verse of a hymn by Brian Wren that we’ll be learning this month:

Joyful is the dark, holy, hidden God,

rolling cloud of night beyond all naming:

majesty in darkness, energy of love,

Word-in-flesh, the mystery proclaiming!

Blessed Advent(ure)!

[1] Elizabeth Hunter quoting Anne Lamott, Hope Begins in the Dark, in her article in Gather Magazine, November/December 2021 Issue, page 1.

[2] Quoted by Barbara Brown Taylor in Learning to Walk in the Dark, p. 48