Dear Ones of St. Columba's,

Every year during Advent there is a particular tension that arises for me around the natural, seasonal themes of darkness and light that emerge during Advent. On the one hand the season calls us to seek light - as it gets dark earlier and our daytime weather darkens with rain, it is natural to long for light. Our scriptures and many of the songs we sing also reflect this longing for light, and fear of the dark. And yet - isn't darkness also a creation of God? 

In her book Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor poses this question "...when we run from darkness, how much do we really know about what we are running from? If we turn away from darkness on principle, doing everything we can to avoid it because there is simply no telling what it contains, isn't there a chance that what we are running from is God?" Taylor proposes exploring a "lunar spirituality" where darkness and all that comes with it - unseeing, unknowing, and lack of perception - is embraced and explored instead of endured or feared. 

I love this idea, because if we are honest, our lives hold much that is unknown. In many ways we are as defined by the darkness as we are by the light. I love the idea that what I don't know about myself, my world, and the people I love also holds the potential to reveal God to me, and to the world around me. 

It is not as comfortable, this idea of God in darkness, as it is to imagine God always in light, is it? Yet I do find it comforting, to work on trusting that God is as present in what I don't know, in what I can't see, in the early nights and damp grey days of winter, as God is in the bright blazing sunlight places of my life. 

This Advent I hope you are blessed with some divine darkness. I hope that if the season is not ablaze with love or light, for you, that you can take comfort in our God who existed even before the words "let there be light." Our God cannot be contained by binary ideas - either this or that, either dark or light. We worship a God so big that light alone cannot contain her. Our God is both dark and light, he is both and also more than we can imagine. 

with care and gratitude,

Alissa