Take this time to settle down and settle in.
Pull a nice deep breath in and let it go.
Inhale,
Exhale.
Welcome to a hit of hope.
Someone recently posted a painting they had done on Facebook.
And they wrote,
Not sure if it's done.
It feels kind of dark.
The painting was a cross with soft curves.
A bouquet of lilacs sat in the center of the cross and daisies and other flowers dotted the canvas.
The predominant color was a robin's egg blue and graceful curly cues went this way and that.
As I looked at it,
I thought,
Oh honey,
If you think that's dark,
You should be in my head.
Inhale,
Exhale.
It occurs to me that dark is both objective and subjective.
Objective dark is the absence of light.
For instance,
Did you know that there are three different kinds of twilight?
Civil,
Nautical,
And astronomical.
It has to do with how far the sun is below the horizon,
Which is measurable.
Which means we could all end up with the same answer.
Objective dark.
But then there's subjective dark.
And this is the darkness my friend posted about on Facebook.
It's the one I often struggle with.
I feel like I'm down in the Mariana Trench in the deepest and darkest part of the ocean while everyone else is up surfing the waves on top.
This kind of dark is a dark state or condition.
It's the emotional dank caves.
The crumbling dungeons where you feel trapped with no way out.
And there are rats.
Lots and lots of rats.
But my rats are not your rats.
And vice versa.
Inhale.
Exhale.
The subjective dark isn't all bad.
In fact,
It's absolutely essential to life.
We need the darkness.
We need the quiet.
The dark is where seeds gather and grow.
It's where we sleep and rest the best.
The dark provides a balance or a counterweight to the light.
A.
Brown in R's Pictoria says,
Ever place light against dark and dark against light.
Because it is in that relief of the one against the other that we get the clearest picture with the most depth and interest.
Plus,
The dark is an opportunity.
It's a chance to participate creatively.
Jeffrey Chaucer writes,
Too dark is turned all my light.
When the dark is deepest,
The tiniest light will be seen.
And if we actively turn our light toward the dark.
What might we illuminate?
How can we creatively meet our dark?
That's what I was doing when I started these meditations.
Turning any bit of light I had inside toward my overwhelming dark.
Because I didn't know what else to do.
I didn't know how else I was going to survive.
The woman I bought my house from,
She planted beautiful gardens to bring light to her darkness.
What can you do?
How can you actively turn your light toward the dark?
How can you participate creatively in the act of illumination?
When it gets dark.
Turn your light,
No matter how bright or how small,
Turn your light in that direction.
Be brave.
Get curious.
Breathe.
And shine.
Live light.
