Homily – Calling Back the Light

Dec. 20, 2015

Matt Alspaugh

Eight years ago almost to this day, I hit a particularly difficult time in my life. Without going into the details, my whole future was suddenly in question. I sank into a pit of despair, unable to talk with anyone about the situation.

But a glimmer of hope came to me shortly after, at a Solstice drumming ceremony, led by Jaime Meyer, whose calling the directions we used earlier. Meyer shared stories of the indigenous peoples of Scandinavia, who tell of a reindeer goddess, flying through the air, the “Deer Mother, who carries the life-giving sun … in her horns.”[1], –running at the southern horizon, carrying the sun safely through the longest night of the year. In Jaime’s telling[2], it is the beating heart of this reindeer that pumps out life to all creatures, sustaining, rebirthing all life. This image was for me a reminder that the darkness that settled me over would not last forever. But I still had to dwell in the dark — for a time.

“To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight.” Wendell Berry tells us how different the world is without sight, a world with dark feet and dark wings. Yet many of us fear the dark.

Jacqui James talks of the language of light and dark in our culture, the connection with good and bad, and with the institutionalization of racism[3].  If anything, churches in our culture unconsciously encourage this sort of dark and light thinking. Much religious language embraces the light and rejects the dark.

Theologian Barbara Brown Taylor talks of what she calls “full solar churches”[4], those that focus only on the sunny side of faith. In these churches it’s all about celebration, certainty of belief of God’s presence, of the power of prayer. But when darkness — doubt, uncertainty, depression — arises in your life, these churches often have no place for you. You, who have so little faith will find yourself unwelcome.

I think this is a familiar story to many of you, you refugees from such churches.  But Taylor notes that darkness has always been a key part of most major religions. Taylor tells us “…many important things happen at night in the Bible, … Jacob wrestles with an angel all night long… the exodus from Egypt happens at night, God parts the Red Sea at night, manna falls from heaven at night.”[5] Jesus was born in the dark, Muhammed received the teachings of Islam while meditating in the darkness of a cave, a practice parallel to that of many eastern mystics. Metaphorically, and more to the point, all religions with staying power confront the reality that we need the darkness, that life — both the material and the spiritual life — is a cycle of light and dark. We go through tough times, times of doubt, disconnection, ‘the dark night of the soul’, and we come out into light, but the darkness transforms us. In the dark, we hibernate, germinate, become wiser, more spiritually mature.

Taylor suggests that instead of full-solar traditions, we might seek a lunar spirituality, in which the divine light waxes and wanes in its time. Indeed there will be those new moon times of complete darkness, but we trust that the moon will return to be full two weeks later.

In the same way, the cycle of the seasons emphasizes a more languid flow of light and dark. The winter solstice is celebrated by many traditions as a reminder of that trust that times of light will return. We open our hearts, our minds, and our soft animal bodies to the darkness, to the cycles, and to faith in the returning light of the spirit. Reindeer Mother brings us the sun.

Notes:

¹ http://exopermaculture.com/2015/12/07/welcome-mother-christmas/

² http://www.edgemagazine.net/2014/12/winter-solstice-reindeer-goddess/

³ Jacqui James from “Been in the Storm So Long:  A Meditation Manual” (ed. by Mark Morrison-Reed and Jacqui James)

⁴ Barbara Brown Taylor, “Learning to Walk in the Dark”, 2014, p. 7.

⁵ ibid. p. 45.