A Seed Needs Darkness
Though it is still January, the daffodils are sprouting. Buds are opening on the viburnum, the kale is thrusting forth new growth. It’s been weeks since the bird bath froze. What sort of winter is this?
Obviously, we’re caught in the throes of a greenhouse effect, but no matter how warm the days, the pre-dawn darkness remains. I wake before sunrise to exercise the dog, relishing the silver glow of moonlight, the few stars that peek out from behind clouds, the hulking shadows of trees black against the steel sky. A stillness hangs over the morning. Darkness invites reflection, and reflection invites growth.
For some people, growth is exciting. All life contains an instinct to sprout, mature, learn, evolve. Children can’t wait to be the big kid, to stay up late, to be able to drive. They’re excited about learning, at least until someone makes fun of their questions and mocks their failures. If this happens to us, we will come to fear the awkwardness of being a beginner, and we will accept the right of authority to define our truth. Our inquisitiveness stifled, our doubts silenced, we learn to fear growth. After all, humans need one another more than we need to explore reality or become our best selves.
Therefore, to be accepted by our tribe, we choose to stagnate. We cling to the truth we are told by those deemed trustworthy. Darkness, that darkness that invites reflection and stillness and that is necessary for seeds to sprout, becomes scary, a place where monsters lurk and evil waits.
But the darkness is also where God dwells.
God in the Cloud
We see this, for example, in Exodus. After the Israelites fled from Egypt, they camped in the wilderness of Sinai. There, God appeared to the people as a cloud.
He came in lightning and thunder and blaring trumpets. He came in a cloud that spread across the mountain, casting a shadow that attested to the light shining behind it. Smoke wafted into the air, revealing a fire that burned within the cloud. God arrived in light and flame, but because God’s essence was too bright for us to look upon, he revealed himself to the Israelites through darkness.
Seeing this awesome mystery, the people were afraid. They pulled away from this shrouded deity. Only “Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was” (Exodus 20:21 NRSV). Only he had the courage to face the divine, even a divine hidden behind a veil of smoke. That’s because if we speak to God, if we invite a dialogue with her, we will be transformed, and transformation is growth, and that is scary. Change is okay when a baby becomes a toddler or an adolescent matures into an adult, but true transformation means an atheist could discover belief, and a believer could lose it. A man might come to embrace the unknown, and a woman might learn to trust her heart.
Darkness is mysterious. We don’t know what it will bring. If we enter into a relationship with this shadowy divinity, we might begin to live by a covenant more sacred than the one that binds us to our families or our tribes. This threatens the status quo. It makes communities and governments and individual citizens uncomfortable. When we welcome the dark, we can end up alone. Moses knew this.
The Loneliness of Knowing God
Having been chosen by God, Moses felt separated from his people. They were not his friends. They did not support him during his difficult moments. Not even his siblings could fully comprehend the relationship he enjoyed with God. All leaders understand the burden of being set apart, and while solitude does not have to be lonely, the one who leads must ultimately wrestle with truth and purpose and divine calling on their own.
Few of us experience the depth of loneliness Moses did. Most of us have loved ones around us to share our burdens and affirm our decisions. Yet when we look into the burning bush, when we enter the dark cloud where God resides, we emerge a different person. We might discover we no longer feel as comfortable among our family or our friends.
In the gospels of Mark and Matthew, Jesus says, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house” (Mark 6:4 NRSV).
Maybe that’s why Moses died before entering the Promised Land. As the leader of the Hebrew exodus, he guided the Israelites for forty years. He watched children be born, grow up, and have children of their own. He celebrated and mourned with them, yet he was not part of them. When his work was completed, it was time for him to let his people go.
In the end, prophets cannot go home. Those who deliver us cannot follow us into the place of promise. They return us to loved ones, then go on their way again. They leave us so we can discover the courage we need to forge our own relationship with God, to embrace transformation and growth.
Turning Toward the Dark
Even so, many of us resist the call to become someone new. We may promise to follow the covenant, agree to abide by the commandments, enter into the new land with all good intentions. At some point, though, we will fail. Transformation is just too difficult. We want life to be simple and easy. That is why we tend to cling to old beliefs and certainties, rejecting ideas that threaten our equilibrium.
But life is not content to let us rest in that comfortable stasis. Perhaps if we were more intrepid and sought the wilderness on our own, we would not need trauma, disaster, and suffering to shake us apart, to tumble us into the depths of darkness. We would not need to be invited or, as is more often the case, coerced, to change. Life regularly thrusts most of us into that world of shadows, so frightening because it is there that we find God. Not only does God hide behind the clouds, God lives there.
Or so we are told in Second Chronicles, where it is written, “The Lord has said that he would reside in thick darkness” (2 Chronicles 6:1 NRSV). So when times are hard, when our lives feel dark in that difficult and lonely way, we can remember that the lowering clouds indicate that God is there.
This Christian message reminds us we are not alone. The God who is so far beyond anything we can imagine, who is separate and inscrutable, also burns like fire in the smoky shadows of our lives. If we dare to turn toward that flaming darkness, we will never be the same.
Nothing Exists that Is Not God
There are other ways to think of this divine essence, though. In Hinduism, for instance, the essential aspects of reality are called tattvas. They are a kind of teaching, like the Buddhist dharma. One of the tattvas states that “nothing exists that is not God.” [1] Thus, this God essence both lives in and is the darkness.
As an aspect of God, as part of the light and shadow that make up reality, we, too, reside in the dark. At the same time, the darkness that hides the eternal, the separate, and the immanent God also exists within us. This darkness that we live in and that dwells in us could be called our shadow.
To grow, to become a being who can reflect our true nature, who can pursue the purpose for which we were formed, we must embrace our shadow self. If we have grown up learning to hate the weak, fearful, incompetent, spiteful, vulnerable, or violent parts of ourselves, we won’t want to look at the shadow that dwells in our hearts. That may be where God lives, but that doesn’t mean we want to go there. Recall that, of all the Hebrew people, only Moses was willing to draw close to God.
The Consequences of Turning Away
If we reject the call to growth, we must live with the consequences. Such a rejection may make us feel accepted by our tribe and confident in our own goodness, but as Richard Rohr writes, “The face we turn toward our own unconscious is the face we turn toward the world.” [2]
In other words, if, when we glimpse our hidden urges, we feel ashamed and refuse to acknowledge them, and if we condemn the fears and mistakes that reside within, we won’t own them. Instead, we will project them onto those around us with a loathing made all the stronger because it is actually the loathing we feel for ourselves.
We see this in the ritual of the scapegoat. In Leviticus, the priest Aaron is instructed to take an innocent goat, transfer onto its head the iniquities of the community, then send it into the wilderness. [3] Thus, the misdeeds of an entire village could be cleansed away. The goat might suffer, but the people would not.
What, then, are the consequences for pretending we are blameless when we are not? The problem is that, though we think our faults lie in the heart of someone else, or that they have been vanquished to some place far from us, they nonetheless remain. Our hate and anger seethe in our unconscious, for when we refuse to listen to the voice within, it magnifies. Eventually, it will make us miserable.
In a misguided effort to feel better, we seek to destroy our enemies. We imagine that if we punish someone, we will experience relief, but any solace we feel will be temporary. In our hearts, we will remain miserable, and we will do our best to make others miserable, as well. The consequence of our refusal to enter into the darkness is suffering.
Facing the Truth
What do we do? We face the truth of who we are.
Though it makes us uncomfortable, we must look at those hidden things that most shame us, and we must look upon them with understanding, kindness, and forgiveness. Ironically, it is often the things we dislike about ourselves that contain our greatest gifts. If we hate our shyness, for instance, we will not notice the strength of watchfulness that lies within our tendency to withdraw. Our aggressive nature, which can get us into a lot of trouble, can also give us the courage to stand up to cruelty.
By accepting our shadow parts, we can become whole, a blending of good and evil, wise and foolish, hopeful and hopeless, furious and serene. If we look deeply, we will recognize the wounds that lie beneath our fear and bitterness. With a newfound understanding, we can be tender with ourselves. We may come to love the person we really are. If we can love ourselves in this way, then we can love others.
Peace in the World
What Rohr labels the “God archetype” calls us to an “ever deeper union with our own True Self, with others, and with God.” [4] It is the work of our life, and we are invited to embrace it by a god that is all things, who live in the dark recesses, and whom we can know only because her light casts a shadow and her fire breathes smoke. For within the dark that so frightens us, the beautiful darkness within ourselves, lives a brilliance we can not know if we refuse to go there.
But to go there means we must grow. We must be transformed. Whether we wish it or not, we will become someone new. As we said before, that’s a scary prospect. We might lose our families, our addictions, our beliefs about god, our dreams, our enemies. Loss is never fun.
Embracing change is not for the timid of heart, yet it is worth it. The more we are willing to sit with the knowledge of our shadow side, the more complete and content we will become. Life might not be easier, but we will have an easier time living through what we receive. If we embrace the fullness of who we are, peace will bloom in our hearts. In this way, we will help create peace in the world.
In faith and fondness,
Barbara
Credits
- “The 36 Tattvas,” Saiva Tantra, https://saivatantra.com/the-36-tattvas/, accessed 1/22/21.
- Rohr, Richard, “Becoming Who You Are,” Center for Action and Contemplation, September 9, 2019, https://cac.org/becoming-who-you-are-2019-09-09/, accessed 1/22/21, original in italics.
- Leviticus 16:21-22.
- Rohr.
Copyright © 2021 Barbara E. Stevens All Rights Reserved
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