Taking the Light into the Dark
It’s not a new theme for me but I’ve been thinking a lot about taking the light into the dark. The last couple of years I feel like I have gone into some pretty dark corners of my psyche. But then the light! How bright it is afterwards. But it’s dizzying, too, going into and out of the dark, trying to know each, to know oneself in the dark, and in the light, and in that space between the two. I’m blinking and squinting and groping and holding my hand out ahead of me hoping. A lot of what has happened, I don’t think had to be the way that it was. Nevertheless.
Let’s begin today’s post with this poem:
To Know the Dark
by Wendell Berry
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
Compare the Berry poem to this amazing song by Rose Cousins. (If you’re in the newsletter version, click here).
Over the last couple of years, I have joked that I would wish for the world to stop offering up so many spiritual opportunities for me and for all of us, and honestly I still wish that, but these days in the sliver of light I have found for myself, I almost find that to be funny. And by now, kind of absurdly, I see that they truly were spiritual opportunities even if I refused a few of them, or politely declined, or just said, “uncle!”
What would we like others to know about our experiences these last years? If you could tell folks in the future in a sentence or two, for example. When I was in a very. dark. space. at one point, I couldn’t articulate it, more because I knew that if I did things would get darker for me personally. But I learned some things in that dark place I’ll never forget. The line by Nicole Brossard is one that has popped into my head a lot the last couple of years: “You have to be insane to confide the essential to anyone anywhere except in a poem.”
There was a lot of darkness in this time, I’d say, but also magnificent beams of light. There was a piece in my poem-essay book, The Flower Can Always Be Changing, from back when we had a dog, which I’ve been thinking back to. And dogs are pure and good, and this one is a bit of a reminder to me, of how to be now:
A Certain Faith
by Shawna Lemay
The black Labrador situates himself on the rug at 1:30 pm one winter afternoon. He arrives a few minutes before the low sun swings past the tall house behind ours, right before the golden stuff swaggers through the Venetian blinds and pours onto the rug where he just so happens to be.
There’s a knowing, a strategy, and just a deliberate instinctive way of finding comfort, finding the light on a cold winter’s day, that I admire and wish to emulate. It doesn’t last long, that light, in the winter, but it does arrive, barring clouds, barring inclement weather. The sun will arrive most days even in the deepest winter here at latitude 53.
I’ve subscribed to The Atlantic for a couple of years, and the articles by Ed Yong have been excellent. On Twitter, he mentioned that he’s taking a sabbatical, and well-deserved. It made me think about a lot of stuff. While of course his job, and that of health care workers are in a different category than my day job. (Though I think many would be surprised by the Venn diagram between them….as we provide both a listening ear for stories and are also all first aid trained…).
Yong begins his thread: “I’m taking a 6-month sabbatical, starting now. These past 3 years have been the most professionally meaningful of my life, but they’ve also deeply broken me. The pandemic isn’t over, but after a long time spent staring into the sun, I need to blink.”
I would urge you to read his thread, and then this story: “The Pandemic’s Legacy is Already Clear.” America isn’t Canada, of course. But we’re all interconnected, aren’t we.
I want to say that I’ve turned the corner, out of the shadows and into the light, but I know that’s folly. There are parts of me that I think are permanently shattered. That said, I am better at taking the light with me into the dark. I can see when it’s coming and I grab a candle and a match or two (they don’t make matches like they used to right?). I’m not taking a sabbatical but I am taking four weeks of holidays, which I’ve been hoarding for some time. I’ll be away from work (ie the day job…all the other jobs continue) for the entire month of November. I’m thinking of this as my own time to reset, but I’m going to continue to do the things I love. Probably I’ll be here during that month, but certainly I’ll be keeping up with my Beauty School Patreon which I’ve gone on about more than enough here.
I want to end by mentioning a few books that have really helped me to meander my way back into the light from the darkness.
I’ve mentioned both Bittersweet by Susan Cain and A Healing Space by Matt Licata in previous posts. I refer to the Licata VERY often. I would call it a bit of a lifesaver tbh. And Cain’s book is also terrific. Witness by Ariel Burger has helped remind me of an ethical centre, as has The Subversive Simone Weil by Robert Zaretsky.
A book I used to mention A LOT on TwB, is No Time to Lose by Pema Chödron. This time out, I’m arrested by the lines from the Shantideva:
“Do not be downcast, but marshal all your strength;
Take heart and be the master of yourself!”
Pema says, “remind yourself in whatever way is personally meaningful, that it is not in your best interest to reinforce thoughts and feelings of unworthiness. Even if you’ve already taken the bait and feel the familiar pull of self-denigration, marshal your intelligence, courage, and humour in order to turn the tide.”
I really want to find my sense of humour again. It’s probably among my top three goals at the moment. Pema quotes Trungpa Rinpoche: “Whatever occurs in the confused mind is the path. Everything is workable. It is a fearless proclamation, the lion’s roar!”
And I do truly believe that everything is workable.*
*a few things are still not workable
I used to joke that my burnout has burnout. But by now my burnout’s burnout has burnout. Somehow I can find more humour in the third permutation of my burnout. Who knew? And I do indeed take heart in that.
I don’t know what’s next for me, what my next most elegant step might be….but I’m going to marshal my intelligence, courage, and humour, and I’m going to find a patch of light and take also to heart another piece of advice from the Shantideva:
“Do not act! Be silent, do not speak!
And like a log of wood be sure to stay.”
(Or like a dog in a beam of light….)