“Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee O Lord. “
– Evening Prayer, the Third Collect, for Aid against all Perils,
The Book of Common Prayer and administration
of the sacraments and other rites and ceremoniesof the Church
according to the use of The Church of England.
No, NO, NO!
I’d like to keep my darkness, thank you very much!
It’s early December. The sun set a couple of hours ago. It’s been a day of drizzling rain driven by a cold breeze. The rain has held off since sunset, but the temperature is around 5C. Four people sit around a small wood fire in a patch of woodland. The surrounding woodland softens the breeze, but it’s still brisk enough to make the embers glow. Eyes glisten in the firelight. Soft voices and gentle laughter barely rise above the crackling of the fire. The trees seem to converge above us, just slightly darker than the overcast sky.
At this moment, there is nowhere I’d rather be than in this darkness. Darkness sharpens my appreciation of the light of day. The daylight deepens my appreciation of the night.
A rambling story
Route 65M, the road along the Western bank of the Red Sea in Egypt, goes from Hurghada in the North to the Sudanese border in the South. Inland of the road there is desert. On the other side there are beaches and coves, and the Red Sea. About 140 Km South of the airport at Hurghada you can find Roots Dive Camp. The nearest town is El Qoseir, another 14 Km further South.
Roots offers wonderful SCUBA diving in the Red Sea. Other than that, the camp is simple and comfortable. The food is similarly simple, but the chef worked out the causes of Pharaoh’s Revenge a long time ago, so this is one place in Egypt where there is no fear of tummy upsets. Evening meals are normally taken in the camp, but about once a week everyone makes the short trek across the road to the beach for a barbecue.
After one such barbecue, L and I made our way across the road and back to the camp. L looked up and gasped:
“What’s THAT?”
“It’s the Milky Way.” I said. I just managed to stop myself from saying: “It’s the Milky Way, Silly!” because it really wasn’t a silly question at all.
After gazing at the sky in wonder until our necks were sore, we made our way back to our room. Along the way I worked out that this was the first time I’d seen the Milky Way since camping out in Northern Europe in the 1980s. Before that, it had been a common sight in the rural Midlands of England when I was a child. L was brought up in a town on the South coast of England and she had never seen the Milky Way. During our lifetimes, our darkness has been lightened.
Black and White
It’s nice to have certainty. It’s nice to be able to say: “This is good” or “This is bad”. It’s nice to be able to take any set of polar opposites and assign them as good and bad. It’s nice to see things as black and white. White is good; black is bad. Light is good; dark is bad. Positive is good; negative is bad. Four legs good; two legs bad. Right is right; left is wrong. I’m right; you’re wrong. East; West. Female; male. Continue ad absurdum…
“Without darkness there’s no light”
– Peter Sarstedt.
He had a point. We could not imagine white if black did not exist. I’ve tried to define white without reference to black, and it doesn’t really work. The easiest definition, and the first that comes to mind is “the opposite of black”.
So black and white are different. They depend upon each other for their existence. In the symbol of Yin and Yang they are equal, opposite, interconnected, and each contains a little of the other. There’s so much concentrated in a simple, familiar symbol.
Darkness and Light
The cartoon image of a burglar resonates with us. He wears a striped sweater and a mask across his eyes. He carries a flashlight and a swag bag. He comes in darkness.
Real burglars don’t wear striped sweaters or carry bags labelled “swag”. They realise that wearing a mask or waving around a flashlight is the quickest way to signal their ill intentions. They are more likely to telephone you or send you an email than to attempt to enter your home in person. And if they do intend to break and enter, they’ll probably do it in daylight when there’s plenty of other activity to distract from what they are doing.
We buy Security Lights and use them to surround our property. The association of words, “security” and “light” resonates with us because we still believe in the cartoon burglar. We think the (good) light will dispel the (bad) darkness and all the bad things we associate with it. To a real burglar the security lights say: “Look, I’ve got something you might want to steal. Come back when there’s no-one around, and you won’t trip over anything when you approach.”
More rambling stories – (1) Bonaire
For anyone who has dived on a tropical reef and marvelled at the diversity of life it supports, it’s a real treat to dive the reef at night. The reef takes on a different character at night. Corals bloom, and a different population of fish venture out in darkness. The beam of a torch focuses attention on a relatively small area, and it reflects rich colours that are muted by sunlight during the day. Many of the nocturnal creatures venture out under cover of darkness to escape the predators that hunt in daylight.
Tarpons are large fish, growing to lengths of up to 2.4 metres. They bear some resemblance to mackerel, but on a much larger scale. Two tarpons lived around the dock at a dive resort in Bonaire called Cap’n Don’s Habitat. Nicknamed Charlene and Charlie, they were 1.5 metres and 2 metres long. They would shadow divers on the reef at night, holding position slightly above and behind where the divers couldn’t see them. They used the light of divers’ torches to hunt. It’s a little disconcerting when a fish that’s as big as you speeds past your shoulder in the dark.
Yes, there are predators in the darkness. They pay little attention to other creatures in the darkness. They are looking into the light to identify their prey.
More rambling stories – (2) London
On 24 Nov 17, a Friday at the height of the Christmas shopping season in London, reports of terrorist attacks threw London City Centre into a panic. The stories of attacks centred on London Underground stations. They were all too plausible, especially for those who remembered the attacks that took place on 07 July 2005, the so-called 7/7 attacks. In a mass panic people fled the area around Underground stations and the stores in London’s West End.
L and I were in London on that Friday evening. We heard the news while we were on Piccadilly. Our train home was scheduled to leave Paddington station a couple of hours later. Our route by Underground would have taken us through the areas affected by the supposed attacks, so we elected to walk. We planned a circuitous route avoiding the prime shopping areas of Regent Street and Oxford Street, Liberty’s and Selfridge’s.
Our route took us through Hyde Park. Part of the park was accommodating Winter Wonderland, a combination of funfair and a Christmas market. Winter Wonderland was brightly lit. As we skirted round the market, I stepped off the wide pathway into the shadows of the trees that lined it. Crowding in the light didn’t feel safe. If there was anyone about with ill intent, I didn’t want to be an illuminated target. From the shadows, I could see without being seen. I was with the predators, not their prey.
“Hello Darkness, my old friend”
– Paul Simon
I very much enjoyed reading that, thank you. For me the long descent into darkness after entering through the pillars at Samhain, culminating at the solstice , then the following weeks including the twelve days of Christmas until Epiphany, los Reyes, the 6th of January, are the time I like most of the year. It’s the time to let go, to release everything and pass into a deep mental/ spiritual hibernation. The period between the solstice and 6th January is time out of time, like a hammock slung between past and present when transformation occurs if you let it. A slow unpeeling in the dark that allows for the start of the movement up from the darkness of the deep earth that was entered at Halllowe’en to the light that will begin to peep through the pillars as we walk back upwards and out through the pillars at imbolc into the light of the returning sun of Candlemass. The Church renamed those important cross quarter days because of their importance but retained their significance. At Hallowe’en (All souls) we descend into the welcoming darkness of the earth in the company of our ancestors, at Imbolc (Candlemass) we return to the light of the upper world having undergone transformation and acquired wisdom to bring with us into the light of awareness.
That’s how I experience and interpret it anyway.
Thanks Linsay.
In about fifteen minutes you managed to make sense of something that took me a couple of weeks to write. I was prompted to defend the darkness by a neighbour who insisted upon adding more electric light to what I already considered a surplus. In starting by defending the darkness, I think I was missing an important point. It’s the balance between night (darkness) and day (light), and the way that balance varies with the seasons, that needs to be defended.
BB C