Lent week 2

The liquid edge between day and night

            Barbara Brown Taylor has a book called:  Learning to Walk in the Darkness.  In the introduction to this book, she shares that in our modern world, we as Christians focus a lot of our beliefs and understandings on what she calls Solar spirituality.  She explains what she means by that, we know and believe that Jesus is the light and being in the light is good.  We want the light, and in so doing, we push away the darkness as much as we can.  If light is good, then darkness must be bad.  Personally, one of my favorite passages is from the opening of the Gospel of John which states that Jesus is the light and the light shines through the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.  In my own faith journey, knowing that the light always shines has been my anchor during hard times. 

            In her book, she wants to explore this dualism that we find ourselves within.  If the light is good, where is God in the dark?  How many times do we hear when a tragedy occurs, where is God?  How did God let this happen?  Or even, is God punishing me?  So, instead of focusing on Solar spirituality, the bright light of the day, she decides to explore what she calls lunar spirituality which she says:  “in which the divine light waxes and wanes with the seasons.  When I go out on my porch as night, the moon never looks the same way twice.”   Her aha moment is she begins this process is to ask herself, what if she trusts God even in the rhythms of life just as she trusts the changing pattern of the moon.  So, as we journey through her book this Lenten season, we will ask the same question, does our understanding of God wax and wane through the seasons of our life, and do we trust that God is there, whether we can fully sense the divine presence or not? 

            I love her description of what we call the sunset, she writes:  the liquid edge between day and night.  Here we have the blending of the end of day and the beginning of night.  It is not one and it is not the other it is the blending of the two.  When we want to separate things, when we want to easily define this is good and that is bad, in our own modern language we think in black or white, we don’t want the grey, well, the sunset is the grey, it is the merging together of what we try so hard to keep separate.  And yet, people are drawn to sunsets.  I think about all of the places I have traveled and how people flock to various spots at that particular place to watch the sunset.   Up in Maine, we were at Arcadia National Park and we were basically forced to stop as we tried to come down off the mountain, as everyone pulled off the side of the road to park in order to watch the sunset.  In Key West it is a party every night at Mallory Square for the sunset. 

            If only we could celebrate our faith in the same way, if only we could stop what we are doing and pull off the side of the road to attend to our spiritual selves.  Other than the sunset, how many of us even pay attention to the night sky anymore?  There is so much light pollution where we live, that we don’t get the full glory of the sky full of stars, but during the day, do we even stop and think that the stars are still out there, that they are still a part of the sky, even though we cannot see them?  Some of my favorite memories of visiting my cousin on the farm in the summer involves laying out on the lawn chairs at night and looking at the stars. 

            In our own spiritual metaphors, we have created the understanding that light, therefore day is good and dark, therefore night is bad.  I remember having the curfew fight back in high school and being told:  Nothing good happens after midnight.  Cinderella has to get home by midnight or the magic wears off.  It’s like whatever might be protecting us is only good until a certain time.  If we are not safe after dark, or after midnight, how do we interpret that spiritually?  Are we safer during the day, are we safer in the light? 

            I mentioned this on Thursday night, I wish by being a person of faith that we had some sort of forcefield over us, keeping us safe all the time.  And some people do believe that through faith God gives them extra protection.  Yes, spiritual protection, but there is no force field keeping us healthy from the flu, or from a car accident, or from any other illness or tragedy that might befall us.  And that is often when people give up on their faith, when they give up on the church and even give up on God.  How could this happen to me? 

            And so we enter Lent in the time between the day and the night, the liquid edge, where we cannot define one clearly from the other.  Where we believe God has created the world and created it good.  Where we believe God is in the darkness, and yes, that God shines through the darkness, and where we acknowledge that the darkness exists but does not overcome the light of God.

            As Paul writes in his letter to the church in Corinth – he lists these things that we could define as the darkness.  He states:  We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; ⁹ persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; ¹⁰ always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.  Paul has an amazing foundation of faith and writes to others to give them strength and hope that even despite the challenges and struggles that they are facing, they are not facing them alone, but in and through Christ. 

            This is a challenging text but Paul begins with the statement – so that we do not lose heart.  He hears the doubt, he hears the suffering, he hears the challenges people are wrestling with but he encourages and offers hope to those that will hear his message, do not lose heart because we are in this ministry through God’s mercy.  If it was just a human concept, a human response to each other, then we would not have the power to overcome these things.   But it is more than just people gathering together as a cause, it is God working through people, frail people, clay jars that can easily break. 

Last year, during Lent we use the book – the Gifts of the Dark Woods and through that discovered that we can grow in our faith and understanding of God even in the darkness.  Barbara Brown Taylor agrees with this understanding, insisting that if we look deep within the Biblical Story we will see how important the darkness is within the work of God and the calling of God’s people. Just think about Christmas Eve and how we are drawn to gather in the darkness of the night to worship and celebrate God’s love for us born into the world.  And then again on Easter with the sunrise service, gathering just as the night transitions into the day. 

And so we find ourselves on the liquid edge between day and night, sorting through what is allowing us to be present with God and what is blocking how we feel and connect with our loving Creator.   In closing I share this passage from Barbara Brown Taylor, some have read it on facebook – but she writes:  God does not turn the world over to some other deity.  Even when you cannot see where you are going and no one answers when you call, this is not sufficient proof that you are alone.  There is a divine presence that transcends all your ideas about it, along with all your language for calling it to your aid, which is not above using darkness as the wrecking ball that brings all your false gods down, but whether you decide to trust the witness of those who have gone before you or you decide to do whatever it takes to become a witness yourself, here is the testimony of faith:  darkness is not dark to God, the night is as bright as the day.