Darkness and Light - written by Deacon Mees Tielens

The light shall shine in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it (John 1:5)

You have probably noticed that the Church likes metaphors of darkness and light. We see them in Advent, with our lighting of Advent candles and our readings and hymns about banishing the darkness. And we see them in Lent, where darkness comes to stand for austerity, sobriety, repentance, and sorrow.

As humans we often have an uneasy relationship with the dark. We give our children nighlights and reassure them there are no monsters under the bed. When I go to bed, there are plenty of times I crawl out from under the covers to go check the lock on the front door just one more time, to make sure whatever is out there at night stays out there. When we go camping, we light campfires for warmth and for ‘smores, sure, but also to keep the darkness at bay. It resonates with us on a primal level when the Bible uses light vs dark as a shorthand for purity vs depravity.

But our metaphors are not free from the legacies of colonialism, slavery, and racism that are a constant presence in American life. The language of ‘white’ and ‘black’ is racialized in our country and in many other places around the world. It feeds into existing structures that consider whiteness to be good, and blackness to be bad, with all the devastating and deadly consequences of white supremacy that follow.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Recently I picked up the picture book God’s Holy Darkness by Sharei Green and Beckah Selnick (illustrated by Nikki Faison). It’s a beautiful and thoughtful book that highlights “the beauty and holiness and goodness of Blackness and darkness and night.” Because like most things in the Bible, darkness is a symbol with many layers.

Creation–an act of God done only for love–starts in the dark, the authors point out. When God promises Abraham he will be the father of a great people, God takes Abraham outside at night to

count the stars. God liberates the people of Israel in the dead of night. And Samuel’s calling, if you remember the story, could only happen at night. In striking illustrations, the authors explore the many ways the Bible disrupts the binary of white=good and black=bad.

As children of God, we are called to the difficult work of resisting white supremacy and dismantling the (internalized) seeds of racism and anti-blackness in our lives–including our spiritual lives. And so I ask you, what if we thought of Lent not as a time of darkness in which we are waiting anxiously for the light to appear to vanquish the dangerous darkness, but as a chance to spend forty days in the comforting and nurturing darkness of the womb, where life begins and grows? As we enter deeper into Lent, I invite you to let your eyes adjust to the dark and watch for the beautiful works of God’s holy darkness all around us.

Every third Sunday of the month, St. Anna’s offers Sunday school for children. Join us on March 19th as we explore God’s holy darkness together. And if you would like to read more about this issue, this is a good place to start.