The Luminous Darkness
A meditation on light in the darkness
For many of us, the scenes we see on social media as a result of this regime are not something to celebrate. Power-grabbing edicts designed to dehumanize and strike fear in us. So much suffering. Empathy is labeled as toxic. The path out of this seems shrouded in darkness. However, we must remember to keep our heads and not succumb to despair.
As a child, I was prone to having nightmares. I developed a fear of the dark so that when it was time to sleep, a light in the living room or the bathroom was left on. As the angles of the walls played out, that comforting sliver of light would reach across the hallway to my bed. Bored lying there for hours, I figured out that I could read if I positioned myself and a book or encyclopedia the right way.
The darkness with that little bit of light illuminated my mind as I read the A book, then the B book, and so on. I had already been consuming books, understanding that knowledge was power and provided perspective far beyond that of the average grade school child. The sheer enjoyment of new wonders - places, people, and things that I have never seen or heard of before.
Theologian and mystic Howard Thurman in his book “Luminous Darkness” recounts a student's description of a deep-sea diver. As the diver goes deeper and deeper, the light diminishes almost to total darkness. But paradoxically, at some point, the diver relaxes as he perceives a luminous darkness and regains his composure with a "peculiar vision". Like when we enter a dark room and our eyes adjust to the darkness.
We are conditioned to think of darkness as a setting for nightmares and fear of the unknown, but hardly as a precursor to the light showing up and showing out. Black holes in space are formed when stars die, choking and pulling in all proximate matter, even the light. But at the same time, somewhere else in the universe, new stars are being born with new possibilities of life and shining beauty.
Bringing this back to earth and our lives in the material world begs the question. Where does this light come from? How do we flip the switch to turn it on?
Darkness must eventually yield to light. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning" can sometimes sound like a Pollyanna, churchy, escapist response to darkness. But let's look at it from a different angle. Let's be proactive in claiming this joy and "flip the switch" ourselves.
You may have heard that joy is a form of resistance and that joy is a source of strength. What will we defiantly claim as joy against the “hounds of hell” of fear, deception, and hatred, of which Thurman spoke? “This joy I have, the world didn’t give to me and the world can’t take it away”, the old gospel song rings out through time. So again, if joy is resistance and joy is strength, then maybe it is that sliver of light, that illuminating hope we see in the luminous darkness. Hope against the hopeless, determining that care, compassion and empathy are not choked by the darkness. Living that out in how we operate in a civil society and by redefining our socialities. How we relate to each other.
My goal is that you receive this in the grace that it was written. Please feel free to comment, elaborate, but ruminate on it as well.
Leaving you with a clip from the song "Luminous Darkness".
In the next entry, I will delve in-depth into the message, conceptualization, and production of the song.
Thank you for sharing your story and that’s beautiful clip at the end. While reading this piece and sitting with joy being the light in the dark, I thought of Toni Morrison and the title of her book, “Playing In The Dark,” and how play, the joyfulness of playing, is so necessary, especially as artist. Often the work you do is in the dark. Another book that came to mind—which I still need to read fully is, Zenju Earthlyn “Manuel’s Opening to Darkness: Eight Gateways for Being with the Absence of Light in Unsettling Times.”
This is such a generous and grounding meditation. I’m especially moved by the idea of joy not as denial, but as something we actively claim; an act of resistance and care in itself. Radical Joy! Thank you for the reminder that even in darkness, our capacity to see, relate, and imagine differently can continue to expand.