Light That Wants to Shine Needs Darkness
What if many of the Christmas stories we have inherited are biased or “one-sided?"
Woven from broken threads? What if their hidden biases and omissions unconsciously incline us to make war rather than peace? To hate rather than to love? To divide and conquer rather than unify and include?
Most of the stories of Christmas celebrate the triumph of Light over darkness:
- Jesus is the "light in the darkness," and light overcomes darkness.
- Jesus is THE Light of the World.
- Jesus, as the Creative Word Incarnate, is one with the Father who created this world by saying "Let there be Light."
- Jesus is the Light-house for sinners who wander in the dark.
- Jesus is the Light that shines from every Christmas tree which is celebrated in most Christmas carols.
- Jesus! = The Light!
I’m focusing on the Christmas story, but I could make a parallel analysis of other December Celebrations:
- Buddha’s Awakening (Light within)
- Hanukkah (the Light of Liberty)
- Winter Solstice (the return of the Sun’s Light with longer days and shorter nights)
I.
The Pre-Christian Roots of Darkness vs Light
Zarathustra
An early Light-bearing Prophet from Iran | 600 bce -2000 bce
- He was born of a virgin
- He had an early revelation that he was a Messenger/Prophet
- He envisioned a world caught in an eternal struggle between for forces of Light/Truth and the powers of Darkness/Lie
- He called his followers to side with the Light against the Darkness
- by living an ethical life
- by participating in rites of purification
- by spreading his teachings which emphasized a stark divide between Light & Dark, Good & Evil
Dualism
So this pattern of Light vs Dark is not specifically Jewish or Christian or Islamic—it is a dualistic idea that sometimes infects Judaism, Christianity and Islam and turns them into Fundamentalist cults that must have an Enemy to fight against.
Unholy consequences
Those unconsciously in the grip of this Darkness vs Light Myth can do a lot of harm.
- Christian soldiers and bigots killing Jews and Muslims even though they share the "same book" and many of the same stories.
- Evangelical land-grabbers who from the time of Plymouth Colony to the Indian wars of the 19th century, justified stealing land and slaughtering millions of Native Americans, because Indians were "godless sons of Satan" as evidenced by their red skin and their pagan religious rites. Some were banned in the U.S. until President Jimmy Carter restored religious liberty in 197__.
- Even UU minister can get rasty when infused with the doctrine of an eternal struggle between Light and Darkness.
II.
Testimony from the Natural World
Where do you find Light warring with darkness?
- At dawn, as Mother Earth turns another time-zone rotates away from night, moon and star-light towards the Sun which appear to rise in the east and set in the west.
- At mid-day, on a clear day light and shadow ebb and flow, depending on the clarity of the air, the position of trees and houses, and the angle of our point of view.
No battle, no war, just light and shadow dancing together composing the world we see around us. - At night, we see the light of the stars only because the light of our star the sun is bathing the other side of mother earth with light. Without the encircling dark we could not see the stars, and much the world we be come uninhabitable, with either arctic cold on the dark side or desert heat on the light side.
Our seasons succeed each other, not because Light and darkness are fighting, but because of the angle of Mother Earth as she dances, and the ebb and flow of intensity in the suns light, and the changing balance of day & night.
"IMAGINE," says Emeron in his first essay called Nature, "if our planet had more than one sun so that night came only once every generation."
"IMAGINE the delight, awe and wonder that would attend the eclipse of binary stars and the astonishing appearance of millions of stars and perhaps a moon or two that were always present, but invisible. How people might fall to their knees and worship or turn their telescopes and map stars and planets before they disappeared.
No fight, no war—just the ebb and flow of darkness becoming light becoming dark"
III.
Testimony from the Human World
Light and Dark in the Psyches
We know that our bodies and minds need both darkness and light, night and day, dreaming and waking.
If we slept all day, we might have lovely dreams but what kind of social life? If we were wakeful all day, or prevented from deep sleep and dreaming, our bodies might be able to repair themselves and our minds, deprived of dreaming, would begin to hallucinate.
Consider Alaska, Iceland or northern Scandinavian near Winter Solstice. They are blanketed in 20+ hours of darkness and thousands of people descend into depression. Near Summer Solstice they are bathed in 20+ hours of sunlight and thousands of people become manic. Health in our psyche requires a balance of darkness and light.
Light and Dark on Our Bodies
Our bodies also require a harmonious balance of darkness and light. If we deprive our skin of sunlight, we may not get enough vitamin D and we may sink into depression. If we get to much sunlight, our reward may be skin-cancer which, in extreme forms, can be life-threatening.
Light and Dark in Society
In the social world, terrible things happen when light-skin and dark-skin are set at war or arranged in social hierarchies. In India, the caste system which held millions captive was directly related to skin color: the lighter the skin, the higher the caste, power and privilege.
In our country, the habit of over-valuing light skin and under-valuing dark skin helped produce two centuries of slavery, two centuries of an undeclared war against Native Americans and 400 years of white privilege that is comically reinforced by white skinned people “going native” by working on their tans.
Summary, I have been suggesting, hopefully in not too strident a way that this ancient Manichean idea of an eternal war between Darkness and Light has no basis in our experience of the natural word and has done great harm wherever it has been applied. It has brought conflict—within and without—alternating waves of depression and mania, centuries of racism, white privilege, and the enslavement of those with darker skin.
These deeply rooted, often unconscious patterns can be revealed by careful critical analysis but criticism cannot alter the pre-rational grip that myths and stories have on us. Only a story can replace a story. Only a myth can replace a myth. Only new rites, spiritual practices and ethics can replace a system of beliefs that we have hopefully outgrown.
IV.
A New Beginning
New Stories
One way to begin the transformation of darkness vs light stories is to go back to the stories we have received and amplify the role of night, darkness and dreams.
Where did baby Jesus live before his birth? In the warm, encircling darkness of Mary's womb, where he was bathed in nutrients and Mother-love and attuned to the lub-dub of his mother's heart-beat.
What would have happened to the Christmas story if Joseph, Mary and the Wise Guys had not remembered their nights dreams where they were warned of an unnatural but chaste pregnancy of the necessity to "fear not," but to open themselves to the unknown and—in the case of the 3 Wisemen—to NOT tell King Herod where Baby Jesus was born. But instead to stealthily return to their own country.
And the stable where Baby Jesus was born was not a well-lit upper-class suite at the Ritz
it was a dimly lit, stinky, dark barn filled with fragrant hay and not so fragrant offal that was warmed by the body-heat of cows and sheep. Baby Jesus like his Jewish parents. He probably had brown skin, brown eyes and dark hair. Like his parents he was an under-caste poor Jewish refugee born of an unwed mother and living on the charity of others.
Light that wants to shine needs darkness.
New Rites & Spiritual Practices
Instead of burning candles and lighting millions of twinkling lights our holiday celebrations might re-focus on how dark serves light: we could go out under the majestic night sky, feeling how tiny we are, and open our heart, mind and senses to the dark canopy overhead and the twinkling light of distant stars—each of them a “sun," many with planets whirling around them,
and an as-yet untold number of planets basking in the temperate zone like Earth capable of supporting life, both like and unlike our own blue planet.
Light that wants to shine needs darkness.
And instead of seeking our personal Enlightenment, we might instead take up a complementary spiritual and ethical practice of Endarkenment. We might begin, as psychologist Carl Jung invites us, to reclaim our own “shadow”—the dark, unconscious and unwanted parts of our selves that we tend to fear and loathe and therefore loan to others who we then attack for carrying our own shadow projections.
By claiming and owning our shadows, we might become less dangerous beings, more capable of compassion and justice, more likely to reach out and welcome the out-caste, not rich, and white white people who we have relentlessly exploited for thousands of years.
Light that wants to shine needs darkness.
New World-View
Finally, this ethical, spiritual and mythological revolution might lead us to reclaim neglected some spiritual classics and compose new ones.
Here’s one of my favorite celebrations of the “middle way," the ebb and flow of seeming opposites which are actually beloved partners in the dance of life and death and transformation:
Dao
"When Tin and Yang come together, to join in unity and keep to certain order, everything will be progressive."
Tao Te Ching, Chapter II:
Under heaven
we know attraction because of repulsion,
we know virtue because of vice,
what is and what is not
define each other.
Hard & easy,
Long & short
High & low
Sound & silence
Front & back---
all opposites are deeply intertwined
and mutually dependent.
Therefore the Wise [Sheng]
act without forcing
and teach without words.
She cares for all beings
without being bossy.
He creates without clinging.
What is accomplished without a trace lasts forever.