A New Year’s Invitation: Let’s Make Friends with the Dark
In a fiery closing statement, the sun threw brilliant light onto the rocky peaks behind me, before slipping beneath the Western range. Silence overtook the birdsong, chittering squirrels, and buzzing insects. An unknown night bird skimmed the surface of the lake; a few moments later, a bat swooped overhead. Stars peeked through the darkening spectrum of blues above.
The air cooled against my skin and I pulled on my jacket, but made no further move. I smiled to myself: tonight, I would savor this sacred pageant, this cadenced surrender to the night. I had no need to scurry around like a frantic chipmunk, gathering my belongings and galloping back down the trail to the safety of my car with its bright headlights and promise of civilization. I felt no urgency because my tent was set up behind me and I had everything I needed for the night.
After awhile, I became aware of an unusual feeling inside of me: peace. For, by letting the sun go without regret, by declining to rush to correct the problem of darkness, sources of tension I didn’t even realize I carried melted into the earth. I opened to the wholeness of life, no longer privileging one half over the other, no longer grasping for comfort, or ease, or noise, or warmth, or light. Peace came when I embraced the whole.
How many times have you honored the fall of night?
This is the question I asked myself a few days ago, on the first day of Winter and the longest night of the year. I had been invited to a Solstice Ceremony, and I felt honored and lucky to be included, as these ceremonies are so rare in the 21st century United States. And yet, when my friends have actually come together to mark the occasion, the way we have talked about it troubles me. I have felt tension in my core, the same feeling I get when a truth goes unspoken, or when some form of oppression is taking place under cover of silence.
This year, I took time to reflect on my unease. On the longest day of the year, we celebrate the abundance of light. On the longest night of the year, we celebrate the impending return of the light. Twin questions coursed through my mind:
Why are we afraid of the dark?
Why do we fail to celebrate the night?
The tightness in my belly released.
Addicted to light, hating the dark
Many, many factors set modern humans apart from our ancestors. We have been violently severed from the natural world and our indigenous roots. We no longer need to engage in work which creates the material conditions for our own survival, such as hunting, gathering, chopping our own firewood, building our own tools and homes. Because of this, we no longer work together in community to meet these needs. And for the first time in 300,000 years of human history, artificial light is available to us at all times, in an infinite variety of forms, without any effort required.
From the moment we open our eyes in the morning to the moment we close them at night, we turn on lights. You could map your day by mapping your use of light: your phone alarm wakes you and you look at the bright screen. You turn on a bedside lamp, pull yourself out of bed, stumble to the bathroom and flip on the overhead light. You head to the closet and flip on the light while you dress. Then the hallway light, then the kitchen light, and on and on and on.
There is a word for a substance or activity that we believe we require nearly all the time, but which is not actually necessary for survival: addiction. We are addicted to light.
This addiction is not only physical. We are also addicted to a rigid mental or conceptual framework, and our conceptual framework has deeply imprinted our values. At least as far back as the so-called Enlightenment, Westerners have associated light with goodness, knowledge, science, rationality, literacy, intelligence, civilization, safety, white skin, God, angels, spirit, love, morality, and maleness. We have associated darkness with the “Dark Ages”, Africa (the “Dark Continent”), Black people, indigenous people, evil, ignorance, illiteracy, stupidity, superstition, irrationality, wilderness, “untamed” nature, women, witches, immorality, sin, Satan, hatred, anger, fear, mystery, and animals we fear, such as wolves.
Why does it matter?, you might ask. Well, like most addictions, this one comes with its own unique set of severe consequences. To fuel our light addiction, we drill, we frack, we mine, especially in lands populated by people of color; we destroy the sacred lands and lives of indigenous peoples, not to mention the lives of untold numbers of animals, plants, rivers, mountains, and entire species. You could frame the entire environmental destruction of our planet, including present-day climate chaos, as originating in our addiction to, and worship of, light. (For an absolutely stunning new memoir by an indigenous woman who took on big oil and won major victories, a story that may well change the way you think about our Western lifestyles forever, please read We Will Be Jaguars, by Nemonte Nenquimo.)
Our binary conceptual/emotional/spiritual framework also has grave consequences. Cleaving the world into two halves, one light/good/rational/civilized and the other dark/bad/irrational/savage, provided white American and European men the moral ground they needed to justify genocide, colonialism, systemic racism, slavery, and the violent exploitation and control of women and nature.
The consequences of this polarizing framework are not just in the distant past. A month before she died in 2020, Black Unitarian Universalist Rev. Dr. Hope Johnson wrote:
“I’ve been thinking a lot about how tired I am of hearing words that include black, dark, and more, used in a negative way even as we proclaim that Black Lives Matter… As I reflect on the negative definitions of darkness I am struck by how easy it is to internalize them in many different ways.”
In addition to the emotional pain this causes, it doesn’t take much of a leap to wonder whether this dualist construction of morality causes physical pain, up to and including imprisonment and death, for people of color. Studies already demonstrate conclusively that Americans, no matter our skin color, unconsciously associate Black people with immorality and white people with morality. Now think about how that would impact a police officer with a gun, or a public defender when deciding how much time and attention to give to a case. Police shoot and kill Black people more than three times the rate at which they shoot and kill white people; public defenders are more likely to prioritize cases involving white defendants. While some police officers and lawyers may be overtly racist, many may be acting unconsciously on the implicit bias instilled in us from the moment of our birth, to associate dark skin with criminality or immorality, and white skin with innocence and morality.
Given the whole story, the unfathomably violent truth of how our addiction to light is made manifest, does endless artificial light truly make our lives better? Or is this addiction just another example of how modern Westerners have prioritized physical comforts for an exclusive few over the love of all beings, and in the process, how we have traded away the well-being of our souls?
So, as I return to the questions about why we’re afraid of the dark and why we fail to celebrate the night, I hear the famous song from South Pacific playing in my head: “You have to be carefully taught!” We have been carefully taught to fear the dark for, at minimum, hundreds of years. And if that begs the question — why were we taught to fear the dark? — we need only look at who benefitted from our fear: white men capitalized on it to become obscenely wealthy, by taking the lives, land, and freedom of everyone else.
It does not have to be this way.
We can come back to harmony between light and dark.
In his revelatory memoir, Of Water and Spirit, Malidoma Somé points the way to a new way of relating to the dark. If you have not encountered his story before, a brief background: Malidome Somé was a medicine man, author and teacher whose purpose in life was to build bridges between his indigenous people, the Dagura tribe in Burkina Faso, West Africa, and the people of the modern West.
When he was four years old, Somé was kidnapped by Jesuit missionaries and taken to a seminary to be trained as a priest. There, he was violently forced to abandon his indigenous traditions, language, and knowledge. At age twenty, he escaped and found his way back to his village, where his elders then faced a challenging decision: what should they do with this highly educated young man who couldn’t even speak his own language and knew nothing about survival? I won’t spoil it for you, but the rest of the book describes the life-changing process of Somé’s reintegration and initiation into his tribe.
During the limbo period when his elders were deciding what to do, Somé learned some painful truths about how his people perceived him. For one, they did not trust him because he could read and write:
They understood literacy as an eviction of a soul from its body—the taking over of the body by another spirit. Wasn't the white man notorious in the village for his brutality, his lack of morality and integrity? Didn't he take without asking and kill ruthlessly? To my people, to be literate meant to be possessed by this devil of brutality. (p. 167)
Secondly, his people did not trust him because he used an oil lamp at night:
Among the Dagara, darkness is sacred. It is forbidden to illuminate it, for light scares the Spirit away. Our night is the day of the Spirit and of the ancestors, who come to us to tell us what lies on our life paths. To have light around you is like saying that you would rather ignore this wonderful opportunity to be shown the way. To the Dagara, such an attitude is inconceivable. The one exception to this rule is a bonfire. Though they emit a powerful glow, they are not prohibited because there is always drumming around them, and the beat of the drum cancels out the light.
Villagers are expected to learn how to function in the dark. I was given light because I had lost the ability to deal with darkness, and each time people saw the timid light of the shea-oil lamp in my room, they would walk away from it as if it signaled the presence of someone playing with the elements of the cosmos. (pp. 175-176)
Oh, how my mind was blown when I first read these passages! Light and literacy, inextricably linked and universally portrayed as good in my culture, were seen as the very opposite in the Dagura culture. I thought about how I had been trained since I was a young child to look down on illiterate people as uneducated, and, I’m embarrassed to admit, stupid. I thought of all the summer reading campaigns of elementary school, which rewarded me for reading as many books as possible, teaching me that I was good and virtuous for spending time with books, while spending time outside connecting with nature was, apparently a waste of time.
I imagined young Malidoma, similarly conditioned, reading by the light of his shea oil lamp, while his tribespeople walked around confidently and skillfully in the dark, opening up to direct spiritual revelation. I realized that his tribespeople weren’t ignorant, that the supposedly dumb space of illiteracy wasn’t a blank, a lack, a void – or darkness. Rather, that space was filled with spiritual literacy. That, while Western kids develop book literacy, these people developed spiritual and nature literacy. And they saw these literacies as going hand in hand with making friends with the dark.
I have a way to understand this dark literacy from my own experience. In my spiritual tradition, I engage in a form of prayer called shamanic journeying. It is very different from the way I was taught to pray as a child: thanking God for my family and belongings and etc., and asking Him for help when I needed it. With Christian prayer, for me at least, it was forever a one-way monologue: I never received a response.
But with shamanic journeying, two-way communication ensues! The language used by the Spirit Helpers, or angels, or God or Goddess (this is not a fundamentalist path - people from all spiritual backgrounds can learn to pray in this way), is one of internal visions, words spoken in the mind, emotion, and, most importantly, inner knowing. Put another way, it is a language of the loving heart. And because the communication happens internally through direct revelation, without relying on sermons or exegesis from a religious authority, or even referring to a Book, it happens in the dark. When I sit down to enter the altered state of consciousness of a shamanic journey, I close my eyes. If it is light outside, I may even cover my eyes with a washcloth or bandana. Light impedes the process.
And so, when I read Somé’s words, I thought of the spiritual awakening that had happened for me, when I finally put down all of my books and phones and tablets, and turned off the lights.
So you see, it really doesn’t have to be this way! Other cultures teach us that we need not remain out of balance, that there is a path to wholeness, that we can learn to love and appreciate the dark. Now, this is crucial: I am not advocating for flipping the binary hierarchy of value upside down. I am not suggesting that we switch from worshipping the light to worshipping the dark. What I am suggesting is that our addiction to the light has created a terrible, violent imbalance both in the world, and in our own bodies and souls. If we wish to heal both, we must synthesize a new harmony.
As the Unitarian Universalist religious educator Jaqui James wrote:
“The words black and dark don't need to be destroyed or ignored, only balanced and reclaimed in their wholeness. The words white and light don't need to be destroyed or ignored, only balanced and reclaimed in their wholeness. Imagine a world that had only light—or dark. We need both. Dark and light. Light and dark.”
Practice
If you feel the truth of this in your heart, consider making some friendly overtures to the dark (a New Year’s Resolution, perhaps?). You need not backpack to a remote part of the wilderness in order to do so. Here are some simple suggestions to get you started. If you have other ideas, please take a moment to share them with this community in the comments!
Take a chair, sit down right outside your house, and bear witness to the miracle of nightfall. Pay attention to the changes that take place: the darkening skies, the changes in sounds, the emergence of birds or other wildlife you might not see or hear during the day. Notice how it feels in your body, to accept the transition without resistance. Try embracing it with gratitude!
Allow night to fall inside your own living space. Simply be present and resist temptation to turn on lights and screens. While some people may want to make this a lengthy, immersive experience, it need not be. You can set aside just a few minutes before returning to your familiar lifestyle. (As a simple corollary to this suggestion, by all means cultivate mindfulness around turning off lights when you are not using them!)
If you live in a safe neighborhood and are in a position to trust your body’s abilities, you might consider taking a walk in the dark, bringing a flashlight only in the event that you need it. Try navigating by the faint light of the stars or moon. Bend your knees more than usual for extra shock absorption on uneven ground, and feel the Earth beneath your shoes for information to guide you.
If you are a parent with young children and hardly have time to think, much less add anything new to your routine: most young children are less conditioned than adults to fear the dark, especially when outside in nature with you. You can try these activities with them – and you just might find that not only do they love the challenge, they can become your teachers!
Try journaling on the gifts of darkness. For those of you trained in shamanic journeying, try a journey on the gifts of the dark and/or night. In both cases, be sure to avoid the pitfall of equating darkness with bad/shadow/the so-called “dark” side of human nature. If you find yourself caught in this mental construct, you can also try asking for help from your Spirit Helpers to free yourself from this destructive and polarizing binary (and you thought polarized thinking is new?).
And finally, if you feel called to celebrate the Solstices and Equinoxes in the coming year, make room for celebrating the gifts of the light and the dark. Along with celebrating the abundance of light and the return of the light, try celebrating the abundance of dark, and the return of the dark! Celebrate the sacred, life-affirming harmony between the two. Step away from the Solstice fire for a few moments, look up at the brilliant night sky, and make friends with the night.
In the end, this is about reclaiming balance and wholeness in ourselves and for the planet. It is past time to befriend the dark.
Sources and Gratitudes
“How did ‘white’ become a metaphor for all things good?”, by Aradhna Krishna, July 6, 2020.
”Darkness and Light: Updated Personal Perspectives,” by Hope Johnson, October 19, 2020.
”Dark and Light, Light and Dark,” by Jacqui James, January 21, 2015.
”Dark and Light: Practicing Balance — and Countering Racism — in Metaphors,” by Alex Kapitan, Dec. 21, 2020.
”Mapping fatal police violence across U.S. metropolitan areas: Overall rates and racial/ethnic inequities, 2013-2017,” by Gabriel L. Schwartz and Jaquelyn L. Jahn, June 24, 2020, and the page summarizing the findings in more readable (non-academic) English.
“Implicit Bias,” webpage posted by National Initiative for Building Community, Trust & Justice.
Of Water and Spirit, by Malidoma Somé, 1994.
The Death of Nature, by Carolyn Merchant, 1980.
And thank you to those of you who take the time to comment and share this piece. You make my writing better, and are building a community of people who care about nature and humanity.
I love this piece and am grateful for your guidance.
It brought to mind a couple of things that people one generation up from me have done in love for me (one makes me laugh and grimace inside, and the second makes me smile):
When I step outside at night to look at the stars, my mother-in-law (raised in Cortez) turns on the porch light “so you can see better”.❤️
When I’d go camping with my dad (raised in Brooklyn), he’d say, “don’t turn on your flashlight; we’ll see more without it.”❤️
Thank you for this. What a welcome alternative, on this particular day, to the otherwise ubiquitous "content" in this season suggesting New Habits, a New Diet, a New Organizational Method, etc. These are possibly beneficial endeavors, but so very often the way we write about and engage in them centers individualized Accomplishment (which easily comes with self-judgment and shame) and a capitalist sensibility of Optimizing Outcomes. This strikes me as spiritually opposite (to put it mildly!) from what you are describing.
One specific thing that struck me is that your first suggested practice:
"Take a chair, sit down right outside your house, and bear witness to the miracle of nightfall.
Pay attention to the emergence of wildlife you might not see or hear during the day."
lands a bit differently in my dense city surroundings. There certainly is some urban "wildlife", especially if you count free-roaming neighborhood cats along with the raccoons and occasional skunks, but our nightfall is always incomplete, with outdoor lighting and headlights ever-present. I'd be curious to hear reflections or practices from others readers who live with large amounts of light pollution.