Simon & Garfunkel “Hello Darkness”
When
Norio and I go to Portugal each year in May, one of the things we love is being
stretched out on a long chair, looking at the skies – day or night depending on
the weather. The house is in the country, at the top of a hill so we can see
the city of Faro, a plane or two coming in to the airport, and the city of
Olhao. If we want we can turn off all the lights in the yard and just BE in the
dark.
The
word ‘lighthouse’ in Portuguese is ‘farol’ and there is indeed a lighthouse in
the city of Faro. Southern Portugal is full of them – there is one in Olhao,
twenty kilometres from us. There is one on the western coast in Albufeira, and
if the weather is really clear we can see the lighthouse at Vila Real de Santo
Antonio – right on the border between Spain and Portugal. So we sit, outside in
the dark-but-not-dark, in absolute silence. Even the sounds of the nearby
freeway are muffled. The moon rises, and the whole seascape is in front of us.
In
the book “Learning to Walk in the Dark”, Barbara Brown Taylor writes:
“When I first began telling people that I was
studying darkness, their reactions all came from the same direction.
“That
makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck!” one woman said, rubbing
goosebumps that had sprung up on her arms.
“Is
it about spiritual warfare?” someone else wanted to know.
“Darkness
as in evil, or darkness as in depression?” someone else asked.
Their
associations with darkness were so uniformly negative that I thought about
sending out a survey to discover how that had happened. How had so many people
arrived at the conclusion that darkness was something to be feared, fought,
gotten through, or avoided? Was it a Hollywood thing or a Freudian thing, a ghost
story thing or a religious thing? Had their parents instilled a fear of
darkness in them to keep them safe when they were young, or did they have their
own alarming experiences of the dark to fuel their fear? What explained their
apparently universal agreement that the best way to deal with any kind of
darkness was to turn on a light?”
I
tried to think back to my childhood – in northern Saskatchewan in the summer,
and I mean the far north – the sun barely goes down – so from about May until
the end of September, we lived outside. It was only when the colder weather and
snow came, and the sun only came up about six hours a day, that we were inside
after dark. I don’t remember being afraid of the dark. I do remember my
mother’s stentorian voice echoing through the neighbourhood about the time the
street lights came on.
Did
you know that there are different kinds of twilight? First, there’s civil twilight – that’s when
the car headlights are legally supposed to come on – how often do we drive down
the roads and see cars coming which might not have lights on, or maybe one
missing? What do we do?
Nautical
twilight – when it’s possible to steer by the stars. Last year, the US Navy
began re-instituting the training of sailors in by-the-stars sailing, with
sextant, compass, charts. Instrument sailing is OK, but what happens if
instruments fail? Sometimes it’s good to know how to do it the old way.
What
does the sea look like at night? On the bridge of a ship at night, literally
everything is turned off except instrument panels. Dark, heavy thick curtains
blank off the whole bridge from the entry doors. Sailors have to be able to
navigate in the dark. If the lights on the bridge are turned on, they cannot
see *out* of the ship. It needs to be dark to be able to navigate.
When
planes come in to the airport, the lights are out, even lights in the flight
deck. Only the instrument panels are lit. Bright light from planes can affect
the vision of other pilots, other planes. Light can be a distraction, and we
don’t see the other things we *need* to see. Sailors and airline pilots need
dark to “see”.
Astronomical
twilight – which is almost fully night – when even the faintest of stars can be
seen. We get a much better sense of our place in the universe in this time –
and with the moon and stars, is it really dark?
Without
the dark, what would we see? What would we miss? What are we missing now?
I wondered what it was like living in a place
where there are at least two months of darkness in January and February. So I
asked some friends….
Rev. Leila Valtonen in Helsinki says
“There's 1000 kilometers worth of difference between Helsinki and Lapland,
even! Up there the sun does not appear
between the end of November - mid-January. But they say nordic lights and snow
give a different kind of lightness... I think for me it makes the change of
seasons very emotional indeed: candles and lanterns in the dark and enjoying
the outdoors when light is back. Summer nights are very special! Who would want
to sleep then!
Yet there are big differences
between individuals. Some are diagnosed with depression. Different advice and
techniques are given: bright light lamps in the morning. Some people are afraid
of the darkness coming, and in Finland of course there's often a long period of
greyness and lots of rain before the actual darkness falls in. Snow brings some
comfort and joy to many.
Lorna Koskela on the other side of
Finland says:
As for congregations ..well not sure
of this but 1 Advent Sunday has traditionally been the most popular day to go
to church (almost a must) linking Easter to Christmas with the reading of
Jesus' triumphant journey into Jerusalem ... I wonder if that is - in part - to
get us through the darkest time (Advent begins the six weeks of darkness in
northern Finland, and obviously the shortest days before/after winter solstice
in the whole nation) - so another thing
to think on is Christmas being placed where it is not so much to take over
pagan festivals but more to celebrate the anticipated coming of light to turn
back the darkness
Bjorn Broch Johansen, who comes from
Tromso in the far north of Norway says “I grew up at 70 degrees north, even north of Lapland. The sun was completely gone
for 2 months, and then stayed up for 2 months straight in the summer. I
recognize most of what Leila points out. What's important to know is that this
applies to a small minority. Most of the people are not bothered, but rather
enjoy what each season has to offer. When this is all you know, it is normal.
But seeing the sun pop over the horizon again in late January is always a happy
day.
So – what can we say about dark for
ourselves? If we have fear of the dark,
how do we cope? And that’s physical dark – but it becomes a metaphor for the
darkness of not knowing where we’re going – of feeling lost, of feeling our way
along. Did Abram and his entire entourage go with trepidation? Did Abram get an
earful more than once from Sarai about not even knowing where they were going?
All we’re told is that God came along and said “Go”, and they did. When Jesus
and the disciples set out for Jerusalem – did they go with confidence or fear?
Lent is a good time to reflect on
unknown journeys. Life itself is an unknown journey, and within that there are
times when we have to take chances, step off on what appears to be the best
road, maybe the only road, and walk in the dark. So for Lent, we reflect on
walking in the dark- remembering that we are walking together. May it be so.
Sources:
1.
Barbara Brown Taylor . Learning to
Walk in the Dark, Harper Collins Publishers. 195 Broadway, New York NY 10007.
Pp. 26-27
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