Walking in the Darkness

In my reflection in Ash Wednesday service with Living Stream, which you can re-watch here, I talked about vulnerability and how Lent is our opportunity to come before God in all our beautiful vulnerability. We of course can, and should, do that anytime but there is something sacred about this Lent season when it seems particularly fitting. Where Advent is all about preparation, Lent to me is about reflection. “How do I want to be resurrected?” “What can be resurrected in me?”. These questions circle my thoughts in this 40-day journey. On Ash Wednesday I talked about Brene Brown and her call to dare greatly by living with vulnerability at the center of our lives. This call to live into the vulnerability and discomfort was reissued for me in the opening pages of Barbra Brown Taylor’s new book Learning to Walk in the Dark. I started reading it last night shortly after it downloaded to my iPad at 9 pm, one of the perks of West Coast living is that books are released on Eastern time so I get it at a reasonable hour to start reading. In these first few pages Taylor calls us into the dark places in our lives,

“when, despite all my best efforts, the lights have gone out in my life (literally or figuratively, take your pick), plunging me into the kind of darkness that turns my knees to water, nonetheless I have not died. The monsters have not dragged me out of the bed and taken me back to their lair. The witches have not turned me into a bat. Instead I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as light.”

We need darkness as much as we need light. In these days of Lent we need the darkness of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday just as much as we need the “Alleluias” of Easter’s resurrection. But darkness is scary, even once our eyes adjust, it is uncomfortable and uneasy. We do not know where we are going. We cannot see where we are headed. And so we have no choice but to reach deep within and live in our vulnerability. And when we choose to live into that place of vulnerability it is amazing who we will find is with us in the darkness. When we can live with vulnerability and bravery we never know who will speak the words of Christ to us and walk through the darkness with us. Or to whom we can be the presence of Christ. As church, we need vulnerability and darkness. It is where we are most real and where I believe we can best be Christ to the world. But so often I see us struggle with how to be vulnerable, Taylor knows that as Church we do not like the darkness as much as we like the light. We cling to light and ask to be delivered from the darkness and the perils and dangers of night. We do not like to sit in the in-between place, where we have to have hard conversations about the future of our congregations, where we struggle with tension in the denomination, where we do not feel heard or welcomed. We shy away from the perils of the night and are assured that God will lead us into the light, but what if instead we stayed in the dark and sought to find God in the darkness. What lesson might we learn, what strength might we find if we fully open ourselves to the depth and sacredness of the night. When we can feel just a little bit closer to the holy, and when we have to tap into the still small voice inside us to guide us.

In these final days of Lent as I continue to read I’m sure I will ruminate over what can be resurrected in me, but I hope I can also learn to welcome the in-between and live into the vulnerability. Who knows, maybe I will find you in the darkness too.

Blessings friends,