Lighting the Dark

The days are getting shorter, the nights longer. It is cold, not above freezing all week. Our world is covered in snow and ice and the colors have dimmed and become muted. It seems somber when the skies remain grey for days. It is cold and damp, and tiresome. Everything is more of an effort, and seems to take more time. I can't just run out the door in my shorts and t-shirt and flip flops and skip down the hill. I dress in layers. I plan the layers very carefully so that I will be warm all day. A camisole undershirt, a turtleneck, a warm and fuzzy long sleeved t-shirt over that, and then a heavy soft flannel shirt, and then a cardigan over that. Long underwear bottoms under my jeans, and sometimes 2 pairs of socks if one of them is thin. I pick the shoes that will best keep me from slipping on the ice (I hope!), and then, when it is time to go, I choose which jacket is best for the weather, which scarf, which hat, which gloves, or would mittens be warmer today? It takes time, and it takes thought. I don't want to get cold and I don't want to get sick, and I certainly don't want to fall.

It is the time of increasing darkness, the time when our northern hearts yearn for the light. Houses decorated in bright white and twinkly colored lights cheer my weary, frosted spirits as I walk home from work, laden with groceries. I had to walk home in the road all week, because the sidewalks were slick and treacherous. I prayed a car did not hit me in the half-dark--some of them come pretty close, as if to confirm my unworthiness as someone who must walk up the hill, bearing burdens. When I am already tired I can become easily discouraged and feel humiliated and sad. A loser in the contest of who has more material things. That is a contest I honestly have no interest in participating in, but I am sensitive too, and feel it when I am treated with disrespect, even anonymously, simply for being who I am.

I fell twice this week. I am usually pretty balanced on my feet. But for 2 consecutive mornings, on my walk with the dogs, I fell. Both times I had lost my concentration, distracted by something else. The first day I was thinking about our next move--crossing the road. It is a tricky spot where cars come up over the hill quite suddenly, if they are going too fast, and I was shifting my focus to looking for the glow of oncoming lights and listening for a car's approach. It was then that Little Bear, eager to get to the Field of the Big Tree, pulled to go across. And zip, that patch of snow beside Barbara's mailbox was actually ice and down I went. The next day, I was right near the cathedral of Norway spruces, and I was beginning to cross over off the cemetery path and onto the grass where the footing was better, but I was also beginning to say Psalm 23 aloud and was focusing more on that. Little Bear made another sudden lunge to go sniff and pee on a tree, and down I went again. That was a worse fall that left me banged up, scraped, and stiff. It left me thinking irrationally, thinking that those damn dogs will never weaken and age, while I will. Because I never fall. I focus my concentration on staying on my feet. The first one was bad enough and pulled a muscle in my leg, but the second one, happening the very next day, really rattled me. It made me feel old.

(This is Little Bear's season of glory. Just as the Indian in me needs to do certain things--like to be out at dawn, greeting the sunrise, every single day of the year, the sled dog in him hits the snow in a specific stance and gait and off he goes. Pulling. Pulling me. If it isn't icy, I can give him a run he will enjoy. But when it is icy, I am pulling on the brakes constantly. He wants to run and duck his head down and scoop up snow in his mouth and chew it as he goes. It is a beautiful thing to see, how he finds a track and goes for it, despite never being trained in it. It is simply part of who he is. I told the vet once that he was generally a very good dog, but sometimes is really unmanageable. And she replied, "That's the Husky in him, he can't help it.")

And so now as we enter the season of increasing darkness, we focus our eyes on the light. Holiday lights decorating houses, candlelight from menorahs brightening the table as the family shares a meal--Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, happening right now. In our faith tradition, we sing of the glory of God coming to earth as a tiny baby, in a lowly stable, in a place no one would expect God to be. The images of our Christmas stories are full of bright lights in the darkness, and I think especially of the blazing star that told of the baby Jesus's birth, the star that learned men followed for thousands of miles so to find that baby boy. I am dismayed when I hear these stories dismissed as fantasy and fairy tales. But even if a person chooses to read them that way, they are stories full of images of hope and joy, of peace and love, of glory found in humble, unexpected places.

We are all following some story, that is the way human minds work, in language and imagery. In our Native tradition, we say we ARE our stories, and that without our stories, we are lost. So, some people follow stories of wealth and accruing material things, and there their hearts are. Others follow lights in the darkness, a brilliantly shining star leading them to find hope in unexpected places. Perhaps I am blessed because I have been touched by spirit. I am enthralled by mystery and look for beacons in the dark. My life has been too full of dark. And so I reach eagerly for the light, a celestial light, a natural, supernatural light, the light of God's love made manifest, a gift to us. The human made world, the world that excludes God and the miracles of the Christmas stories--the world that turns the holiday into merely a shopping and eating fest--is a place of shadows and mirrors, of people endlessly admiring themselves and what they have made. How tiresome and empty I find it. Give me a solitary star shining in the darkest night. I will gladly stand out in the snow and brave the ice with my unruly dogs so that my heart be filled with such a light.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

(Thanks to NASA for the image of the Pleiades. The Cherokee believe the light of higher consciousness came to earth from these stars.)