Learning
to Walk in the Dark
Barbara
Brown Taylor (2014, HarperOne)
We
don't give darkness much time or space in our lives these days.
Electric lighting first appeared fourteen decades ago, television and
computers and smart phones within living memory; light follows us
everywhere we go, in a way that is historically new. Like quiet,
darkness is now something we have to go to some trouble to
experience.
In
Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor explores
the consequences of this shift for the natural world, and for our
spiritual lives within it. After she'd left her job as rector of an
Episcopal Church in 1998, she and her husband moved to a farm in the
hills of rural Georgia, where the Milky Way is actually visible, and
it makes sense to notice the seasons of the moon. That the flood-lit
neighbors down the road deny themselves this part of country life is
a minor irritation, but not much of a surprise. They very likely have
never lived with real nighttime darkness.
Nor,
if they happen to be churchgoers, have they heard anything positive
about it. The usual servings of holy writings tend to lead to what
Taylor calls the 'full-solar version of Christianity.' (We heard just
such a reading in today's lectionary. The twenty-second chapter of
Revelation told of a vision that "there will be no more night;
they need no light of lamp or sun.") In the fundamentalist youth
group where Taylor first experienced Christianity, darkness was
regarded as a thing to be avoided at all costs, and the precursor to
eternal damnation.
Yet,
she says, "even in the Bible, that is not the whole story about
darkness." Abraham met God by starlight, and his grandson Jacob
wrestled all night with the angel, in a way that changed the whole
story of the world. And when Moses made his covenant with God, in the
presence of the people of Israel, a cloud obscured the mountain-top.
"While this darkness is dangerous, it is as sure a sign of God's
presence as brightness is, which makes the fear of it different from
the fear of snakes and robbers."
Darkness
can be mystical, then, and even holy. There are truths to be found
there that are unavailable to the bright light of day, like the stars
that shine unseen overhead, at noon. Taylor goes into one of the
great caves of West Virginia with a guide; they stop several times to
sit in the dark. "There is no way to tell time, which means
there is no rush. There is no light, which means that I do not have
to worry about how I look. There is no one beside me, which means
that I do not have to come up with something to say. Above all, there
is no threat."
And
what of the darkness that is a threat, when loss, pain, or sorrow
makes it seem like God has departed for good? We can pray to be able
to pray; we can read Job and the Psalms, with more resonance than
before; we can look for trusted guides. "For good or ill, no one
can do your work for you while you are in this dark place. It has
your name all over it, and the only way out is through."
Such
times come to all of us who live long enough, I think, and they are
the crucible of wisdom. Taylor, now in her sixties, is wise about
life, in a way I'm grateful for: "To be human is to live by
sunlight and moonlight, with anxiety and delight, admitting limits
and transcending them, falling down and rising up. To want a life
with only half of these things in it is to want half a life."
May
we have grace to want a whole life.
Email, May 1, 2016
My
reviews of some earlier books by Taylor:
http://anygoodbooks-mixedreviews.blogspot.com/search/label/Barbara%20Brown%20Taylor
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