![](\"https:\/\/64.media.tumblr.com\/e7f57770366a8681fa063aba37621b8b\/ebdeec7eba7b7e72-24\/s640x960\/3f6969cfeb344f225e61dae6ce3551800c72aab0.png\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nThe total solar eclipse is seen from Charleston, South Carolina, on August 21, 2017. \/ AFP PHOTO \/ MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN\/AFP via Getty Images<\/small><\/i>)<\/i><\/p>\n
And darkness has its own profound spiritual gifts.\u00a0 Darkness is the space for rest and restoration.\u00a0 It is also the time for un-productivity.\u00a0 Those things you can do in the light \u2013 the planting and sowing, knitting and weaving, cooking (or gathering manna) and cleaning up \u2013 just don’t work as well in the dark.\u00a0 Historically nighttime was for storytelling and song, snuggling and simply being.\u00a0 The demands of the day couldn’t be met a night, so night had its own softer rhythm.<\/p>\n
Slower, more about connection and joy, a time to make sense of things that had happened, a time to consider what was coming.\u00a0 Time for prayer, and contemplation.\u00a0 Time for rest \u2013 physical and otherwise.<\/p>\n
In this \u201ccity that lights and hauls the world,\u201d we are at the epicenter of messing up darkness by making it possible to be productive during the night!\u00a0 Maybe this is why the image of Jesus shining feels incomplete to me \u2013 we are used to lots of shining and seeing the value of light, but we don’t get enough darkness.<\/p>\n
In the book \u201cThe Dark Night of the Soul\u201d by Thomas Moore, the metaphor of darkness is expanded and used to make space for times of grief, uncertainty, and when healing is desperately needed.\u00a0 Moore talks of those as times when we can’t connect to God because the ways we once understood God don’t fit how we now understand things.\u00a0 For him, the darkness becomes a womb, a place where development is happening without being seen, a place one stays in until one is ready to leave and able to thrive outside the womb.<\/p>\n
Which is all to say that God is found in the darkness, and not just in the light, and I fear that modern Christian faith over focuses on the light, just like modern life does.\u00a0 We fight back the darkness with LED bulbs, and we miss the gifts the darkness means to give us.<\/p>\n
I also want to take this one step further, when we associate light with God we then end up associating darkness with \u2026 not God?\u00a0 Maybe even with evil.\u00a0 In our society, which is full up to the brim with white supremacy narratives, that creates big dangers.\u00a0 At the time of Jesus, racism wasn’t one of the issues on the table.\u00a0 But today, it IS.\u00a0 And while light and dark aren’t the same thing as light skin and dark skin, they’re related enough that when we emphasize the goodness of light, we end up supporting the narratives of white supremacy.\u00a0 And when we emphasize fighting back against the powers of darkness, we end up supporting the narratives of white supremacy.<\/p>\n
Which, clearly, isn’t what we want to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So I want to reimagine this story in the simplest of ways.\u00a0 What if Peter, James, and John get to the top of the mountain and see Jesus transfigured before them, and his clothes become dazzlingly black, such as no pigment on earth could dye them?\u00a0 And then the story goes on like we know it, with Elijah and Moses appearing, Peter sticking his foot in his mouth, God blessing Jesus, and Jesus requesting the whole experience stays a secret.<\/p>\n
What happens in our imagination if the clothes are dazzling black?\u00a0 What happens if we see Jesus transfigured and instead of the ways that light is reflected by white, what we see is light being absorbed by black?\u00a0 Is it less dazzling?\u00a0 More?\u00a0 Less sacred?\u00a0 More?\u00a0 Maybe just the same, but different too.<\/p>\n
Of the many gifts of darkness, one of them is that there aren’t shadows in darkness.\u00a0 Jung speaks eloquently about our shadow selves, the ones we try to hide that emerge despite out best efforts.\u00a0\u00a0 Which, really sounds like the metaphor I’m concerned about, but I think we can glean something from it.\u00a0 Especially because the parts we experience as \u201cshadows\u201d are wonderful and important parts of ourselves that we’ve denied, but are are beloved by God.\u00a0 But in darkness, there are no shadows.\u00a0 Which I think suggests that darkness makes space for us to integrate ourselves, the self we project into the world with the self we try to hide, and to simply be as a human \u2013 imperfect but beloved by God.\u00a0\u00a0 Darkness lets us be whole, make space for our whole self, and notices the gifts of all aspects of our beings.\u00a0 Darkness is a place for healing and integration!\u00a0 What a wonderful, and needed, gift!<\/p>\n
What if the dazzling black of Jesus’s clothes that is awe inspiring like catching a glimpse of the cosmos itself, was also an experience of profound love where Peter, James, and John realized that they were loved as they were \u2013 all parts of themselves, even the ones that they struggled to love or were ashamed of?\u00a0 What if the reason Peter offers to build a monument is because it is so utterly amazing to find out that God can love the whole of you, even when you struggle to do so yourself?\u00a0 What if the dazzling blackness is being wrapped in the story that you are already loved, just as you are, without hesitation, and without an expectation that it takes producing enough to be enough?\u00a0 What if our humanity is found in the meaning-making of darkness instead of in the production of light?<\/p>\n
What if the dazzling blackness is another form of manna in the desert \u2013 a way of God taking care of the things the people need?\u00a0 And what if it is meant to be shared with abundance because there is plenty \u2013 of manna, of love, of darkness?\u00a0<\/p>\n
What if all we have to do to experience it is to turn out the lights?<\/p>\n
Amen<\/p>\n
February 11, 2024<\/p>\n
Rev. Sara E. Baron\u00a0
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady\u00a0
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305\u00a0
Pronouns: she\/her\/hers\u00a0
http:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/\u00a0<\/a>
https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FUMCSchenectady<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"