The Call

Arun Anoop from Unsplash

“Holy places are dark places….Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.” C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

Welcome Community of my Heart and thank you for coming here! If you like what you read, I would love it if you would click the ‘like’ button, and comment as well if you like. Check out “Notes” on my main page too. This essay was written in response to Beth Kempton’s invitation this week to write about originality, as part of her Essay Festival this summer.

I arise at 4 AM every day. As the dark calls to me it quiets my mind, especially in the predawn hours. These are the holy hours of dreams and visions: Pensive, observant, and clear, I consider everything that comes along my brain/body highway. Unconfused by too much light and activity, I hear my thoughts audibly and they dance around my muscles and bones looking for an attachment, a place to land and grow into realizations.

There are other treasures in the darkness, whether as a part of the day, or in a closed space. When we demonize the darkness, we are deprived of its treasures. Rest and peace, depth, time to come closer to our truth. Kali, Medusa, Pele, and the Black Madonna are all true representations of the Divine Feminine in her dark form. Kali, the great destroyer, the powerful Medusa who turns people into stone with her gaze, the fire Goddess Pele, and the Black Madonna, the great protector. These goddesses show how to respond to anger, rage, disappointment and indignity, how to effectively manage those emotions that often overwhelm us, our own inner darkness.

The dark of night is the time to observe meteors, shooting stars and the moon. Babies, seeds, and ideas gestate in the dark. We began our life and spend half of it in the dark. The journey of our soul happens in darkness. The middle of the night, whether we awaken and lie in our bed until sleep claims us again, or we get up and take a walk in the neighborhood, that is the mystical Hour of Her.

We have become addicted to light and so, there are few places left where light pollution is not an issue. New Age books and lectures incessantly push the idea of ‘reaching for the light’ as an avenue toward knowing and control, completely ignoring the mystical gifts, the connection to the natural cycles of life, and the mysterious depth of the darkness.

I love

a rainy dark day.

I love

those moments when I awaken in the night, it’s my time to converse with my ancestors.

I love

the blue hour, that liminal time between sunset & nightfall.

I love

the dark moon, a time of rest and rejuvenation.