The Longest Night, The Brightest Light

Note: This is a post I had on my LJ (jdhobbes) that I was asked to repost some place more public so that it could be shared. I hope you enjoy it and Happy Yule.

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Tonight is the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. I'll be holding my all-night vigil with my candle and I will hopefully still be awake at dawn to greet the sun. Happy Yule everyone.

Since November, I've been thinking about this idea of darkness and our relationship with it. Mainstream thought does not have many nice things to say about darkness, equating it with being lost, containing forbidden/dangerous knowledge, or hiding terrifying monsters.

Speaking from a purely North American mindset, I can certainly relate to these ideas. At 40 years old, I must admit to a certain amount of fear of dark places (I still get a cold chill down my spine when I turn my back on my parents dark basement and try not to dash up the stairs). When I think of friend Guy who ended his life in 2008, I imagine that he believed himself to be alone in a dark place, unable to see the people who would have carried him back to the light. The truth of it was that he wrapped himself up in his own darkness so that no one would see his pain until it become all consuming, and in the end, consumed him.

Darkness is terrifying, it is the great deceiver, and dogs our heels all of our lives. But this post isn't all doom and gloom... I promise!

As a storyteller, I recognize that dark places can be challenging and transformative if you keep your wits about you. The hero often needs to cross a dark wood, deal with shady characters, or face his own darkness before he can carry the day (and often the princess). Without the darkness to challenge us, how would we grow? It is the process of fighting our way out of those dark places that we become stronger, more confident that we can achieve more than we thought we could. But in so doing, we always carry some of that darkness with us, sometimes as a badge, sometimes as a reminder.

This past summer at KG, Thornhaven honored me by asking for my help on designing and executing a Men's Ritual that moved away from the Warrior archetype. We explored the three rings of self-identity, where I had to deal with the centre of one's being (you can read more that in my August 6th post). This place is especially terrifying because the darkness at the centre of your being forces you to face yourself in the most honest of ways, a brutal type of honesty. People spend their whole lives filling it with distractions to NOT have to face this type of reality.

But as I mentioned before, darkness can be a deceiver as well. It can trick you into believing that you are alone and disconnected. When you look out into the darkness and see nothing and no one, you may believe that you have no one to call friend, or worse, there's something out there that means you ill. But the truth of it is that there are others in that darkness looking for you as well, wondering why they are alone too.

The only way that you can reveal yourself is by sharing your light. People share their light with each other all the time through acts of kindness, generosity, and beauty. And by sharing our light with others, we increase our own light and the light of others. This isn't some kind of hippie-drippy, granola idea: it's reality. If the light of one candle can reveal one person, the light of many candles can reveal a group.

Our mainstream society has tricked us into thinking that there is some kind of power and prestige in walking alone. This is a lie. No one gets anywhere in this life without the support of family, friends, teachers, mentors, strangers, enemies, etc. All of these people carry us through our lives, and we in turn carry them. We share our light with their light, making navigating the darkness of the unknown that much easier.

So on this eve of the Winter Solstice, I wish to thank you for sharing your light with me over the year. I look forward to sharing your light in the New Year. Namaste.