"Weeping may spend the night but joy comes in the morning." (Psalm 30:6)
As I young boy, I lived an idyllic life -- especially during the summers. Where we lived I could ride my bicycle almost anywhere, go fishing or romp in the woods right out our back door. My parents encouraged my freedom as long as I was home at meal times. After supper I was still allowed to play outside, but I had to be able to hear a parent call me to come inside and get ready for bed.
When the call came I knew the bathtub was full of warm water and any delay meant a cold bath. After a bath I put on my pajamas and headed for my bedroom, and that was a BIG problem. After I carefully checked under the bed and in the closet, I would jump into bed and pull the covers over my head just as a parent turned off the lights with a cheerful, "Good night. Sleep tight. We will see you in the morning."
Who were they kidding? How can you sleep tight when once the lights were turned off, the nighttime creatures crawled out from under the bed and out of my closet ready to attack at any moment?! I survived the nights by pulling the covers over my head so I couldn't see my fears manifested in my room.
Just in time for Holy Week and Easter, I received the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor's most recent book, "Learning to Walk in the Dark." She deconstructed my childhood understanding that the light was all those things good for me, but I was seriously in danger at night. That set up a dichotomy that drove my spirituality and had been reinforced by the church for many centuries. Even in our written prayers, God was present in the daylight but nighttime was relegated to the ultimate dangerous darkness.
While it may takes some practice, the reverend encourages us to fully embrace the brilliant light of the Easter Resurrection and to dare to walk again in the dark to the upper room of sacred foot washing and the meal of remembrances, and making those connections with our nighttime experiences where God was present with us at night in the same way as He was present with us during the day.
For many centuries, that flawed dichotomy has aided us in pulling the covers over our heads and refusing to see our deepest soul pain, including the death of someone closest to us. We might not even remember that during a human tragedy we experienced a special closeness to our compassionate God.
My heart and soul resonated with her insight: "I have learned things in the darkness that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion, I need the darkness as much as I need the light." Later she calls us to embrace a full solar faith.
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Parks is rector of St. Theodore's Episcopal Church in Bella Vista. He can be reached by email to [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this column don't necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.
Religion on 04/23/2014