Season
of Light
“All
the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”
Francis
of Assisi
New
Year’s Eve, 2021: Helen Keller, both deaf and blind, said this: “Once I knew
only darkness and stillness…my life was without past or future…but a little
word came into my hand that clutched at the emptiness, and my heart leaped to
the rapture of life.” Here we are entering year three of the pandemic, with
almost a million people dead in America. These are times when light is desperately
needed. Fortunately, beginning this week, we will increase our hours of
daylight by a couple of minutes each day. I feel us leaning into those two
minutes with everything we have.
Like
Helen Keller, we can be moved from hopelessness to hope by the care and
kindness of another—that one person who puts “a little word into our hand”
can instill enough confidence in us to open our eyes to the joy of being alive.
We must enter the new year with the expectation of good things to come. And
then we must work diligently to bring those good things into being.
Faith,
according to Barbara Johnson, is “seeing light with your heart when all your
eyes see is darkness.” We carry the candle within and if we can illuminate
our own darkness, the darkness outside of us will not be so threatening. One of
Carl Jung’s most famous quotes is: “Knowing your own darkness is the best
method for dealing with the darkness of other people.” We will do almost
anything to avoid that deep knowledge of ourselves, but now is the time for courage.
Let me
say this: There will always be darkness, but there will also always be light, and
even if you and I have only one candle apiece, we can hold them up together and
shed light all around us. Let’s not carry this year’s darkness into the new
year. Let’s hold up our candles and make 2022 a season of light.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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