blinded by the light

I haven't been in the habit of reading much in recent years. It seems that vacation idling, when the routines of daily life at home are replaced by new a environment and fewer demands, provides the best opportunity for me to fall into the pages of a story or idea. That, or plane travel--captive soul, and all. But I don't fly much.

Now that I'm in a new environment for an extended period, and my days lack routine beyond dog-walking and a few other necessary tasks, reading ought to jump to the fore of how I pass my time. Perhaps soon. I'm still in the process of settling in to a new life, and I don't quite feel the ease of indulging in leisure. 

As it happens, I brought just one book with me on Phase One of The Move, Barbara Brown Taylor's Learning to Walk in the Dark. It was recommended to me by a friend, who in turn loaned it to me. At the time I was hungry to find the resonance in its pages that my friend assured me was there, so I managed to find some time to start it, and then take it along on an expected trip via air travel. My friend was right. Time now to read the last chapters.

Learning to Walk... is a rich offering that I savor as I turn its pages. Through personal stories and reflection Taylor affirms the value of darkness as a companion in life, especially as a spiritual teacher and bestower of unique gifts. Having grown up in a tradition where Light is the primary metaphor for the presence of the divine (the inner Light, holding one in the Light...), and having loved Light as a grounding experience in my own faith journey, I found myself jolted out of the complacency that the "quest" for union with the divine, and spiritual or personal wholeness is found by focusing on the Light. 

My preference for Light shows up in hymns (I want to walk as a child of the light), in poetry ("I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, give me a light that I may find my way in the darkness..."), in photography, and on and on. All of a sudden, through Taylor's writing I am experiencing Light and Darkness not as opposites that serve as object lessons of good versus less good (evil, if you want to go there), but as necessary partners that together expose the beauty of the created order and the extraordinary diversity of that order (sometimes chaos!). Together Light and Darkness have the capacity to elicit from all its creatures the fullness of who we are and who we can be. Learning to Walk... serves to remind me that the blinders that we think protect us from the shadows instead reveal that shadows have as much to teach us as the Light by which they are cast. 

This is an extraordinarily thought-provoking work, and I cannot commend it highly enough.