To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

Back in the old days, in my old days, I lived on ten acres of land that was surrounded by a thousand acres of state owned forest. I loved to step out of the house at night, out of the light and into the darkness. It was incredibly dark there. I especially loved it in the winter when it was not only dark, but the air was made hard by the cold.

I didn't always love the dark. There were earlier times in my life that I was scared to death of it. As a young child, I had to take my bath upstairs and alone. Nothing could have been worse. I would scream and cry in protest before finally being forced up the stairs with the door closed behind me. There were little dark nooks and crannies and cubbyholes all over the place. I was sure that lurking in them was doom. It might be some secreted murderer awaiting his next victim, but more likely it was something unnatural that was just waiting for a tasty snack...like me.

Years later, but a good while before learning to appreciate the darkness in the woods, I found myself once again afraid. This time I was afraid of the darkness in my own soul. And I feared that, like the earlier monsters, it too, would consume me.

I was in my middle twenties and had gone through a difficult divorce. Once again I found myself afraid of being alone and incredibly afraid of the dark. I was afraid that the darkness inside of me was death. In a way, I suppose it was a kind of death, but it was a little death, not the big death that I feared. I didn't know that then.

For several years my fear kept me from exploring that darkness. My failure to explore it kept me from exorcising the demon grief that haunted me. And so I remained stuck, afraid that if I unveiled the monster, I would die. And because it remained cloaked, it wasn't going anywhere, except to grow in darkness and in power. I was all too aware of the fear, but I failed to grasp that the gift being held for me by the darkness was my freedom.

The winter solstice is a little over a week away. This is the darkest season, the darkest time of the year. Even though, as a culture, we have done everything humanly possible to eradicate darkness, we still can't get away from it. December reminds us of that. Beyond the illumination of every electric bulb and electronic tube, darkness serves as a constant contrast. Our illuminated outward view is a persistent reminder of those darker inner recesses.

In bygone years, the cold and dark brought our forebears inside for protection from the elements. Now, it seems more like we seek to protect ourselves from what's inside. In our rapidly developing multi-tasked orientation, we invent complicated diversions to keep our senses and our minds occupied. Electricity allows us to keep up whatever pace we might accomplish, and to pretend that seasons don't matter any more.

In days of old though, we remembered to slow down at this time of year-remembered to slow down and take note. All around us nature has geared down, in some cases even seeming to stop. We seem to keep buzzing right along to the next distraction. We're not necessarily so quick though, at picking up on the messages from the clues around us.

Those natural clues tell us to stop, to notice who we are, to go fallow (not shallow), to recollect our properties in anticipation of what is next. Ruth Stout writes, "...only in the winter...can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself."

And in her novel, A Romantic Education, Patricia Hampl wrote, "The cold was our pride, the snow was our beauty. It fell and fell, lacing day and night together in a milky haze, making everything quieter as it fell, so that winter seemed to partake of religion in a way no other season did, hushed and solemn."

As a liberal religionist, I would hasten to add that "hushed and solemn" are hardly the only way of being religious. Still, one can hardly hope to develop a religious life without a portion of that life being dedicated to the hushed and solemn activities of reverie, reflection and renewal. During this season of "Advent," this period of expectancy, we are invited by the darkness into these religious, spiritual activities. The gift of darkness is one that reminds us that now is a time for being, not just a time for more doing.

There is a relationship, I think, between our inability to slow down and a fear of the dark. Since the Age of Enlightenment we have cast out surreptitious gods and devils alike. That which we once held in both awe and in fear, was found to be irrational, improbable and irrelevant.

There is a part of the enlightenment that still hasn't come to fruition though. We may no longer accept magical deities and demons as the dominant movers and shakers of our lives. We have a greater appreciation of our own responsibility to fill those roles for ourselves. What we haven't recognize well though, is that those supernatural figures were the personification of our own inner workings, our own inner dynamics.

In the days of old, downtime, Advent, was a time for making peace with the supernatural. We have never really replaced that loss with a time for making peace with the very natural, though sometimes oppositional, elements of our own nature. Our inner deities and demons continue to long for our attention.

We may not have too much difficulty tending to that part of ourselves that we might readily identify as godly or full of light. Most of us are pretty quick to affirm ourselves as doing the best we can to live a responsible life and to love our neighbor. One of the problems I have with some elements of the New Age Movement is that it often upholds this unbalanced glorification of the light.

The imbalance is that we're not all light. In an earlier age when we could believe in devils, we could remove ourselves from responsibility for evil. With no devils in the picture, who can we blame for all the evil in the world?

We try to soothe ourselves by denying the darkness that is a part of each of us. We try to soothe ourselves by looking away from our depths, and relegating our gaze upon the surface of our lives. If we are going to grow on that surface, we'll need to grow in our deepest parts as well-where it's the very darkest. And to do that we need time, attention and intention.

In the light we attempt to show ourselves (both to ourselves and to one another) to be together, intact, strong and generally bent on goodness. These aren't lies; this really does represent who and what we are. But it only represents a part of our whole.

We are also fragile, unsure and often untrusting. We are also sometimes very alone and lonely. In her book, The Journey, Lillian Smith describes this darker aspect of us very well.

"Without words, it comes. And suddenly, sharply, one is aware of being separated from every person on one's earth and every object, and from the beginning of things and from the future and even a little from one's self. A moment before one was happily playing, the world was round and friendly. Now at one's feet there are chasms that had been invisible until this moment. And one knows, and never remembers how it was learned, but there will always be chasms, and across chasms will always be those one loves."

To be with ourselves in the darkness is to be vulnerable. It is to acknowledge and accept our greatest pain and to bear witness to our greatest fears. To be with ourselves in the darkness is to love ourselves more fully, for all that we are and still can be. To be with ourselves in the darkness, to love ourselves in that kind of fullness, amidst the brokenness, opens us up, as well, to the possibilities of loving others in their fullness. To deny ourselves leads to our denying others, or trying to deny others, of their fullness.

An experience I had this past week illustrates this point all too clearly. Some of you are familiar with an article that appeared in last week's Montclair Times. It was about the "Love Makes a Family" photo exhibit currently in our Fletcher Hall. The purpose of the exhibit is to invite people to recognize the inherent worth and dignity of all persons, and the inherent value of all loving families, whether the parents in those families are heterosexual or gay or lesbian.

The piece in the Times didn't do a very good job of informing people of this purpose. It wasn't a good article. It was written by a young, inexperienced reporter whose interest was in sensationalizing the story in order to make a name for himself. Through a letter to the editor published in this week's edition, I attempted to provide a more judicious account of our values and purpose in having such an exhibit in our church.

This past Tuesday I received a phone call from a woman who lives in town and who read the original article in the paper. It's been a while since I've received a hate phone call, and so it took me a bit off guard. The woman informed me that I was an abomination in the eyes of the Lord.

She said she was flipping through the paper, not knowing that the article was even there. She explained that, as she got nearer and nearer to the page it was on, she could feel something terrible and ominous coming. When she turned the final page and saw my picture she said, "it was so evil I felt like I was looking at a picture of the devil himself."

Now I'll be the first to admit that I'm not very photogenic. It wasn't a very good picture, but I didn't think it was that bad. When I tried to explain to the woman that I wasn't interested in her judgements and that gays and lesbians have every right to participate in loving families, she wouldn't hear of it. She assured me that she loves gay and lesbian people and that she only hates their "sin." She also assured me that I was even more evil because, as a minister, I should help to end that sin, not promote it.

I told her it was my job to promote love and not fear. I assured her that I felt very sorry for her and her limited ability to accept people for who they are. It wasn't enough for her to just be uncomfortable with her homophobia. She wanted the world to go into denial with her.

The reason I'm telling you this story isn't just because I find it amazing, which I do. The reason is that this is an incredible example of someone's inability to enter their own darkness to face a fear-homophobia. We see in the result of that inability how that person diminishes her own capacity to love, and how she attempts to diminish the value of anyone else who would even remind her of that fear.

Poet George Ella Light writes:

"I write this poem out of darkness to you who are also in darkness because our lives demand it."

I wouldn't want anyone to think from the story I've just shared, that this woman's inability to deal with her inner demons in any way lets us off the hook. I use it as an example because it can help us to see how one's inability to enter one's darkness diminishes the capacity to be as fully human as one might be.

The purpose of the illustration is to invite us all to recognize how whatever we might fear most can provide an invitation to be more fully human. We need only be willing to bear witness to that darkness within ourselves. I speak this morning out of darkness, to you, who are also in darkness, because our lives demand it.

Darkness is a gift if we accept it as one. It is a burden, a limiting and diminishing burden, if we do not. What is the gift that's waiting in the darkness? Perhaps it is the death of innocence and naivete. But the gift is also a fuller understanding and appreciation of who we are. It is a fuller capacity for self-love and for the love of others.

In this season of holidays, is there a more worthwhile gift we might seek for ourselves and encourage for others? In this season of anticipation, is there any greater yearning than for the birthing out of darkness of the freedom from fear and the freedom for a more embracing and deeper love?

May we be midwives to the birthing of that love which truly transforms and heals this world. For it is the world, more than any one of us, that waits in great expectation.

"I ask of thee, beloved Night- Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!" (Shelley)

"The darkness is a rope, not a prison; hand over hand I haul myself in to touch your face, to blossom." (Maurya Simon)