It is the season of the long dark. From time out of mind, religious communities have found reason to gather and to light candles against the dark in this season. We moderns know the truth of the seasonal cycles. Some of us can even explain them coherently. The religious impulse to hold the dark at bay still calls us into the warmth and the light of community.

We reflect on the spiritual theme of “Listening” this month. The long dark is a time of greater quiet, of more silence but it is also a time of listening. Perhaps this year we have greater need of silence. There has been so much speaking and so much of that speaking has been shrill and hate filled.

Perhaps it is not so much silence that we need as respite. Perhaps it is rest for which we yearn most. Even those of us who have managed to close out the angry voices in our world, even those of us who have found satisfaction in the work of love and justice…all of us need rest and renewal.

I also feel the need to re-center and to listen again for what I know to be true in my life. The long dark calls us to a different kind of knowing and a reclaiming of those truths and values we are willing to stake our lives on.

We do “stake our lives on” things we believe to be true. That is what we are doing in the choices we make about how we will live, how we will spend our time and our energy and our money. It is not that we can ever be certain. Our religious tradition proclaims that revelation is not sealed. Truth always remains both personal and a work in process. Yet, by our living, we commit. Our actions speak the truth we are willing to “stake our lives on.”

In the dark and in the quiet, this season calls us to listen to our lives.

I share this poem by Nancy Schaffer that I found myself re-reading in my devotions this morning.

A Theology Adequate for the Night
By Nancy Schaffer

Not God as unmoved mover:
One who set the earth in motion
and withdrew. Not the one to thank
when those cherished do not die—
for providence includes equally
power to harm. Not a God of exactings,
as if love could be earned or substracted.

But—this may work in the night:
something that breathes with us, as others
sleep, something that breathes also
those sleeping, so no one is alone.
Something that is the beginning of love,
and also each part of how love is completed.
Something so large, wherever we are,
we are not separate; which teaches again
the way to start over.

Night is the test: when grief lies uncovered,
and longing shows clear; when nothing we do
can hasten earth’s turning or delay it.

This may be adequate for the night:
this holding, something that steadfastly
breathes us, which we also are learning to breathe.

Blessings in this time of darkness. May we, each of us and together, discover what we need in this season of quiet and listening. May the candles that we light this month show a path for each of us toward hope.

Bill