My photographer friend Russell Taylor captures winter morning fog in northern Oregon’s high Cascades. Sunlight travels through the dark spaces of the Cosmos, to land in these ancient woods, on this hidden trail.

Light in Darkness

presented at Oregon Interfaith Hub’s Interfaith Winter Service,
December 5, 2023
Approx. read time: 1:30 min.

Winter comes. Days grow short.
Sunlight is precious, and fleeting.
The dormancy within mirrors the dormancy of Creation.

For Christians, this is the season of Advent,
a season of invitation to come close, to approach,
to advance toward … what we do not yet know.
We want it to be … Peace.

When we are attuned to it, Advent carries
the urgency of Light in dark spaces,
precisely when life seems most bleak.

Advent defies the logic of evidence
embedded in our world’s present narratives.
It offers, instead, the logic of grace, and hope, and
possibility to all who are courageous enough
to embrace it.

Humankind and all of Creation groans—
whether knowingly or not—
to live its original loveliness, and to remember
its original blessing of justice,
generosity, joy, and peace.

We celebrate this season of Light in Darkness
because we know we have it in us
to yearn, as the Hidden Holy One yearns,
to cherish what the Hidden Holy One cherishes,
which is every one, and, every thing. 

Advent, season of spiritual pregnancy, is so necessary
to the proper celebration of unimagined Birth.

We can, and must, hold the tension of Light in Darkness
just right, and honor this sacred season of waiting,
hoping, trusting, even as we grieve the spaces
where Light, and Peace, are not. 

We offer, now, the full maturity of our hearts
as balm to a broken world,
starting close in, and radiating outward.

We keep watch for the Hidden Holy One,
who walks amid the rubble and the cries, even now.