Darkness

 “Darkness can become the tending place in which our longings for healing, justice, and peace grow and come to birth.”—Jan Richardson

At Holly Skogen Park, there is a long, narrow cement drainage tunnel through which rain water and melted snow trickle or rush from the highway into the creek that runs through the park.

My son says he wants to crawl through it. I say no, a strange, inexplicable fear rising in me.

“You could drown,” I say, and then we both look around at the rain-less, snow-less landscape and begin to laugh.Through my laughter, I add, “Or get run over. The cars on the highway on the other side move fast.” But he’s still laughing, and after getting that sentence out, I am, too.

“You don’t want to lose me,” he says. It’s a statement of fact. He’s not asking a question, so I don’t say anything. He looks at me for a minute, his head cocked to one side. “Is that your biggest fear?”

“I never thought about it, but maybe,” I say, a long series of fears—some realistic, some completely bizarre—playing like a soundless movie across the front of my brain. 

Those fears move to the fears that have been realized over the last six years since we began Petalouda House--personal and collective. I see the court room in which I served as a witness to a federal crime, that long walk up to the witness stand; the empty rooms of people who have run away, hastily packing whatever they could carry; the day one of my children called me saying they wanted to die, and I knew it was different this time, that they meant it...the images move into collective traumas,  George Floyd under that cop’s knee (I can't ever retain his name); my friends running from tear gas, hands over their eyes. This goes on until I am dizzy and have to close my eyes.

My son doesn’t notice any of this. He’s crouching in front of the tunnel, peering in, waiting.

In an attempt to stop the movie in my brain and lighten the mood, I say, “Maybe the reason the tunnel looks scary to me is that I’m afraid of the dark!”

He raises his arms over his head, spreading his fingers wide toward the sky. “Conquer your fears!” he shouts. “I’m going in!”

I watch him crawl toward the small opening on the other end, peer through it, and crawl back.

“There’s a whole other world there!” he says.

“Yeah,” I say, “the world you drive by every day on your way to school.”

“No, not on the other side! I mean inside the tunnel,” he says, shaking his head.

“What’s it like in there?”

“It’s dark and quiet, and sometimes, that’s what feels best. It’s like when everything is really bad or really good, and then you need to go somewhere dark to…” his voice trails off.

“To feel everything all the way?” I ask, but he’s already running off, on to the next delight awaiting him.

“Conquer your fears!” he shouts again, and he jumps into the creek’s shallow waters, breaking the thin layer of ice. 

And so it is at Solstice: we go into the darkness, the quiet, and sometimes, that’s what feels best. But instead of conquering our fears or ignoring the personal and collective horrors we have known, we hold them in our sight, like lost dogs or sullen teenagers, and comfort them without touching. 

As the light comes back, we begin to see them clearly. And then, we can let them walk behind us, dragging their feet; or before us, jogging into the dawn; or beside us, like an old friend whom we’ve learned to accept just as they are. And if they want to sit down and put their weary heads on our shoulders, we let them; then, when they are ready, we touch them gingerly; we give them rest.