Walking in Darkness

Sometimes we may find ourselves lucky enough to have someone to steady our shaking hand or someone we need to dig deep into our own resilience to support. But we do not know how long it will take. All we know is that we must keep moving.

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Many years ago, I worked at a residential home for at-risk teenage boys. One of our field trips was to the Ape Caves, a network of underground lava tubes carved out by the eruption of Mt Saint Helen.

My one and only co-facilitator had expressed some hesitations about the trip and I was quick to reassure her. We all need to get outside of our comfort zone from time to time. It wasn’t until we’d begun our descent into the caves, flanked by a giddy horde of youngsters, that I began to sense her deepening sense of fear. Her breath got shallow and her voice higher, but she still seemed willing and I believed she would acclimate.

By the time we had fully entered the darkness, she had descended into full-blown panic. She was panting, shaking, and disturbingly unsteady on the loose stones. I had no idea whether the shorter route out was back the way we’d come or pressing forward to the exit.  All I could do was hold the flashlight in one hand and her hand in the other, focused on illuminating her next step and keeping her steady as the whoops and hollers of the boys echoed through the chambers and out across the forest. They were feral. We were in survival. And time narrowed into a single moment.

I had no idea how long we’d been underground. I had no idea how much further we had to go. All I knew was that one or two of the boys would pop back down to give us encouragement or a sense of what was ahead. At one point, they had to push and pull my nearly paralyzed cofacilitator up an 8-foot flow of sheer stone. When we finally surfaced, the woods were dark, the boys were scattered, cold, and hungry, and I discovered we’d been underground for five hours.

We can always look back at what we could have done differently. We can take the risks more seriously and listen more closely to the fears in ourselves and others. We can recognize the wisdom in turning back instead of pressing on. Sometimes hope is a liability. Sometimes perseverance is placed in service of the wrong vision.

But more often than not, I find we’re simply in the dark, with one small light to help us place one foot in front of the other. We may find ourselves lucky enough to have someone to steady our shaking hand or someone we need to dig deep into our own resilience to support. Sometimes we get inklings of what might lie ahead. But we cannot see the path. We do not know how long it will take. All we know is that we must keep moving.

It takes so much courage to step outside of the known. Sometimes we fall in love with a vision and set our sails on that wind. Sometimes a deep love is torn away from us and we free fall. Sometimes we think we’re on a steady course and the skies darken. Sometimes we’re terrified and simply run as far and as fast as we can.

These are the times we come to know both our hidden strength and how profoundly we rely on the unseen. There is deep mystery to the wounds that travel generations to surface through us for healing, to the dream of the earth that calls us to service. If all we have are our own faculties, we will fail. We cannot see in the dark. We cannot chart a course when the future is unknown.

But we can place our faith in something greater. We can trust the ancestors who gifted us this body – all the life forms that evolved into the form we take today. We can trust the wisdom-keepers and ember-tenders – all the beings who have uncovered and shared their knowing so we would not forget. And we can trust the descendants who wait ready and eager for the seeds we will pour into their hands.

We can become like the Polynesians who crossed the South Pacific by merging with the swells, stars, and gulls. We feel our way through how life rises and recedes, twinkles and darkens, soars and dives.

If we align with these, we will never be lost. We will come to an end, tomorrow or the next, but we will have served something worth sustaining, something that brings meaning to the inevitable sufferings of life.

Plant this deep inside, water it daily, watch for the light at your feet, and we will all one day re-emerge, together.

Nancy

“We have clearly entered the Long Dark, a prolonged season of uncertainty and radical change. Much becomes possible in the darkness: Seeds can sprout, dreams can guide us, imagination can flourish, and new ideas can germinate. Let us enter the darkness full of curiosity and a willingness to be informed by the dreaming earth.” – Francis Weller