There is a light in us that only darkness itself can
illuminate. It is the glowing calm that comes over us when we finally surrender
to the ultimate truth of creation: that there is a God and we are not it. . . .
Joan
Chittister
____________________________________________________
in the darkness all Israel lay
oppressed and poor, a captive nation
in the darkness Bethlehem squatted
not the romantic place of our Christmas dreams
but a village nestled among
rock strewn hills with barely enough grass for sheep
in the darkness shepherds sat
dirty and cold, oily and excluded
in the darkness
Mary and Joseph lay with animals
Perhaps there was no room upstairs with the people
Perhaps there was simply too much shame
Carried here
In the darkness light was born
a little stranger
Wrapped in swaddling clothes,
the prince of peace
Sacred child
Sacred one
Who came to show us the way to live
Who came to reveal the truth
Who came to bring us life
Who came to be light in the darkness
We too live in the darkness
It looms around us
It grows within us
We know the taste of darkness
But it is the darkness
That reveals the light
The power of even the faintest glimpse
That moment when the Sacred caresses our soul
When love warms the frozen places within
And we know
We know
We are not alone
And we know
That the Light shines and in darkness
And the darkness cannot overcome it
We know in that moment
“That life begins again on the other side of the
darkness.
Another life. A new life.
After the death, the loss, the rejection, the failure,
life does go on.”
(Chittister)
__________________________________________________
Joan Chittister, Between the Dark and the Daylight:
Embracing the Contradictions of Life (Image: 2015), 19-20. As quoted by Richard
Rohr
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