Tag Archives: Darkness

Rays of Promise: Post-Pandemic Goals Worth Winning, Dr. Robert Zuber

20 Dec
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People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Carl Jung

One need not be a chamber to be haunted.  Emily Dickinson

I wonder if that’s how darkness wins, by convincing us to trap it inside ourselves, instead of emptying it out.  Jasmine Warga

Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light. John Milton

They gave it up before they ever really even got started. J.D. Salinger

I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me; all day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.  Sylvia Plath

I need more of the night before I open eyes and heart to illumination. Denise Levertov

I’m writing this morning on the darkest day of the year in the northern hemisphere and from a city currently with the highest number of COVID infections in a state with the highest number of COVID infections in a country with the highest number of COVID infections.  Chants in the US of “we’re number 1” have never seemed as shallow to me as they do at this particular moment, a time which continues to put extraordinary strains on those few for whom caregiving is a vocation not circumscribed by what seem to be the ever-shrinking circles of concern of so many of the rest of us.

The media is chock-full of disturbing health-related and political messaging of late, pitched alongside the hope that the miraculously rapid development of COVID vaccines will stem the current tide of death and misery early in the New Year.  Will we in the north survive this infection-saturated winter? If so, will we be able to recover our human touch or will we remain secluded our smallish worlds, defined more and more by computer screens and video distractions? Moreover, will we make good on pledges for equitable access to vaccines for the entire global community?  It would seem to be almost a miracle of another sort if we could collectively walk back the fear and self-preoccupations which have defined us through much of 2020 and affirm – through policy and practice – this global responsibility (thankfully reinforced in large measure by UN agencies) to ensure global access to vaccines which offer hope, in the short-term at least, that we can dodge full-scale damage from this plague and, once again, manage to save ourselves from ourselves.

However, many social and media commentators now recognize publicly what many of us have feared privately – that the dysfunctional personal and political traits which have accelerated in this plague year – not birthed this year – will be hard for us to shake.  We have had another long year to justify turning our backs on each other, creating enemies from conspiracies, transforming climate denialism into an art form, holding fast to beliefs about the “myth” of COVID in some instances to our last dying breaths.  The vaccines will, if all goes well, keep the pandemic in check, but they will have no direct impact on the creeping “malignity” of our spirits, darkness which we have chosen to bury inside of ourselves and which is unlikely to be dispelled either by medical breakthroughs or by the sunlight now poised to oh-so-slowly return to our northern skies.

And, sad to say, we are getting scant assistance in confessing and overcoming our darkness from our institutions of governance, which often seem trapped in their own bubbles of self-importance and self-interest.  The US is only one of what seem to be a growing number of states seduced by authoritarians and their sycophants who seem to believe that holding power is about taking advantage of opportunity rather than serving the public interest.  And in so doing, such “leaders” are reinforcing for their publics values based on a nefarious “creed” described recently by Anne Applebaum: “Everyone is corrupt, everyone is on the take.” We’re living in a world without morals or principles and “all that matters is whether or not you win.”  Such a cynical, transactional view of the world has certainly taken root in the US, and those roots are now deeper and broader than some of us are willing to admit.

Thankfully, we know that corrupt practices and winning at all costs does not define us entirely, even in this plague year. Our own social media is inundated each week with incredible acts of courage and kindness that offer hope to our present and help ensure a post-pandemic quality of life for future generations.  From tree planting in the Sahel to emptying prisons of the politically incarcerated and tortured, initiatives are underway in so many global settings to stem the current tide of normative decay and blatant cruelty. In this the UN is doing its part beyond rigorously promoting the “global public good” of vaccines.  This week alone we witnessed some good movement towards a global moratorium on the use of the death penalty, some enthusiastic support for political and peace progress in countries such as Afghanistan and Sudan, and a couple of compelling events focused on the need for human rights-based approaches to counter-terror operations and more robust institutions of accountability for those who commit mass atrocity crimes.

But like the many countries at present whose social fabrics are fraying at the edges, the UN has also been subject to increasingly stubborn postures and nasty exchanges that seem a bit startling in an institution that generally reinforces diplomatic politeness (with occasional touches of passive-aggression.)  In the Economic and Social Council, diplomats hurled vague accusations, including at ECOSOC’s current president (Pakistan), over the fate of a still-unendorsed Political Declaration that is badly needed to help galvanize state support for the UN’s Decade of Acton on sustainable development. And in the Security Council, its often-ugly and rarely-impactful discussions on Syria’s long decade of violent abuses flared up even further this week, punctuated by China’s assertion that Germany’s soon-to-be-concluded humanitarian leadership on Syria and its overall Council tenure have been a “failure.”  

We don’t share China’s judgment in this, but we are mindful of what these exchanges represent – signs of further fraying of our standards of propriety and mutual responsibility.  States are now dabbling in what too many of us in our personal realms are doing as well – shutting the metaphorical doors and windows to divergent viewpoints and basking instead in the echo chambers of our self-selected, self-interested versions of “reality.” Whether in Washington, Brasilia, Moscow, Damascus or any number of other capital settings, our leadership is increasingly acting out a cynical script, less about inspiring people to be their better selves and more about keeping our darkness locked within where it can best “haunt” personal and collective potential.

Given this pervasive dearth of inspiration by much of our political leadership, the way out of our darkness, out of the hell that we have relentlessly manufactured for ourselves, will likely be long and hard.  And the near-miraculous vaccines now becoming available to those most vulnerable to infection will not by themselves bring the illumination that we so long for in this season.  But they might eventually help give our species one more chance – a chance to end corrupt practices in governance, increase responsiveness by our international institutions, guarantee better health and educational access, and make our political systems of checks and balances more reliable, our judicial systems better able to ensure accountability for the worst of human crimes, and our economics more equitable and eco-responsive.

Given where we now find ourselves and despite a bevy of pandemic-related disruptions and uncertainties, if winning is indeed, “everything” then surely this is the “winning” to which we should aspire. This is the “illumination” which we should now be preparing to welcome, illumination which can effectively dispel darkness to which we have become both conscious and committed to push out from our most remote inner spaces.  Indeed, if we are to reset our pandemic-infected, darkness-infused present, it will take more than governments, more than global institutions, certainly more than vaccines.  It will, as Jung noted, take more of us with the courage to “face our own souls,” to confess our dark spaces and then persevere to the brink of our capacities in illuminating and incarnating opportunities to make our world greener and less violent, opportunities that might just represent our last, best chance for life.

This evening in the northern sky, a rare convergence of planets will lead to the sighting of the “star of Bethlehem,” a “star” that was believed to settle over the manger where the baby Jesus lay many centuries ago, a mysterious star illuminating a sacred promise. This year’s version of manger season offers its own inspiration and guidance on how the promises that define our own time might best be implemented and sustained, how our current darkness might have its power over our values, priorities and actions finally and fully dispelled.  We would do well to urgently discern its message.

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Night Vision:  An Advent Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

4 Dec

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Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.  Anne Frank

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.  Edgar Allan Poe

This reflection is dedicated to Robert Aspeslagh, perhaps my greatest mentor, who passed away this fall in Amsterdam.  Robert was a thoughtful student of humanity and our always messy and sometimes mean-spirited politics.  He was also a painter who, like great Dutch artists of the past, explored the wealth of human wisdom lodged in the metaphorical spaces between darkness and light.

There are many reasons why Advent is my favorite liturgical season, coming as it does near the end of what in many years is a dark, gloomy and wind-swept fall.

Advent conveys the seasonal obligation to prepare for a Christmas celebration that is hopefully about more than conspicuous consumption and strained family relations.  It also expresses a strong and pervasive longing – calling out to Emmanuel for relief from fear and despair; dreaming of that time when peace is finally welcome to permeate our hearts and define our politics; doubting and then overcoming doubt that we can right our collective ship before it becomes permanently disabled on rocks of our own making.

The image that I have always carried around with me during Advent is that of a young adult, female or male, sitting with some sense of urgency on the edge of a cliff on a crisp, clear night, moon and stars casting light both subtle and mesmerizing.   There is vast darkness in this image, but also spectacle; the spectacle of the “heavens” we rarely bother to seek out any longer, an awe-inspiring display that provides a soft but sufficient light once our eyes figure out how to adjust to its peculiar intensity.

Of course, there are many fall nights — even in biblical lands — that are crisp but not clear; when clouds hover, blocking out the spectacle and leaving the cliff sitters in a veil of darkness that, even in those times, must have been highly uncomfortable.   A darkness that most of us “modern” folk can barely relate to, an enveloping presence for which there is no candle, no flashlight, no outlet for devices: for us a bit reminiscent perhaps of a long walk down a dark and lonely path with little to guide your steps or protect you from the unexpected.

This is the darkness that suspends all of light’s gifts  – the ability to navigate space, to pinpoint danger before it seizes us, to orient ourselves in a world of constant stress that trades off satisfaction for the (not always cheap) thrills of modern complexity.  To be in an enveloping darkness is akin to being lost in a deep swamp (or the deep woods) where potential dangers lurk but where there are no signposts of safety.   We cannot “see” threats that might be lurking, dangers both real and imaginary, those that might attack our person and, much like the monsters allegedly hiding under our first childhood beds, those that stoke fantasy-driven fear and helplessness.

But there are dangers with the light as well.  Where there is light there is also distraction, an almost relentless seduction by everything in range of our senses, an exposure to the world made uncomfortable through its ability to behold you as well as you beholding it.   Our lives are now so “bright,” our world so fully (and artificially) illuminated.  Sunlight may indeed be the best disinfectant, as noted last century by US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis, but the light we manufacture, the clutches of which we can barely escape, is as likely to cause sickness as alleviate it.

As many of you recognize, “light pollution” is a term now used to describe the consequences of what for many of us (especially in cities) are our excessively indoor lives, dominated by artificial illumination for which even copious amounts of Vitamin D cannot compensate.  Especially this time of year, our encounters with natural light are often reduced to fleeting glimpses of sun or moon. Indeed, even if we wanted to, there is so much artificial illumination in our world (before and after sunset) that most of us can no longer find a seat at the cliff to behold the galactic encounter that inspired and absorbed the first Advent longings.  Our obsession with masking the powers of darkness robs us of exposure to the greatest spectacles and deepest wisdom that darkness is best suited to reveal.

Sometime before the dawn of the computer age, I used to run a program at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York known as “Nightwatch,” named in part after that famous and expansive Rembrandt canvas which, along with other Dutch masters of the light in the Rijksmuseum, I was privileged to see with my dear friend Robert on several occasions.  The idea of the Cathedral program was to give groups of teenagers an opportunity to abandon at least some of their distractions for a weekend, to experience this grand sacred space in a manner unlike what they would likely be exposed to elsewhere.

As I recall, the pre-Christmas programs were the most popular, despite the relative lack of seasonal warmth and sunlight. But the “darkness” they experienced at the Cathedral was mostly safe, even in that (at the time) mostly unsafe neighborhood.   The Cathedral’s walls mostly though not completely rebuffed the noisy, illuminated chaos coming from the outside.  The lighting inside the Cathedral itself was carefully modulated (by me) to accentuate the shadows in that great space, but the subtle volume and intended object of that light (an altar) seemed to bring a comfort and even calm to many.  There was just enough light in that vast, dark space to inspire awe in those youth and create opportunity for reflection, but not enough to allow them to be distracted by those many objects that a stronger, more intrusive light would have revealed.

As our current group of UN interns has shared with me, there is much emotional content that can be attached to darkness, or at least regarding degrees of darkness that they have experienced in their lives.  On the positive side, darkness is associated with solitude and reflection, a break from the relentlessness of our excessively illuminated lives and the “flaws” and distractions such illumination exposes.  In that sense, darkness is rightly associated by them with both relief and focus, offering judgement-free opportunities to sit with themselves and examine their life trajectory, concentrating and comforting the senses in ways that daylight hours in UN conference rooms and their artificial illumination can make so very challenging.

We “all look better after dark” one recent television commercial proclaims.  We “look better” in part because the light surrounding us then is softer, more forgiving of the physical flaws and behavioral quirks we otherwise try so hard to conceal, the flaws that make us more interesting to others (also I suspect to God) but often – and so sadly I think — less interesting to ourselves.

Finding space to cultivate that ever-more elusive night vision is a key aspect of our Advent preparation.  Beholding light that can soften the darkness without robbing it of its powerful messages; light that focuses our attention while minimizing temptations to distraction; this is central to tapping the emotional content of this season.

In some metaphorical sense, and in part due to longstanding addictions to our overly (and artificially) illuminated world, many of us still prefer to “sleep with the lights on.”  This is the season to turn those lights off or, at the very least, lower the dimmer switch.

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