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In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing
About the dark times.
~ Bertolt Brecht

Even the splotches of rusty orange and russet punctuating the lacework of bare branches have turned now to brown leaf-carpet.  They were what remained of one of the more brilliant autumns we have seen on this mountain, a season resplendent in scarlet and gold, back-dropped in azure blue skies and graced with crisp, invigorating air.  I wandered gratefully in the splendor, but images and news from other places intruded and captured me: a wounded and unquiet Earth, a world of injustice, people and creatures in peril; global reports of climate catastrophe; testimony to abuse of power and high betrayal.  These are the dark times, the dark edge we walk. 

"Every day has something in it whose name is forever." (Everything That Was Broken, Mary Oliver)

Recently that "something in it" was the sight of my granddaughter and two friends plucking wine berries from the bushes by the dirt path and popping them in their mouths. The path they were on led to a large fallen oak. The girls hoisted themselves onto the trunk, which rested majestically in loam and leaves on the forest floor. They proceeded to walk fearlessly along the broad rounded beam, which ran crooked, though true, into the branches that once had danced in the sky. They were utterly at home, skipping effortlessly through imaginary worlds and back again to the present of tree, branches, leaves, balance, height; perfect play in the woods.

Still Point Mountain Retreat is a sister community to Rolling Ridge Study Retreat. Located nearby, adjacent to the Rolling Ridge Foundation lands, Still Point exists for the same reasons and does the same work of wilderness preservation and hospitality for those seeking deeper connection with nature and soul. On a recent Saturday the Still Point partners gathered for a workday and meeting, at which I offered a version of the reflection below.

The old willow stump by the creek has sprouted pale green fronds.  The crocuses are pushing up through brown leaves. Water in the creeks gurgles irrepressibly over rocks, bird song wafts delicate music in the trees, and frogs make frothy love in the ponds. Spring has arrived, despite the world’s troubles. This means that for the next few precious weeks, or maybe only days, it will be possible to walk comfortably in the wild woods.

As the season began, we gathered in the Meditation Shelter to offer thanks, to re-awaken to the wonder that "many millions of things come together in order for us to take even one more breath of air...that we are miraculously, part of something, rather than nothing..."(David Whyte). Now, on the threshold of winter, at the solstice, the turn of the year: the question is not only why we are part of something rather than nothing, but how that something can hold both shadow and light, bitterness and poignancy, cruelty and love.

A suggestion for an inner work practice comes from Elizabeth O'Connor, Our Many Selves: A Handbook for Self-Discovery, "From Judgment to Empathy: Exercise Four", page 71:

"What you criticize in another, try to find in yourself. We want to discover our dark selves, not in order that they may be blamed and banished out of sight, but in order that we may have conversation with them and they may lead us to the light. This is the promise if we will attend to them."

"An added discipline for this week might be to say nothing negative about anyone else or about yourself. This will give you more energy for inner work on the subject. If you find it a difficult discipline to keep, do not be discouraged. A discipline is to help us learn, and there is often more learning in failure than in success."

In the human imagination, and as they have been throughout the ancient world, the cedars of Lebanon are sacred trees, planted by God.  They are long-growing, strong, the material of temples and voyages in sea-roaming ships.  

Recently I read a piece in The New York Times by Beirut bureau chief Anne Barnard describing how the cedars of Lebanon could vanish by the end of the century.  The warming climate is stressing the trees, and political and cultural upheaval makes protecting them haphazard.  “Many thousands of square kilometers of forest once spread across most of Lebanon’s highlands.  Only 17 square kilometers of cedars remain, in scattered groves.”

At the Poor People’s Campaign in DC in June, the Rev. William Barber asked the assembled crowd,

"They say Aslan is on the move."  The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis has enthralled me ever since I was 9 and read the Puffin book with its pen and ink illustrations by Pauline Baynes.  Many generations of children have loved the secret world filled with unconventional and magical creatures, and the young heroines and heroes who are neither patronized nor belittled.  I too loved Narnia, every thicket and lamppost, faun, centaur, and dryad. I loved how in the story subtle sounds and shifts in the air foretold the approach of the yet unseen Aslan and the breaking of the Witch's spell.  

It must be the season, or the year.  This snowless winter I was part of three retreats, one per month, about finding the grace in darkness even while leaning toward the light, about the essential rhythms of descent and renewal which keep our lives and our planet from ending, about the fertile dark as soil for the seeds of hope.  There seems to be a need in these shadowy times to seek the lantern of soul and to hold onto one another while we quest, hands clasped in sacred circles.  During these retreats, we danced in this way in fields in the late afternoon as the sun turned rose and coral and the moon appeared delicately in the lambent sky.