And the prelude to that arrival of enlightenment is an honoring of the dark (Advent). Sometimes that darkness is a gentle or tender darkness such as Rilke sings about:

You darkness, that I come from:
I love you more than all the fires
That fence in the world,

“Unlocking Dreams: Kislev & Hanukkah Insights” – Rabbi Cat Zavis of Beyt Tikkun: A Synagogue Without Walls

For the fire makes
A circle of light for everyone,
And then no one outside learns of you.
But the darkness pulls in everything:
Shapes and fires animals and myself,
How easily it gather them!—
Powers and people—
And it is possible a great energy
Is moving near me
I have faith in nights.

Wisely does Rilke talk of our origins as “darkness” that we come from. We all come from nine months of darkness and contentment in our mother’s womb. And that womb speaks of compassion as our origin. 

Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha: ‘Humanity is under the rubble.’ FRANCE 24 English

Both Hebrew and Arabic connect the words “womb” and “compassion” in their languages. Would that connection were being heeded and practiced even more in Palestine and Sudan and Ukraine and around the world today.

A second dimension of darkness as our origins is the nothingness that precedes our existence, how we come from non-being. I recommend this practice: Add one year to your age and meditate on that time, a time when you did not yet exist. We come from a holy nothingness and Advent reminds us of that.

So too do the findings today about dark matter, dark energy and black holes from which so much evolves in the universe. 

Yes, it is good to “have faith in nights” and to recognize the power of darkness as a source for existence. And to move beyond the fear of the dark which helps move people from ignorance and racism as well.

Besides a gentle darkness, there is also a strident one. Black holes certainly demonstrate a wild fierceness that refuses to be tamed. And what the mystics call the “dark night of the soul” names fierceness we are all feeling today. Angst, fear, even doom. Such psychic realities match cosmic realities. 

Today we rightly talk about the “dark night of society” (Heschel) and the “dark night of our species” (myself) that all of humanity finds itself in. Advent and the mystics invite us not to run from such fierce darkness but to stick around and learn what it has to teach us.  

“The Fallen Church.” Collage by Daniel Arrhakis on Flickr.

Not least of which is that nothingness is a prelude to a Great Coming. 

As Eckhart tells us, I once had a dream. Though a man, I dreamt I was pregnant, pregnant with Nothingness. And out of that Nothingness God was born. Thus it is that Advent (the via negativa) leads to Christmas (the via creativa) and on to the via transformative (compassion and justice).

Astronauts who tell of how the great darkness and silence of space brought the mystic alive in them. Practitioners in AA and other addiction groups say the same thing. All learn to have faith in nights.