Good morning…
As we gathered for class on Sunday afternoon, I asked a friend, “How are you today?”
“I’m really tired,” she replied, not knowing that “tired” was where our opening poem would begin. Together, we sat outside in the sunshine and listened to David Whyte read his beloved poem “Sweet Darkness.” We unpacked the thoughts stirring within us.
Might you revisit the poem with me now? Consider the lines stirring you alive.
******
Sweet Darkness by David Whyte
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your home
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
******
Being “tired” droops us down into a different part of ourselves. The light, bright hype eventually becomes too exhausting. As we deepen down and close our eyes, we are greeted by sweet darkness, darkness which illuminates our teeming world within.
We are not beyond love. Darkness provides for us a home with a beaconing horizon. Since the world was made to be free in, we must give up all the other worlds except the one to which we truly belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of our own aloneness to learn that anything or anyone that does not bring us alive is too small for us.
This poem led our group to a favorite quote from another author we have read and enjoyed. Howard Thurman encouraged us, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Might we begin our discernment process by following the lead of our own tiredness? With courage, we enter the sweet confinement of our own dark aloneness. At the core of our being, we move beyond anything or anyone that does not bring us alive, because the world desperately needs us to come fully alive.
God whispers into our awakening process. “I will give you riches hidden in the darkness and things of great worth that are hidden in secret places. Then you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who calls you by name” (Isaiah 45:3, NLV).
As God calls us by name, will we listen?
…Sue…
