Disciple: Let There Be Light? Let There Be Night!

In her new book, the Rev. Barbara Taylor Brown urges us to embrace the darkness to find healing and transformation

By Bruce Elliott

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor has been living her calling for years: delivering exquisitely articulated sermons, leading spiritual retreats and writing award-winning nonfiction. Her new book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, is her 13th and has received the kind of glowing reviews for which her writing has become well-known. Time magazine put the book on the cover of its April 28, 2014, issue and featured a compelling portrait of the Episcopal priest, theologian, college professor and Georgia resident.

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor has been living her calling for years: delivering exquisitely articulated sermons, leading spiritual retreats and writing award-winning nonfiction. Her new book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, is her 13th and has received the kind of glowing reviews for which her writing has become well-known. Time magazine put the book on the cover of its April 28, 2014, issue and featured a compelling portrait of the Episcopal priest, theologian, college professor and Georgia resident.

Taylor writes in much the way she speaks, with an understated elegance and erudition leavened with a common touch that allows us to relate her stories directly to our own lives. In Learning to Walk in the Dark, she shares what she has learned from a place most of us would rather not go: the darkness. The book explores both the literal and metaphysical darkness. 

She first experienced the literal darkness on the 1950s Kansas prairie, where deep outdoor darkness was the norm. Whether gazing at the starry night sky or playing among the prairie grasses and wildflowers under blue skies, as a child Taylor felt an awe in those fields. They infused her with a deep sense of belonging and connection, and it was here she had many encounters with an unusual kind of light. She calls it the Divine Presence and describes it as “a kind of golden light that seemed to embrace [her] as surely as [her] mother’s arms.” This feeling of deep connection happened more frequently outdoors than anywhere else, and she was curious to know more. She noticed that the Presence could be felt in bright sunlight or in night’s darkness, and sometimes it went away.

Taylor writes that metaphysical or spiritual darkness “is shorthand for anything that scares me—either because I am sure I do not have the resources to survive it or because I do not want to find out.” Yet she does confront the reality of darkness in her own life, doing so with bracing transparency and authenticity. She acknowledges her fear of the unknown, familiarity with divine absence, mistrust of conventional wisdom, doubt about the health of her own soul, keen awareness of the limits of all language about God and “shame over [her] inability to talk about God without a thousand qualifiers, and barely suppressed contempt for those who have no such qualms.”

In spite of her and our best efforts, when spiritual darkness descends and we stand all weak and wobbly at the crossroads of our dread and fear, if we can but summon the courage and faith to steadfastly face the darkness, we may behold that we can survive, shaken perhaps, but still here. It is through such encounters with darkness that we can begin to discover its hidden riches. Writes Taylor, “I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there really is only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.”

Taylor names this perspective a lunar spirituality, as contrasted with the “full solar spirituality” taught in most churches. The latter focuses on staying in the light of God 24/7 and always staying on the sunny side of faith. Yet inevitably when darkness falls and we begin to doubt and question, friends may try to comfort us only from their solar perspective, because this is all they know to do. And this way simply is not up to the task of confronting the shadows and spiritual darkness we experience.

Contemporary culture is saturated with superficial entertainment and electronic escapism, so learning to face our darkness and struggling through it as the way to spiritual transformation is about as popular as eating Brussels sprouts for dessert. And yet with our mostly berriesand-whipped-cream approach, we miss the struggle that creates our soul’s deepening and provides the purpose and meaning that can bring us fully to life. It can be the hardest work we will ever do, but also the most rewarding.

One of Taylor’s major themes is the interplay between darkness and light, both in Holy Scriptures and in our everyday lives. She points out that most people equate goodness with light and evil with darkness. In everyday usage, “references to darkness are 99 percent negative…if you simply look up the word ‘darkness’ in a concordance—from Genesis to Revelation, darkness is used as a synonym for ignorance, sin, evil and death.” So from a scriptural point of view, it is easy to understand why Christians would carry such negative connotations of darkness.

Yet looking at scripture from a narrative perspective, a more complex portrait of darkness emerges. She points out that many good, if mysterious, events occur both in the literal darkness and in individuals’ spiritual darkness. In the Old Testament, it is at night that God tells a childless and despondent Abraham his descendants will be as many as the stars he looks upon. It is in a dream of Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, in which Jacob sees a ladder and watches as angels use it to move between heaven and earth. And later, Jacob wrestles with an angel all night long and comes out of it transformed by the experience and marked by a permanent limp, a blessing and a new name. Sometimes, as in this story of Jacob and the angel, the confrontation between light and dark can be psychologically terrifying because we have long avoided facing an important truth about ourselves. And yet when we confront the truth we dread, the experience can transform our lives. Within the depths of our darkness God is always present, and new life is always being birthed.

In Learning to Walk in the Dark, Taylor invites us to take our own journey, forging a path through the darkness to healing and transformation.

Bruce Elliott is a freelance writer and speaker. He resides in Charlotte, North Carolina. Contact him at [email protected].