In the cycle of Holy Week remembrances, today is known to some as Spy Wednesday. This holy day is when the worship cycle marks Judas’s betrayal of Jesus to the authorities (Matthew 26:14-16). Some communities will observe this day with a service of Tenebrae, the Latin word for darkness. And, although I had not noticed this before, Tenebrae is the beginning of a cycle of three services that chart the path that leads us ever deeper into the great darkness of death that comes before resurrection.
All of this has me thinking about the question: what do we mean by “darkness,” and how do we see in the dark (if we do)? How does the darkness change our vision, and therefore, everything else? I hope you will keep reading and join me as I follow where these questions take me.
And if you aren’t already a subscriber, I would love you to join this conversation about how we use our senses, particularly our sight, to find our way to something larger than ourselves. It is going to go on for a while!
Remembrances Past
By late summer in our first pandemic year, I was walking earlier and earlier each morning, attempting to avoid both the late Washington summer heat/humidity, and my fellow human beings in the neighborhood. August is special in DC, temperatures can hover around 75 over night, the days easily reach 100+ with a feels-like temperature of even more. In August, walking before the sun rises and begins the baking schedule for the day means walking really, really, early. And it definitely means walking in the dark. And for me, it meant trying to take pictures in the dark, like this one of the near-full moon just before sunrise.
There is something magical about walking across the border between night and day. There is something magical about feeling the transformation from cool night breeze to the stillness that often comes with the warmth of the sun. And I can almost forget that I am literally in the center of one of the world’s great cities when, I look up and as I take my first step from house to patio I see stars and planets and the moon.
No, I don’t walk around the neighborhood with the kind of sophisticated camera equipment that would allow beautiful pictures in the early hours of seemingly no light. I was taking pictures with just my smartphone. At first, I would take a picture of the moon. And then I would be struck by my giant shadow as I walked down the street, and take a picture of that. At one point, I spent what seemed forever standing on the edge of one of our neighborhood parks, trying to capture the barely visible differences in the shadows as I looked across the open expanse of grass. This, of course, was nearly impossible because of all the street lights. Days of this that I realized — I am not trying to take a picture in the dark, I am trying to take a picture of the darkness. And I am trying to do that with a tool that is designed to collect the reflection of light.
Just What is Darkness?
I can’t help but wonder…do we really have the right words for this thing we call darkness? I don’t seem to be able to accept darkness as the opposite of light; so much evil has been done with that understanding. And so I did what one does when they have a question, I searched the Internet to see what I could see.
The most vibrant definition I found was this: that something is said to be dark when it absorbs photons (or light) rather than reflecting them. The amount of visible light absorbed defines the depth of the darkness. Literally, there is light in the darkness. Literally, without light there would be no darkness. This is not just a idea to inspire hope in moments of despair, it is science, science supporting hope. What I saw that night, looking up from my mountainside trail, was the truth.
On vacation in the Alleghenies, far away from city lights, walking up the mountain path by my rented cabin, I took a picture that taught me the truth of this definition, even before I knew the definition — I learned that there was more light in the dark than I ever imagined. My eyes and the image in my camera told me so, and my soul believed them.
Back to the Books (Like Always)
One of my favorite books that wrestles with some of these questions is that by Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark (2014). I return to this book over and over again, Maybe I am so attached because it was the book that she was finishing up when she was the graduation speaker for my seminary class. Or maybe I return to it over and over again because Taylor speaks with the voice I wish that I could master, with that storyteller’s ability to call our attention to the details around us that we need most at the moment that we can finally use them. I learn from her particular blending of story, science, and lived theology.
Her own written journey with the idea of walking in the dark began with the admission that:
For now, it is enough to say that ‘darkness’ is shorthand for anything that scares me—that I want no part of—either because I am sure that I do not have the resources to survive it or because I do not want to find out. (4-5).
And yet, as Taylor admits, in all those times in life when fears come true and the light seems to go out as darkness takes hold, as she puts it, ”nonetheless, I have not died.” (5). She continues:
Instead, 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 is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light. (5).
We need darkness as much as we need light. I would take that statement even further — we are foolish to see a sharp dichotomy at all, because, as the scientists say, darkness is in the light and light is definitely a part of the darkness. Instead, I am beginning to understand darkness and light as two different ways of seeing. Maybe that is the ultimate lesson of the days of darkness in the liturgical calendar that begin today, with the service of Tenebrae.
Tenebrae, and the Days of Descent into Darkness
Sadly, as practicing Christians in a Christianity-influenced culture in the 21st century, many of us are all about the resurrection, all-too-happy to skip over the days before and go right to the triumph. I get it, and Holy Week speaks to each of us in our own way, in our own context.
I have never been much of a Christ the Lord is Risen Today kind of Christian, though, with its Christ Victorious theology. My focus has long been on the days before and the questions we sing in the hymns of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, the recriminations and sorry of Were You There, and The Crucifixion.
No matter what you believe about the stories of Holy Week, no matter whether you consider them myth or Gospel truth, these stories about this man Jesus invite us to live as he lived, which means learning to walk in the darkest of darkness.
In our own times, the idea of Tenebrae (which literally means darkness) does not often see its own remembrance as service or liturgy. Instead, features of that traditional liturgy, such as the extinguishing of the light, appear as part of a Maundy Thursday or Good Friday service. But there is something unmistakably stark about a modern service of Tenebrae, such as the one held in my parish, where readings and music lead the participant into the darkness, as candle after candle give up its light. It is a moving re-enactment of how our perception shifts from light to dark, step by step, candle by candle. You only have to watch a sunrise or a sunset to understand that the shift from darkness to light, or vice-versa, is not sudden at all.
The Message of these Days of Darkness
The darkness that begins when Judas agrees to betray Jesus is only the beginning. We who are watching this story, rather than living it, see the first candle go out. Tomorrow, as the disciples gather in the Upper Room, and Jesus washes the feet of even the man who will betray him, another candle goes out, as Judas’s heart is not changed by an act of love. The world becomes yet more dim as Jesus waits in the Garden, another candle extinguishes another piece of light through his arrest and trial. And then, the last candle that we can see goes out, with the Crucifixion. We think that we sit though Holy Saturday in total darkness, even though we know the next part of the story. And yet, there is light in every piece of darkness in this story, if we but change our way of seeing.
Barbara Brown Taylor’s first definition of darkness contains a lot of truth. Darkness is the aggregate of the things that frighten us, about ourselves, and about the world. And that’s why I’ve come to see Holy Week as a school for that essential human skill of learning to walk in the dark. That is why weeks spent trying to take pictures of the darkness taught me to look differently. And why science was able to make the bridge in my understanding.
Leonard Cohen was wrong. The cracks are the place where we see the border between dark and light, where we can hold the dichotymy as one, and where we can at last grasp these ways of “opposite” seeing for the wholeness that they form together. That, too, is the lesson of Holy Week. Darkness opens my eyes, and my heart, in a way that pure light never can.
Leonard Cohen and Jesus, now that’s a pair. But what do you think about darkness? I would love to hear from you.
Words of Inspiration
More from Barbara Brown Taylor:
There is a divine presence that transcends all your ideas about it, along with all your language for calling it to your aid, which is not above using darkness as the wrecking ball that brings all your false gods down—but whether you decide to trust the witness of those who have gone before you, or you decide to do whatever it takes to become a witness yourself, here is the testimony of faith: darkness is not dark to God; the night is as bright as the day. (Taylor, Barbara Brown. Learning to Walk in the Dark. 16).
Music for The Days of Darkness
Wasn’t That a Pity and a Shame (Sevier/Locker)
Were You There? (Sevier/Locker)