Darkness and Light

I have a confession to make. I am not a Christmas person. I know people who are just gaga over the entire Holiday season. I am not one of them. I am more of an Easter person. Easter is by far my favorite religious holiday. Does this make me morose? I don't think so. I think it is just that I am a person who thrives on contrasts. I need both darkness and light in my world. It is precisely because of the darkness that I can experience the light.

I am reminded of reading something recently by one of my favorite bloggers. She was discussing the poetry of William Butler Yeats and how his writing is breathtakingly painfully beautiful to read. But for her, the way he breaks her heart over and over feels so wonderful that she is drawn to his poetry again and again. I can so relate to this sentiment. I feel this way myself much of the time.

I have never understood people who demand sugar all the time. Who insist on sunshine every day and revile gray,rainy days. Who push away every emotion that is uncomfortable. Who want everything to be pleasant and cheerful all the time. To me this is such a fake way to live. Life is made up of both happiness and sadness. Joy and sorrow. New life and death. Sunshine and rain. In short, it is a life of contrasts. And in these contrasts, true beauty is found.

The Irish understand this. This is why there are so many amazing Irish poets and writers. The Irish all have a wee bit of melancholy in their souls. Which explains much about me in all probability. You can't escape your gene pool!

All this reminds me of something my mentor wrote to me in a recent email exchange. He was talking about how one dimensional and fake much of our "worship" is. He said that people confuse the happy feelings they have in worship for some kind of authentic experience. And if they don't have a happy feeling that day, for whatever reason, they think something is wrong. Because worship should be happy, right? His point is that true worship, like real life is made up of many facets. There is joy, there is sorrow, there is repentance, there is anguish sometimes as we realize our failures and acknowledge that we need to change something in ourselves. This is so true. True worship should be a multifaceted experience. But more often than not, people want one thing and one thing only. A feel good sugar high. All light, no darkness, thank you. Can anything truly grow in such an altered environment? Can a plant exist with only sunshine and never a drop of rain?

Which gets back to my original point about Christmas versus Easter. I am in the minority as an "Easter" person. Most people would rather focus on the joy of the birth of the newborn baby rather than the anguish of the crucified Christ. For me the former has no meaning without the latter. So while I can celebrate Christmas, my eyes are ever fixed on the purpose of the birth which is the cross at Calvary. Yes it is sad. Yes it is painful. But it is a thing of unspeakable beauty. It is a journey from darkness into light. Shalom!