Dark

Awe in Darkness...Pt 1.

Community of Voices

Photo by Timothée Duran on Unsplash

Did you not hear, Xiala, that I am grandfather crow? You may study the stars, but I am made of the shadows between the stars. - Serapio, Black Sun

"I am describing a darkness that is like rich loam, that strengthens us, encourages us to push deep roots into dark earth, where we can grow toward the light fed by the darkness.

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How marvelous it would be if all children of every culture viewed darkness as a symbol of connectedness, with equal power and intensity of light in a universe that requires both.” - Race and the Cosmos

When I imagine what it was like for each of us to be in the womb, I picture darkness--but a warm, cozy dark. A place where we're comfortable, protected by our mothers' bodies, and have all of our needs met." - Roy Mong

Sometimes you have to make space in your body for a new thing. - Rev. Riana Robinson

We need the darkest night to get the deepest rest…so that we can grow and dream and keep our secrets to ourselves. - Sulwe

The Awe of A Mothering Darkness

I messaged a friend to ask if she'd heard the "sound" of the Black Hole generated by NASA. She said, "Yes!! Amazing. Womb-y and eerie and beautiful." My response? "OMG OMG OMG YES". Had we been talking in person I would have looked at her wide eyed, screamed her name and done a combination of I-really-have-to-use-the-bathroom-type dancing and grabbing her shoulders with that "Wait, what did you just say?!" look of expectation.

When I first heard the "sound" of a black hole (which, Twitter basically had an entire parody thread about that was *chef's kiss*), it didn't scare me, but there was something unfamiliar and attractive about it. I wanted to keep listening…and I wasn't sure what to do with it. Another friend called the sound "wild and very Godly", to which I replied, "With a touch of creepy which I think is appropriate when the sound of God is coming out of a black hole".

There is talk in the theoretical physics world of primordial black holes that aided in our cosmic evolution, as well as the universe actually being born from an "original" black hole. To me, that sounds like a black hole is the womb of God. Maybe my friends' interpretations of the "sound" aren't that far off.

The Rev. Dr. Wilda Gafney, writer and expert in Ancient Biblical Hebrew, gives her interpretation of a portion of Genesis that reads:

The earth was formless and shapeless and darkness covered the face of the deep, while She, the Spirit of God pulsed over the face of the waters.

- Gen 1:2

She continues to note in her commentary, quite poetically:

She, the Spirit of God, She-who-is-also-God, at the dawn of creation fluttered over the nest of her creation...

-Womanist Midrash

Dr. Barbara Holmes offers commentary on this same verse:

The phrase, "The world was dark and void" (Genesis 1:2) is not an indictment. It is an indication of the state of the universe in the beginning. In the beginning there is a natal darkness. It is the womb out of which we are born, a genesis space for "Let there be" and nurture. This is a mothering darkness that nurtures its offspring.

p142, Race and the Cosmos, 2nd Ed.

I could muse just on Rev. Dr. Gafney and Dr. Holmes interplay of conception, pregnancy, birth, and nurture, as Gafney says further in Womanist Midrash that as the Spirit of God fluttered over her nest, "He, the more familiar expression of divinity, created all." But, I won't; not for lack of desire but for lack of space!

From these explications, this primordial darkness - whether located in a black hole or blanketing the deep - seems to be tethered to wombiness where existence gestates, is nurtured, and sustained. We know this tethering in an earthy way as well. Put a seed in the darkness of the ground and it springs forth into a new cycle of life. In the darkness of our bodies, microscopic interminglings start the formation of a new human. Within the enclosed container of the egg, a variety of beings find their beginning. The primordial darkness on a cosmic scale is recreated in and around us on the microscopic. Womby darkness is near and a deep part of our existence.

Whether the theoretical physicists are "right" or even in the ballpark of our cosmic beginnings, the mere suggestion that we could have emerged from the belly of a black hole considered alongside a creation story that begins with darkness and Godly wombiness beckons us into the awe of darkness.

Often, instead of awe, darkness can be associated with things that are unknowable, scary, and even dangerous. But when we look at darkness cosmically and locally, it's a necessity for what we think is good; things like life, rest, peace, and being known.

In Lupita Nyong'o's book Sulwe, Day and Night are sisters. Night is unappreciated and mistreated by people on Earth, so she leaves. Day pleads with her sister to return:

[W]hat I do know is that we need you just the way you are....We need the darkest night to get the deepest rest. We need you so that we can grow and dream and keep our secrets to ourselves.

Rest, growth, dreams, and secrets find a place to nestle and be nourished in darkness. Can our awe find its place there too? Moreso than a fearful respect, can darkness draw out admiring wonder from us the way light does? There is no rejuvenating rest, deepening of roots, or transformative dreaming without the presence of darkness. And while we don't understand all the mechanics of what happens in the dark, we know there isn't much that happens without it.

Be jaw-droppingly, wow-inducing inspired by the dark. We may find out its necessity is rivaled only by its sister, light.

This concludes the free portion for Of Earth & Of Stars. If you are a paid subscriber, keep scrolling :) There are four more sections paid subscribers receive:

3. Ritual of Connectedness

4. Dark Communion

5. The Name of Darkness

6. What Has My Attention

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