Some words for these, the darkest days of the year: Silence, praise and inner life.
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come out of the silence,
like prayers prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb the silence
from which it came.
Wendell Berry, How to Be a Poet
From the 17th to the 23rd of December a special sequence of invocations have been prayed, since at least the 5th Century. The one for today remembers the Israelites journey out of slavery in Egypt:
O Adonai, You appeared to Moses in the burning bush,
and gave him the Law on Sinai:
come and save us with an outstretched arm.
The word in Hebrew – Mitzraim – means “a narrow place”, so “going out from Egypt” can mean going from a place where we are stuck, to a wider place, a place where we are free. Many of us have felt stuck this year, so this ancient desire at this time, the darkest days of the year, reflects a deep longing to be freed, to see where we are trapped and to let go of what is dead in our lives.
You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.
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.
David Whyte, Sweet Darkness
Courage is like – it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue: You get it by courageous acts.
It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.
Mary Daly
We are born with only one obligation – to be completely who we are. Yet how much of our time is spent comparing ourselves to others, dead and alive? This is encouraged as necessary in the pursuit of excellence. Yet a flower in its excellence does not yearn to be a fish, and a fish in its unmanaged elegance does not long to be a tiger. But we humans find ourselves always falling into the dream of another life. Or we secretly aspire to the fortune or fame of people we don’t really know. When feeling badly about ourselves, we often try on other skins rather than understand and care for our own. Yet when we compare ourselves to others, we see neither ourselves nor those we look up to. We only experience the tension of comparing, as if there is only one ounce of being to feed all our hungers.
Mark Nepo, The Book Of Awakening
If we are silly enough to remain at the mercy of the people who want to sell us happiness, it will be impossible for us ever to be content with anything. How would they profit if we became content? We would no longer need their new product. The last thing the salesman wants is for the buyer to become content. You are of no use in our society unless you are always wanting to grasp what you never have. The Greeks were not as smart as we are. In their primitive way they put Tantalus in hell. [Advertising]…on the contrary, would convince us that Tantalus is in heaven.
Thomas Merton
To know what you’re going to draw,
you have to begin drawing
Picasso
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