Dunkirk NY – Every year at the winter solstice I post this video. This Northern Exposure clip comes from the 4th season episode Northern Lights, which explores the theme of light during the winter solstice.
Goethe’s final words: “More light.” Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that’s been our unifying cry: “More light.” Sunlight. Torchlight. Candelight. Neon. Incandescent. Lights that banish the darkness from our caves, to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier’s Field. Little tiny flashlights for those books we read under the covers when we’re supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and footcandles. Light is metaphor. “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet.” “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” “Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom; lead thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home- Lead Thou me on!” “Arise, shine, for thy light has come.” Light is knowledge. Light is life. Light is light. -Chris in the Morning
This year I’ve felt a deeper understanding of the holiday season and its relation to light. As I was watching people along the road put up their holiday lighting decorations, it really struck me hard that, despite all the madness and commercialism, this is the way people now fight the darkness of the winter season, whether they are conscious of it or not. Huge Christmas light displays, the street post lights along the main roads in the city, candles in windows – all of it is a fierce attack on the surrounding darkness. I remember when I was driving for Enterprise how I noticed much more that I would leave in the darkness for work and arrive home in the darkness after work. The day is a little more than 9 hours long, with maybe 10 hours of visible light where I live. The houses lit for the Christmas holiday season have taken on a more intense message and meaning for me, one of doing the very best one can to beat back the darkness and bring back more light. I felt that this year as I hung my own modest string of lights around the front doorway and decorated the house for the holidays. Light is pretty critical to me in terms of dealing with seasonal depression, but this year I found myself not so focused on my own need for light, but on everyone’s need for light. The natural need for more light extends even more in a metaphorical sense, as I consider how much more light is needed within all humanity at a time when so many dark forces look to crush humanity out of existence.
By historical standards these are becoming dark times. Anger, cruelty, authoritarianism, and oppression are everywhere you look. The assault on the poor and helpless is unabated. Nature is beginning to fight back and have its say, as the climate reacts to our abuse of its abundance. This will not be corrected any time soon, and the resulting chaos will last for some time to come. The hardest thing to come to grips with is that, as with so much in the natural world, this process is both normal and natural. When a forest fire rages, we all fear the destruction and death it brings. And yet nature lets us know it does this only to clear the land for the new life it intends to bring. Living with and through the scarred landscape is never easy; we have to look with purpose to find the seedlings that will fashion the new life to come long after we have gone.
Hope lies only in the amount of light we can bring to these dark time: the light of knowledge, wisdom, humility, compassion, and understanding. Let’s hope that the coming decade is one where we can bring more light to shine on the dark places we are creating so as to root out the darkness for future generations. -twl
the day’s dying light
the year’s dying breath – one wink
closer to the grave