Of the benefits of living out here in the comparative boonies, not the least is getting true and proper Night. You just can't get the same sweep of variation in city; oh, sure, the sky's dark, but it's background only--something you can pretty much ignore. The exception is a sort of thick golden smoky light when a city's befogged--that's rather pretty. But out in the country, and even more on the back roads out of town, night varies most wildly and wonderfully. Tonight it's a new moon, clear, but not really clear, so there are a few stars out, a few planets, nothing much. But when the moon's full, you can practically read by moonlight; and when the moon is full on, say, a bitterly clear January night or at the height of summer--ah, there's real glory.

At the self-same time, when there's heavy cloud cover, you might as well be in your own coat pocket when you're outside. The countryside can "do" dark, as cities, with their background of self-light, are simply incapable of experiencing. It's not quite the extraordinary dark you get down a coal mine when they turn the lights off (an experience I have no intention of repeating, thank you!) But we can get a darkness that feels so solid and thick you'd think you could slice it and it use to shingle with.

Funny: dark can seem like a Thing, an entity in and of itself --something equal and opposite to daylight. You can set up Dark and Light as two separate entities, two things, maybe two figurines or idols, balancing each other perhaps. You can set them to play with each other, with one winning over the other or with the two of them cancelling each other out. But in fact, that's not true. Dark doesn't exist in and of itself; Dark is simply the absence of light.

Likewise, we can set up polar opposites: God and the Devil, Good and Evil, and we religious people can say that they are opposite and (we believe) not quite equal--we do believe that God will win, that Good will triumph. Christ told us that. In the meantime, however, we can say "The Devil made me do it!" or we can focus on Evil in the world. But that's not true, either. The Devil never made anyone do anything; that's us trying to wiggle out of responsibility for our own actions. I believe the Devil's a figure we've invented for our own convenience--a scapegoat to salve our egos. Evil isn't some independent outside agent, like gravity or electrochemical attraction: evil is only the darkness inside human beings.

We do what we do, in part because of the darkness inside of us, and that darkness is where some good should rightfully have been, and is not--where something should have grown, and has failed miserably to sprout or flourish. That's common enough: not one of us is all that we should be, not one of us loves God, our neighbours, and ourselves as well as we should. Being any sort of a self-aware adult human being means looking at your own failures and saying ruefully, Oy!--trying to do better, knowing that we can't always make it, and learning to accept that God does see the effort, as well as the missed mark.

But where we get into far worse trouble by avoiding the knowledge of our failures. Some have said that Pride is the granddaddy of the Seven Deadlies; others say Anger; others say Sloth. I think the ultimate sin is Denial--the ego's refusal to see and accept our failures. It's Denial (which, now I think of it, is really Pride + Sloth) that stands between us and reconciliation and forgiveness. How can we accept forgiveness when we're so busy insisting that there's nothing needs forgiving? How can we accept mercy and grace when we insist there's really nothing wrong--well, nothing really wrong --with our selves and actions, when so clearly something is deeply amiss? Denial builds up, like a leprous shell--like concrete armour, protecting the Dark in us from the Light of self-recognition. Because the alternative is pain, and we don't like pain. In fact, we'll go to astonishing lengths to avoid it.

We warp ourselves (and those around us) into the strangest shapes, the most malformed and twisted ways, simply to avoid KNOWING that the darkness is there, where Light ought to be. We manipulate ourselves and others into such tortured knots to avoid dealing with the dark. We imprison ourselves and those around us in the darkness because we don't want the Light; it hurts our eyes too much.

It's much easier to focus on the darkness in others--or even on what we've decided is wrong with others, regardless of reality--than it is to face the darkness in ourselves. So we revel in Righteous Indignation or Ideal Causes or "Telling the Truth in Love" or (even more common) harsh judgment, competitiveness, self-promotion, blaming, scapegoating, psychopathologizing, in order to prove how much worse everyone else is--how much blacker their darkness is than our own ittybitty shadows. Or we charm and manipulate others, giving them the skin of warmth and concern, proving what wonderful people we are, so that nobody--ourselves most especially included--has to look too closely at what's absent under the skin. Hitler was a warm, concerned, loving, protective friend to his intimates.

The only answer is to let the Light in, and that requires honesty and the ability to admit that we need it. Funny, how hard that can be....

It's my experience that gentleness, acceptance, true humility and real love are the products of strength--the strength to let egotism go the way of the dodo, because we want that Light. Anger, self-righteousness, manipulation--even a sort of odd childish charm!--are the ego's way of defending its own darkness. Integration is so much like painful hard work: easier to stay dis-integrated.

But when Denial breaks and falls away--and it always seems to fall off in chunks--it's like losing a concrete shell. Yes, there's pain--but also such freedom, and the touch of fresh air on unaccustomed skin....

God give us all the strength to "take our own hearts and look them in the face". God give us honesty with ourselves, to become whole and integral. God give us the courage to open ourselves to the Light. God save us from the darkness we clutch so close within ourselves.

(For BBW)