Why We Need Night: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Darkness

"Living in a glare of our own making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural patrimony—the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense, light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy—arching overhead."

-               from Our Vanishing Night

Walking the streets of Bakersfield in the evening, having just moved here from Chicago, I am struck by the lack of street lights surrounding my home. As I walk the dog or walk back from an evening spent at Dagny’s or another downtown destination, I am caught off guard and a little uneasy when I suddenly notice I am surrounded by the darkness. 

As I make my way down 20^th street, towards coffee at Dagny’s or dinner at Mama Roomba’s, I am always excited to walk by the Fox Theater, especially on show night. On those nights the brilliant lights of the Fox Theater marquee light up the night sky in downtown Bakersfield. The marquee, with its lights twinkling, can be a mesmerizing sight standing in stark contrast to the darkness that envelopes the homes in my neighborhood.

The Fox Theater sign’s prominence has only grown as our clocks have been adjusted for daylight savings time. The days are growing shorter; the darkness comes earlier and earlier each evening. As the sun light fades, we head into the season of Advent. Throughout this time we will gather each Wednesday evening at Emmanuel on Baker Street, in the midst of the darkness, for a service of evening prayer. Normally we come to worship on Sunday mornings with the sun sitting high in the sky warming our faces and greeting us as we walk through the church doors. But during these weeks in December we gather after the sun has set and darkness has fallen on our great central valley.

In the darkness of the nights in which we come together to pray the bright lights of the Fox and the Nile Theaters, the Padre Hotel, and the brilliant lights of fast food restaurants and shopping centers all across Bakersfield will burn, lighting up the night sky. Their brilliant lights are due in no small part to our society’s aversion to the darkness. In the darkness we become acutely aware of the unknowns. We know both our smallness and the vastness of the world around us. Our aversions lie in the darkness’ power to reveal our frailty and humanity against the grand scale of the universe.

Yet as we head into this Advent season, our liturgy begins to accept that darkness is a part of God’s created world. Darkness becomes an invasive theme in our worship. The shape of our worship acknowledges that we live in darkness. Throughout the Advent season the dichotomy of the Fox’s brilliant and mesmerizing sign and Emmanuel’s much more humbly lit sign will grow more apparent. I find comfort in the acceptance of darkness in Advent. There is authenticity in this acceptance, because the reality is that darkness is a large part of our existence. As the people of God, we live in the darkness of faith. We accept the dark because it is a part of our world, of God’s created order.

There is great evidence of God’s presence in the darkness. In John’s gospel, Jesus searches out and finds Nicodemus in the middle of the dark night. Luther writes in his commentary on Exodus and the tabernacle that, “God dwells in the darkness of faith, where no light can overcome it.” To live in faith is to live in darkness. There is a certain aspect of uncertainty with faith. There is a mysterious element to God’s presence throughout our lives. At the table and in the world we proclaim a God whose actions are often mysterious to us.

But in the midst of the darkness, in the midst of uncertainty, we gather together this Advent in hope to proclaim a certain truth; the truth of a God who comes and dwells in the darkness of the everyday world we know. It is because of this truth we are able to gather in the darkness and the uncertainty of the world. While the rest of the world squirms in the darkness, seeking out the light, take comfort this Advent season that God is active and present, even when the sun goes down and the lights go off. As the Fox Theater’s marquee lights up the night sky, we gather in the darkness down on Baker Street, confident that God is here in this place.