We left our Christmas lights up this year. Not outside--we never put any outside--but the ones we have strewn around our living room to make it look like a college dorm. We need them in the winter. We don't have a lot of windows, and the warm, white twinkly lights chase away the darkness that settles in so quickly. We keep them up after Christmas every year to keep the grey away, to keep the depression away, to help us pretend that the minute we set foot outside, it won't be into biting winds, slick black slush, and an endless slate-colored sky.
But this year we didn't put them away in February, like we usually do. This year we needed them longer. Maybe it was the sudden upsurge of racism and violence that infiltrated the news, and overheard conversations, and our social media feeds. Maybe we needed to remind ourselves that, just like all of the old hatreds can live just beneath the surface, so can the light, hiding indoors in tiny, tacky bulbs, helping us to remember that the darkness isn't the whole story.
I thought about taking them down yesterday, to make Christmas more dramatically different (I'm all about a sort of secular liturgical cycle), but with the seemingly unending parade of natural disasters, and modern horrors ("Mom, what's a holocaust? What's genocide? Do those things happen any more? They don't, right? Dad, what's a missile? Ryan said nuclear weapons can reach us. They can't right?"), it seems better just to let the light be light.
* * *
In preschool Sunday school, when we talk about light, we talk about how it can be changed. We talk about how, even when we blow our candles out, the light is still there, swirling around us as smoke. And now it can be everywhere, all at once, even when it's hard to see. The kids look at me like I'm crazy when I say this. That's not light, it's smoke. And in the darkened classroom, swirling amidst the toys and sand tables, it's really hard to see.
* * *
I went to church on Sunday alone. The children had ballet auditions to attend, but I was teaching Sunday school to some of the youngest members of our church. On the way, I had one of those moments where the you can suddenly see how big everything is, how connected, and terrifying, and unbelievably beautiful. Where the past, present, and future, and all the possibilities in between, rush at you with startling clarity, and whatever is out there that connects these things comes at you like a bolt of lightning and knocks the breath out of your lungs. This happened while I was driving on the freeway, and I almost veered off the road from the force of it. I spent the rest of the drive shaking and gasping, and watching every tree, and car, and bird shine in a new way.
* * *
I spend most winters deep in depression. It's seasonal, but we can't afford those therapy lamps, and they seem like a lot of work anyway. Besides, the heaviness seems appropriate, like a blanket of snow. It melts away when the days lengthen, and everything beneath the surface comes back with a renewed vibrancy. The most important thing to understand is that in both the darkness and the light, I am fully myself.
* * *
When I walked into church by myself on Sunday, I was greeted by one of my tiny students. He was pointing at one of the ceiling lights in the hallway, staring up at it, mesmerized. "It's a light!" he exclaimed. "It turns off, but then it turns back on!" This concept was occupying his whole mind, he kept staring, and repeating what he knew about the light. "Someone can turn it off! But then turns it on!" I crouched down to his level, "Did you know that our story in Sunday school is going to be about light?" I asked him. "We are going to talk all about it today! I'm excited you're already thinking about lights!" He nodded sagely.
* * *
At church, I don't tell anyone about almost running my car off the road. I don't tell them that I saw the moment of my daughter's birth, and every other possible moment that could have been at the same time, and every possible future. I don't tell them how often things like this happen to me. How sometimes I see things, and then later those things happen with uncanny accuracy. I am not out of my mind. I am not a religious zealot. I wouldn't want anyone to think that. It's just that sometimes things come rushing at me, and if I open myself up to them even a little, they move through me like lighting and leave me shaking and shining.
* * *
We sing "This Little Light of Mine" during circle time. The Sunday school children are kneeling on a rug covered in the alphabet and little, puffy clouds. They are laughing as they blow out the fingers they are pretending are candles. They are laughing as they use their hands to make bushel baskets that hide the make-believe light. We sing, "Put it under a bushel?" and then say, "NO!" and giggle because of
course we don't want to hide our light. Of
course we don't. One of the children says that he is a car, and doesn't have a candle. I tell him that cars have lights too, and we talk about how everyone can show their light in a different way. He turns his lights on and off like blinkers. It is, of course, precious. I can't imagine any of these little ones hiding their light. They are all joy at merely existing. Or sometimes fiery flames of indignation over some small injustice. But always light. They don't know how to hide it yet.
* * *
At home, we don't replace our light bulbs often enough. when one goes out, we let the others compensate. And we grow used to the dimness, as if that's the way it should be. As if that's the way it's always been. My house is full of little patches of darkness, in the shower, at the dining table. On the rare occasion that we
do replace a bulb, there is a great deal of celebration. "Oh my gosh, it's so strange to see the kitchen
look this way! I didn't even know our bathroom could
be this bright! Did you know our house could look like this?!"
I'll admit that sometimes the new, glaring light is an assault on my senses. Sometimes I want to go find a patch of darkness where the burnt-out bulbs have been left unaddressed, and blanket myself in seeming absence of light.
* * *
By the time we reach story time, I am no longer shaking. The existential electricity has shuddered itself out of my system and the world has lost a little of the supernatural vibrancy that it had earlier revealed through the dirty windows of my car. I get the children to be very quiet by asking them to feel the quiet inside of themselves. They sit impressively still while I light a big candle and read, "I am the light." They only wriggle a little as they patiently wait for me to light a smaller candle for each of them from the big light. They are entranced by the tiny flames. When some of the waxier candles go out, I relight them on the other smaller candles. I improvise to keep their attention. "Sometimes when our light goes out, we can get light from each other. See how even when we give light, we still have enough for ourselves?" I make a note to remind myself of this. I remind myself not to hide.
* * *
The days have grown shorter with a quickness I did not expect. I keep waiting for the depression to settle in with the lengthening darkness. It is an old friend. It has predictable habits. But so far, I have seen no signs of it. I have not turned down any invitations. I go out to lunch after church with friends, even though my family isn't there, and I don't even stop to ask myself why anyone would want me to eat with them in the first place. I go home and rest without any clawing, aching in my chest. So far, I am not hiding. So far, the light still looks like light.
* * *
There are times in class when we talk about light changing to smoke--how it's still there, but different--and I buy it. This time, when I extinguish the candles one by one, straining my eyes to see the smoke swirling around the room, I am as incredulous as the children. "The light isn't gone. It's just changed. And now it can be everywhere," I say in my magical voice. But I don't fully believe it. After all, didn't we just say we didn't want anyone to blow out our light or hide it? What is it worth as just smoke? How can it light up anything? We turn the fluorescent lights back on and get to work with playdough and sand. This is the kind of light we're used to. Steady and obvious. This is the kind of light we do our work by.
This is the only kind of light we pretend to know. But just like the world's darkness that we try to forget, there are other, hidden forms of light that we don't control with just the flip of a switch. There is the light we get from each other when our own is fading to nothing but a dim blue. This light takes work, and is imperfect. Sometimes in the process you get burned. You almost certainly will end up returning the favor. This light is less predictable than the fluorescent lights, but it is more precious.
There is the light that comes at us all at once in ways we can't describe. The kind that almost shatters us, but not quite. The kind that would have us write symphonies if we were composers, or poems, if we had that way with words. The kind that is so much light at once that we cannot help but see far, far more than we usually do. The kind people describe as religious experience. The kind that we keep quiet and don't talk about, because we are afraid we will sound crazy. Everyone knows that light should come from a light bulb, or if we're feeling extra spiritual, maybe a nice candle. Something we can contain and control. Something we can at least
describe.
And then maybe, just maybe, there is light that doesn't look like light. Maybe when our light goes out, it doesn't go away. Maybe it changes. Maybe in the darkness it is still doing some kind of work. Maybe it is transforming. Maybe it is transforming
us. Is it possible that when the world is so dark with violence, and disaster, and rumors of war that light seems inconceivable, it is moving quietly in disguise through spaces we leave for it?
This sounds like idealism, like a metaphysical optimism we cannot afford to have in a world that continues to throw the grit, and blood, and coldness of it's realism at us with as much force as ever. But maybe through all that we're the kid pointing at the light. "It goes off. And then it comes on again." The light is always there. It can always come back. Even if we
do let it go out, it will not be contained. Even if we lie dormant under a pile of snow, and blankets, and despair, and claim the that the darkness has us forever, it will move around and through us in disguise and wake us up when the days are longer, and we will be lighter and freer than before.
I don't know that this is true, but know that I need it to be. So I think I will continue to leave my Christmas lights up for now, tiny bulbs of light joining forces with small candle flames and fluorescent bulbs and inexplicable epiphanies, arrayed against a world full of dark. And the light will shine in all of our darkness and--because it is both predictable and unexpected, because it turns off and then on again, because it is stealthy and subterranean and in disguise, because it is always there, even when it doesn't look like light--the darkness will not overcome it.
