Disclaimer to family and friends who may be alarmed enough to call me: Don’t call. I have learned my lesson. Enough said.

The other day I set my alarm for 5:30, so I could walk early. As I left the house and the crescent of light that spread from the light pole in our yard, I realized that it was dark. Really, really dark. Can’t-see-your-feet-or-where-your- feet-are-going kind of dark.

But the sun will be coming up soon. If I can just make it for a half mile or so, I’ll be good. But a half mile in, there was no sign of the sun, and I had drifted off the road several times, shuffling through the dew-drenched grass until I found my way back to pavement.

And then I heard a crashing sound in the field to my right. A deer? Something more predatory?  It was then that I started clapping maniacally as I walked, hoping that whatever was out there would take notice: Hey, I am walking here. And I’m handicapped because, unlike you, I have no night vision. Can you give a sister a break?

In the distance, a glow of headlights cheered me. But as the truck approached, I realized that, ironically, I was more handicapped than when I was in the dark. Blinded by the light, momentarily I had absolutely no idea where I was or in what direction I was moving. As the truck passed me, I also felt the sting of humiliation. That guy probably thinks I’m an idiot (which I am) to be out here in the dark without reflective gear or a head lamp. I really hope that I don’t know him or her. 

Then a jewel of light appeared in front of me: a light pole at the entrance of a gravel driveway. Confidently, I steered my course towards the light. And then, once there, I spotted another light in the distance and found my old walking rhythm as it drew me on.

In the sanctuary of light, you may be blessed with the smallest points of light, which like a luminary compass, show you the way. In her poem,   “Insomniac,” Sylvia Plath writes:

The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole—

Letting in the light, peephole after peephole. At times, we may find ourselves slogging our way through the dark night, our eyes desperately searching the blueblack before us for one small peephole, some pin prick in the all-consuming absence of light. Often a single peephole is enough to sustain us. How far that little candle throws its beams! [William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice].

For much of my life, when two roads diverged in the woods, I took the path of the tangible light poles, forsaking the spiritual ones. I marched–and sometimes crawled–onward towards people, places, and positions that, I believed, were the truest lights. In these people, places, and positions, I believed I would find all that I was looking for: comfort, affirmation, and wisdom. When my marching song should have been Onward, Christian Soldier, it was actually more a weak version of Carry On, My Wayward Son. 

Until I moved towards a light that was, in the end, no light at all. Plunged into darkness, there was little comfort to be found in people, places, or positions. Broken and in the absence of tangible light, I finally turned to God.

Finally–such a woeful, pathetic word. Even as I write, I am acutely aware of how cliched and time-worn my story is. False lights glitter all too brightly, their promises all too familiar. Like the children of Israel, I had accumulated years of idols. I had filled the shelves of my life with false gold and artificial light.

Broken–such a necessary, life-saving word in the sanctuary of light. In Matthew 16: 24-26, we read:

Then Jesus told His disciples, If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?

Paradoxically, the sanctuary of light requires losing yourself, your life, and your former lights. Aristotle claimed that nature abhors a vacuum. Clearly, Jesus would agree. In the absence of false light, in the vacuum created by loss, true and living light abounds. The dark night of the soul need not last forever. If one will but seek the source of the real light.

In his letters, J. R. R. Tolkien writes:

I perceived or thought of the Light of God and in it suspended one small mote (or millions of motes to only one of which was my small mind directed), glittering white because of the individual ray from the Light which both held and lit it…And the ray was the Guardian Angel of the mote: not a thing interposed between God and the creature, but God’s very attention itself, personalized…This is a finite parallel to the Infinite. As the love of the Father and Son (who are infinite and equal) is a Person, so the love and attention of the Light to the Mote is a person (that is both with us and in Heaven): finite but divine, i.e. angelic.

The splendor of the sanctuary of light is revealed in Tolkien’s description of Jesus as the Light and of each of us as one small mote to which all love and attention is directed. If losing my life ensures that I may be this one small mote, then today, I will once again lose my life. For this losing is a daily, willful act. And this is good news for those like me, who, in spite of best intentions, in spite of past experience, and in spite of wisdom, find themselves veering weakly towards false lights.

I don’t plan to walk again in utter darkness–down the old highway or through the remainder of my life–without a headlamp and Jesus. Both are necessary; both are life-saving.