An Ode to Hard, Dark Nights and The Miracle of Light
A Paired Poem and Essay, Meditating on Light in the Darkness
Hello, friends.
I just wanted to thank you for all of the amazing comments and engagement on my last post, which included a love letter to writers and creatives and my poem, “A Liturgy for Faithful Creatives.” I will respond to you all so very soon. I’ve been sick. My daughter has been sick. And I have been against big deadlines with my day job, being a professor, and with TWBTO Advent Series: A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS.
It has been such a blessing working on this Advent Series because I have needed the Light so very badly in this continuous dark season, which is also light but not always so much so. I’ve loved working with our amazing writers at TWBTO:
, , , , and so far! will close our series out right before Christmas.I’ve also enjoyed pairing some of my poetry and writing here with each essay that comes out. Today, I am excited to share
’s Advent essay, “The Miracle of Light: Finding Advent Hope for Our Broken Temples.” Read to the end and you can enjoy a sneak peek and then join us at the blog to keep reading.Donna’s essay, which explores the deepest and darkest night and how God’s perfect and eternal Light can save our broken temples, reminded me of a poem I wrote that recently won a poetry contest with
and Makers and Mystics, called The Bright Wings Poetry Contest. My poem, “An Ode to Hard, Dark Nights,” explores this very darkness and how God goes to the bottom of the pit to intervene on our behalf. This is the Light of Christmas, breaking through all year long through the work of Christ—his birth, his life, his ministry, his words, his death, his resurrection. This is the only hope that has the absolute final say in our lives. If you find yourself in the deepest darkness tonight and you wonder where the Light of Christmas is in your loneliness or pain or suffering, look no further. He is right here.Allow these words to soothe your soul.
You belong here,
me
AN ODE TO HARD, DARK NIGHTS by Kimberly Phinney "An Ode to Hard, Dark Nights" was first published with Ekstasis Magazine and is the winner of The Audience Choice Award in the Bright Wings Contest 2024 with Ekstasis Magazine and Maker and Mystics. You can find it here: https://www.ekstasismagazine.com/bright-wings-audience-choice. This is a song in praise of hard, dark nights: no firelight, no afterglow, but the sliver of a crescent moon and a few stray stars flung out into the wilderness, calling you into the great Alone with your animal self, falling down on tired knees broken against the ground. Then prostrate— cross-like— face down and stretched to the end of yourself by how wrong you’ve been— because, of course, this is the end. But there is still some warmth coming up from the Earth, and a humming in the sweet black air— some great vibration of life that goes out before you. And though you can’t see them, the birchwood and pines rustle inside the wind’s divine pull— in a dance of wills— and somewhere, a great horned owl bellows his clear, determined hoot like a psalm across the land. So, you learn to breathe, again, with his heralding— a rhythm that beats electric blue like a pulse: “It’s not the end— it’s not the end—” No, this is not the end— hardly an end, but a hard beginning. There will always be a morning— a rebirth. So, here in the dark— in a night bleaker than bleak— in a time outside of time— there is a mark on the Holy map of your soul where you found your Maker in the hard, dark night— and then lived to see the light of dawn.
We are so excited to share our next essay in our six-part Advent Series: A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS. Please enjoy
’s beautiful essay’s sneak peek below and click this link to keep reading: The Miracle of Light: Finding Advent Hope for Our Broken Temples — THE WAY BACK TO OURSELVES. Be sure to follow and her work at Serenity in Suffering.The Miracle of Light:
Finding Advent Hope for Our Broken Temples
by Donna Bucher
“May it be a light to you in dark places when all other lights go out.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Not too long ago, amid the gentle light of the Advent candles, I found myself aching with remembrance. Sorrow from years of grief called forth by the light limned the halls of my memory with a cold shame I could not shake. Instead of basking in the joy we often expect to feel during the Christmas season, I grieved the ruins of my life—my heart gripped by lament—wondering if God’s promised Light could ever restore the desolation.
In this space, God reminded me of the miracle of light sent to his people before the coming of the True Light we celebrate at Advent, a miracle that met God’s people in the ruins, just as it would meet me many years later.
This biblical desecration forced a lament that broke forth from the depths of sorrow buried deep for long years of oppression and bondage. Robbed of their culture and religious practices under Antiochus IV and the Seleucid Empire in the second century BCE, Jews in Jerusalem and throughout all Judea grieved the ruin of their Temple.
Can you imagine the sort of grief they must have felt, as they watched everything they knew and loved crumble at an enemy's hand?
After the ultimate blasphemy of sacrificing swine upon Yahweh’s sacred altar, the Maccabean priests rose up in rebellion, winning a supernatural victory over Antiochus Epiphanes and recaptured the Temple. Despite the knowledge of the Temple sacrilege over the course of its Gentile occupation, nothing prepared the priests for the reality of the malevolence awaiting them upon re-entry to the Temple.
The brutality that ravished, defiled, and polluted the Temple defied words.
Entering what once housed the glory of God, the forbidding darkness mocked their victory with its unrelenting shroud of despair and utter emptiness. The lampstand, which stood perpetually burning, now sat extinguished as a testimony of evil’s victory.
The purpose of the lampstand, as given to Aaron in Numbers 8:1-4 and Leviticus 24:5-9, was to shine upon the table of shewbread, where twelve loaves rested representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Just as light and fire symbolized the life-giving presence of God (Exodus 12:21-22), so the lampstand represented the presence of God and his glory shining upon the twelve tribes of Israel.
This wasn’t just some ordinary light; rather, it was the Light.
Click this link to keep reading: The Miracle of Light: Finding Advent Hope for Our Broken Temples — THE WAY BACK TO OURSELVES.
"So, here in the dark—
in a night bleaker than bleak—
in a time outside of time—
there is a mark
on the Holy map
of your soul
where you found
your Maker
in the hard, dark night—
and then lived to see
the light of dawn."
I love the imagery of our soul being a map. Even a holy one. I've never thought of it this way, and may think of it differently from now on. Thank you for this honest and vulnerable share!
Congratulations, Kimberly, and well deserved!
I love "sweet black air" and "determined hoot / like a psalm."