With gratitude to sister Amina who posted this in her recent blog:
The Dark of the Year
Now we come to the dark of the year, the long nights, and the silence of the stars. We feel how old the earth is, and how small we are. Ages upon ages of us have come and gone. Archeologists brush the dust from bones that look like ours. An old loneliness presses on our hearts, the ancient ache of our species adrift in an indifferent night, calling into the dark and hearing nothing back. We know we’re falling toward our deaths along with everything and everyone we care about, and there is nothing to be done.
Meanwhile the mountains above us sweep through the night. They’re not lonely. They know what is happening. If they could, they would bend down to us and say —
Children of Earth, you are home. Your home is the radiant universe, this holy mystery that birthed you. Your loneliness is your cry of longing for that home, and it is here. You are home.
Yes, whatever comes, goes, but coming and going are not really coming and going. Every evening is a dawn somewhere, every dawn an evening. We mountains come and go, like your breathing, and nothing is lost. The dark inside of us, above and below us, is alive with transparent holy light. Dark and light are not two.
Children, there is a wondrous loving holiness everywhere, luminous within all that your two eyes see. You know it but you can’t remember. The night is a cathedral of light. What you think is death is a door. When you go through it you will remember what you are, and your grief will vanish into joy.
Out of the luminous dark our universe home is made, made of a love that has no opposite, no beginning or end. Love bursts into form, into you, into us, returning from form in time without going anywhere. Time is its illusion, its make-believe, its playground.
We mountains know about time. Heaved from the earth, worn by rain and wind, witness of countless days and nights, we know about time and the timelessness it comes from. Trust us when we tell you that infinite joy ignites this timeless moment and fills all of space, even the darkest places, even your loneliness.
Children of Earth, you are wondrous, holy, and inseparable from all. You are blessed — so bless! You are made of love — so love!
In the dark of the year, we light candles. A small light in our homes to praise the light of the dark. We embrace each other, thankful for the holiness within the embrace, within each other. We raise our glasses and touch them together, and the little clink is heard throughout the universe.
~ Pir Elias Amidon