Just as there are many forms of light, there can also be many forms of darkness. Light, for example, can either be illuminating and/or scorching. So it is also true with darkness. The darkness is where the unknown still lurks. While most praise the light and the clarity it can bring, the darkness is where all unanswered questions still lie, comfortable lingering in the shadows. It is where curiosity yields no restraint and where the act of searching is at the core of survival in this environment. It is a place not of hopelessness, but of where God resided before they created the world. It is holy and it is divine. In a culture obsessed with high definition, the shadow is a place "that still holds a moment of mystery, a moment of trance." (1)
Rachel Naomi Remen:
"In the beginning, there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. And then, in the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand, thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light."
Charles Moore in his foreword to Jun'ichiro Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows
" . . . thus darkness illuminates for us a culture very different from our own; but at the same time it helps us to look deep into ourselves to our own inhabitation of the world . . . "
Echoing light reflections in an opening to The Holy Darkness.
Flyer gratefully designed by Vina Sananikone
Resources:
Lawrence Kushner - Kabbalah and the Inner Life of God (via On Being with Krista Tippett)
Junichiro Tanizaki - In Praise of Shadows (1)
