Accustomed to darkness

The Adoration of the Shepherds, painted in 1646 by a pupil of Rembrandt represents the episode in the Bible (Luke 2: 6–20) when the shepherds pay homage to the newborn Christ. One is silhouetted dramatically with his back towards us; to his right, another kneels, raising his hands in wonder, while a third stands reverently to one side. The lantern he holds appears dim compared with the light that seems to radiate directly from the sleeping child, illuminating the faces of those around.

In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. (John 1:4-5; NIV)

This is no grand set piece with halos, angels, and other religious iconography; instead, the setting is earthy, intimate and secular. Other figures have been added besides the shepherds, giving the scene a welcoming and informal feel, the artist relying solely on lighting to convey its spiritual nature. The light is made more intense by the deep shadows of the stable; in the gloom, I can just pick out the shapes of the animals, the basket hanging above Joseph’s head and the rafters in the roof space.

Light cannot see inside things/ That is what the dark is for:/ Minding the interior/ Nurturing the draw of growth/ Through places where death/ In its own way turns into life.

God’s gentle illumination

My eyes rest on the figure of Joseph, and I imagine the feelings of distress, betrayal and humiliation he may have felt during Mary’s mysterious pregnancy. In the painting, he looks on pensively as the shepherd worships his newly born son. His face bathed in light, I imagine him experiencing a long-awaited and grounding sense of clarity, peace, perspective and purpose.

In this nativity scene, the Christ child’s body appears as a heavenly lamp that has been gently lowered down into the darkness, poverty and mess of our human world. Here, it creates an intimate bubble of yellow light where people gather to be touched, warmed, and brightened. In our ultra-fast streaming, artificially lit modern world, peering into the still murk of this painting seems especially soothing. It takes time for my eyes to adjust and for the shadowy details, laced with a soft glow, to emerge. They remind me that, like Joseph, I must on occasion wait patiently, amid inner darkness, discomfort and self-doubt, for the eyes of my heart to adjust to God’s gentle illumination.

And when we come to search for God /Let us first be robed in night/ Put on the mind of morning/ To feel the rush of light/ Spread slowly inside/ The colour and stillness/ Of a found world.

Can you place yourself in this picture? What emerges?

Tom Ingrey-Counter

Quotes are from John O’Donohue’s poem, For Light (2007)

Images licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial (CC BY-NC). See link for more information - https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/pupil-of-rembrandt-the-adoration-of-the-shepherds

The rising sun

“The darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.” 1 John 2:8

Advent comes to us in the dark.

Not simply in the shortening days of winter, but in a world where shadows seem long— the shadows of conflict, division, loneliness, uncertainty, and sorrow.

Darkness near to us, and darkness far away.

And yet, Scripture whispers a daring truth: the true light is already shining.

Not will shine one day, not might shine if the world improves— already shining.

Already rising, already breaking through, already reaching into the places where we fear night will have the last word.

Jesus, the Rising Sun

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus is called “the rising sun from heaven” who comes “to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death.” Advent invites us to lift our eyes toward that horizon.

Like sunrise, Christ’s coming begins before we perceive it.
Light advances while the ground is still cold.

The Magi knew this as they travelled by starlight, sleeping under open skies and waking each morning to the sun pulling them eastward.
The shepherds knew it too—cold nights spent on exposed ground giving way to dawn’s warmth and clarity.

Into the rhythm of those more ordinary sunrises, God sent a Light that did not simply rise but arrived in the unexpected cry of a newborn child.

Jesus, the Rising Sun, shining on those who sit in darkness.

People of the Dawn

Now Christ calls us ‘out of darkness into His wonderful light’ (1 Peter 2:9).
We don’t ignore the shadows—but we face the horizon with hope.
His light is already at work:
in courage, in kindness, in justice sought, in prayers whispered, in communities that keep loving and holding hope for one another.

This Advent, may we look for the signs of sunrise—
in the world, in our communities, and in our own hearts.
And may we carry Christ’s rising light into every place that aches for dawn.

Lord Jesus, Rising Sun,
shine on us and through us.
Amen.

Caroline Tyler

Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life

Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch. I was there when it was written [and] there is a magic deeper still which you do not know. Your knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if you could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, you would have read there a different incantation. Aslan (paraphrased): The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

There is a kind of seeing that becomes possible only in the stillness and the darkness. And it is given as we learn to consent, often gradually and through great personal struggle, to the slow work of God in our lives and in the world entrusted to us.

From the very beginning, the book of Genesis speaks of the whole Created order arising as one full cycle of darkness and light. Evening came and morning came and it was the first day (Genesis 1:3).

Here is the deeper magic that runs thread-like through the gospel Jesus lived and proclaimed. Nowhere do we find him asking his followers to avoid the complex shadows of what it means to be fully human. Rather, he makes plain the uncomfortable and painful truth that all of it is a tangle of darkness and light, and he shows by example how we also are to carry it patiently through to resurrection.

Anton Darius, unsplash.com

It is a struggle which Jesus himself was willing to embody, walking among us and becoming the numinous light in the darkness.

It asks us to move slowly.

It asks us to deepen awareness.

It asks us to hold paradox.

It asks us to open our hearts.

It asks us to live the mystery.

“By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give sight to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1: 78-79)

Lynn Darke

Walking in darkness

Strangers to darkness

In pondering again the various gospel accounts of what we call the Christmas story I'm struck, strangely for the first time, by how predominantly dark it would have been as these events played out. We're so accustomed to living with electricity, with light on demand at any time of day or night that we're pretty much strangers to darkness being a constant, darkness as a presence at the edge of the small localised glow of whatever candle or oil lamp I might be able to light.

How dark and gloomy must that stable have been where Mary lay and gave birth. No hyper-illuminated medical centre, scrubbed and gleaming but a bed in the straw and at best an oil lamp or a couple of candles. She and Joseph likely arrived after dark too as the inn was already full. With no streetlights, no battery-run torches, no security lighting at the back of the inn, a woman on the brink of childbirth makes do in an unfamiliar, dark place.

The Magi too must have seen darkness as a friend rather than something to be avoided else how could they have followed the star? Journeying by night to an unknown destination in an unfamiliar land in starlight at best, one bright star a guiding presence.

And those poor unsuspecting shepherds, settling down for the night near their flocks, only starlight perhaps giving them any sense of their surroundings. Then the sudden, terrifying intrusion of light all around them. Eyes deeply attuned to the darkness of night suddenly, blindingly dazzled.

An invitation to slower and deeper

I wonder what we've lost by having instant and unthinking access to light pretty much anywhere, anytime. And in a way that, as unthinkingly, can turn night into day. Since I stopped working and the rhythm of my weekdays isn't kick-started by the early morning alarm, I've noticed how much I've enjoyed the dark months, how I welcome the gradual fading of the light through September and into October. It really does feel like an invitation into some slower, deeper rhythm of living, sleeping longer, being less active. The darkness feels like rest for the eyes, a counter-balance to the sunlight and long daylight of summer. Part of a welcome annual rhythm. In the morning, my practice in the dark months is to use no electric light but light a candle or two and open the curtains and blinds and wait for, and watch, the gathering light as the sun returns.

There's an implicit narrative in many of our stories and myths that dark equals bad and light equals good. That feels not only too simplistic to me but also misses the point that we need both and indeed one would have no meaning without the other. Can we relearn to welcome the dark? To invite the new ways of seeing and being that might be an invitation when the light fades?

Maybe walking in darkness isn't a bad thing. Maybe there are things to be seen and learned and known there too.

Gus MacLeod

Advent 2025: Introduction

Pre-advent: Waiting

As we approach Advent we reflect on waiting.

Who could EVER have imagined what was going to turn BC into AD.

When a few farm workers and three 

members of an obscure Persian sect

walked haphazard by starlight straight 

into the kingdom of heaven. 

-From BC:AD by U A Fanthorpe

Can we imagine what might be possible in our lives? What God can accomplish?

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope,

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith,

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

-East Coker from The Four Quartets, T.S. Elliot

This enigmatic poem suggests the need for emptying our mind of thought.

‘Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit from thy own thoughts and then thou wilt feel the principle of God’ wrote George Fox in the 17th century.

Emptying our heart of hope, for how do we know what goodness and fulfilment may lie in another direction all together?

Is the music playing behind the door of despair? Patrick Kavanagh, poet

And what of faith, surely this is core to waiting? Is waiting evidence of these core elements of faith, hope and love; so that patient waiting allows the process of an unimaginable becoming.

Is silence the very foundation of waiting, the humus of growth? Is silence the doorway into stillness and awaiting and knowing?

Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10

‘We came to know a place to stand in and what to wait in’ Frances Howgill, early Quaker 1618-1669

‘True silence…is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment’ concluded William Penn (1644-1718)

Rosamond Robertson