What Grows in the Dark?
“The seed is in the ground. Now may we rest in hope while darkness does its work” ~Wendall Berry
Autumn is often a symbol of endings, yet I appreciate it as a time of renewal.
Fuzzy plants take flight, seeds and cones tumble from trees, small mammals gather food until the long fingers of spring light return. Mycelial networks spread underground in the dark connecting all manner of forest life together. The rich compost of fruits dying back, rotting leaves, the debris of summer growth all makes for a place where “darkness does its work”.
Our human lives grow and thrive in the darkness of the womb.
Other transitions begin in figurative darkness: a diagnosis, a death, a divorce, an estrangement, curated political chaos. Like the falling cones and dropping seeds these initiations into the dark require faith—the kind of faith that sometimes feels like we must extract it from the marrow of life itself.
This is the season of descent, we move down and into the naturally quieter months of winter ahead, we burrow into the fertile soil where we might learn to savor the waiting. When we release the need for immediate answers, rest happens.
Just rest.
Those are two words my spiritual teacher says often. She’s not saying go horizontal and forget about the world, she points to the cyclical need for quiet and rest.
It has been a long cycle of descent and darkening of the light over these past many years. In the I Ching, an oracle known as the “Book of Changes” addresses the times of “Darkening of the Light” just like where we are right now. A necessary time when we draw our light inward to protect our inner lamp of moral clarity.
If we are to be agents of creation, it is essential that we know where we are within the life/death/rebirth cycles in our personal and collective lives. Such knowing instructs us on how to use our energies wisely and which inquiries to make.
When seeds split open and gestate in the fecund autumn soil, it is a death in service to the unknown. It is a reminder that life and faith grow in the dark.