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Embracing the Gifts of Darkness

Darkness Has Not Overcome, graphite on paper, 45” x 60” 2020-2025.

In 2019 I began making drawings with crumpled paper. Taking a clean sheet of paper, I’d crumple the thing up in my hands, then smooth it out. Sometimes I’d repeat the process, damaging and manipulating of the paper. 

I started this drawing in 2020 during the pandemic shutdown. I’ve been poking at it here and there the past five years, and this holiday I made the push to finish it. So, here it is!

I wanted to protect the text and used painter’s tape to begin. But in a rookie move I wasn’t careful with it, and the paper began tearing when I removed it. I forged ahead anyway, embracing the ripping – evidence of my mistakes and yet introducing a metaphorical power I could not have planned. I tried to protect the text, but only made it “worse”. In retrospect, by being cautious I only damaged it further, which is freeing in a way.

“Darkness has not overcome” is a phrase from the beginning of the Gospel of John, and it has been on my mind lately. Everyone around me seems to agree these are “dark times.” And yet I find myself weary of this sentiment.

Beyond the tired trope of light equaling good and dark equaling bad, the phrase carries a detached longing—a wistful ache for some imagined “light times” ahead or behind us. I have spent much of my life seeking, searching, and striving for the so-called light, in realms of knowledge, wisdom, and justice. But since we can’t seem to agree on what these entail, I’ve decided to linger in the dark for a while.

And you know what? Darkness is pretty cool.

Jung spoke profoundly about the shadow—the unconscious part of ourselves—and the vast potential waiting to be uncovered through its integration. Darkness, in this sense, holds treasures we rarely acknowledge. Much of nature, too, thrives in the dark. I recently learned about a salamander capable of photosynthesizing even in the absence of light, thanks to The Wild podcast by KUOW. As the person being interviewed put it, “darkness has restorative things to teach us.”

Think about it: during a power outage, when streetlights vanish and we’re left to fumble around with candles, something magical often happens. Things are quiet. There are no screens to distract us. We are forced to pause and it is welcome. We tell stories. We go to bed early. Those moments of enforced stillness can feel as refreshing as the hush of a morning snowfall.

Maybe Leonard Cohen was onto something below the surface when he sang, “You want it darker.” Perhaps we long for darkness in ways we don’t fully understand. Perhaps we sense its potential to surprise us, to teach us, and to restore us in ways the light never could.

What if instead of striving for the light, we dared to embrace the dark? What might we find there, waiting quietly for us all along?

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