This message was given during our Decolonizing Worship Hour Friday March 28th, 2025.
In the book titled Learning to Walk in the Dark, author Barbara Brown Taylor redeems my need to see the world as my ancestors have seen it for centuries. The darkness and the light are both alike. We actually had that experience since we last prayed together with the Spring Equinox and the full lunar eclipse. These natural reminders of awe and wonder have engaged me over and over in my own work towards “truth-telling” and truth-listening.
In my Native American context, the winter months are seen as periods of reflection and dreaming. We cry for a vision to understand what we are doing and what we know. We often hold ceremonies preparing ourselves for this dreaming. Distractions are peeled away until all that is left is the thing itself … the thing that we need to know.
I remember just a little over a year ago as we prepared ourselves here in Arizona to visit the regions where 47 Indian boarding schools took our children, took our history, took our language, culture and tradition – a pilgrimage journey. We could not have been prepared for what was ahead, but we could prepare ourselves to be open to what was being peeled away and truth-telling and truth-hearing became a part of our daily existence.
In some ways, it feels like last year was a very long wintertime when these stories were told over and over again – each different, yet the same. In some ways this journey will continue until all the stories are told, heard and acknowledged.
This past wintertime has been a time of reflection. Knowing that the courage of those who have stood up in the face of adversity, those that have spoken truth to power have opened a door that we are being beckoned to walk through each day together. The power of our corporate cry for a vision, the corporate peeling away is what we are now responsible for and accountable to as followers of the truth, followers of justice and followers of peace.
Just as in Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, we have to acknowledge the imbedded racism that exists in hearing that there is good in light and bad in darkness. It is almost impossible to escape the inference in our language, in our history books, in our children’s books and stories and even in books referred to as “holy scripture.” Think about how evil is equated with darkness … “things that go bump in the night” and darkness is associated with the unknown, the hidden, and the forces of chaos, while light represents order, knowledge, and good.
What does this do to us when we have not reflected on this principle? Do we avoid the mystery and the unknown because we cannot see it and since we cannot see it, does it come from darkness that we must be afraid of encountering?
Barbara Brown Taylor sorts through this obvious judgement and divisiveness by taking us back to our connection to our Mother Earth, to creation and ultimately to the One who created. The proposition she presents is that choosing to live only in solar spirituality (where light improves our seeing) shortchanges the gift of being present and accepting what comes with a lunar spirituality – one that waxes and wanes with the seasons. Whereas the sun is basically the same each day as the earth rotates around it, the moon is sometimes as bright as a headlight and at other times just barely a crescent. Some nights the moon is high in the sky and adding light to the world. Other times she is altogether gone, leaving a vast web of stars that are brighter in her absence. All in all, she is for me a truer reflection of my own spiritual journey and maybe also yours.
The message then is that we cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a hope. Part of the terror is to take back our own listenings. To use our own voice. To see our own light (even in the darkest night there is light). Hildegard of Bingen
When I orient myself to the many way in which this change in seasons, the lengthening of days and the shorter nights, I also begin as a child does, resisting at first because I do not want to leave the safety of the night – I want to continue to dream and to peel away what is in the mystery, the unknown and touching the face of the One who is and always has been and always will be.
And yet, the light beckons. As my resistance to the growing light melts away, I begin to see the new life, the renewed life and the cycles of life beginning again and again. In this mysterious cycle and rhythm of the earth, we are invited to start again, fresh – having had time to reflect and peel away what we have not been able to understand. Even if we do not fully understand and do not fully see, we wander slowly into the light seeking what has always been, but we may not have known before. This is what truth-seekers do best.
There is a Scripture passage (Matthew 5:14-16) translated by The Message that says:
“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God”
No matter how we refer to the Holy One, no matter what faith we follow or do not follow, we can imagine ourselves sitting in this worship community together as “light-bearers” not hiding our light but shining it as beacons of hope in the world.
Light-bearing comes with responsibilities. It is humbling and if I am honest, frightening at times, to think that shining my light for others to follow might lead us all down a crooked path with ups and downs that challenge us. But, as long as I know that I am not only accountable for what I do and say, but that my words and actions may have an impact on others, I am bound to be discerning, to pray, to sit in ceremony and to visit the night when I really need to see more clearly.
Emily Dickens poem reminds us that there is a quality of loss affecting our content as trade had suddenly encroached upon a sacrament. Indeed, as we lose sight of the darkness and the light slowly replaces it, there is a danger that the holiness of what is new, what is seen again, what is realized for the first time may jeopardize the sacramental nature of our work, of our being. In this regard as with all our lives, our intentional connection to the miracle that is creation has the potential to center us and to give us new life.
Now, as we move slowly and deliberately into the light, the light of Spring where the undeniable evidence of awe and wonder remind us daily that there is a mystery in the unseen, in the unknown at the end of a journey of discernment. We are also reminded that to be truth-seekers, truth-tellers and listeners for the truth in a world where anything, but the truth seems to cloud our path, you must be the light.
You were created to be light. Live in the warmth of a solar spirituality and shine bright. And, when it is more appropriate, shine as our mother moon does waxing and waning giving just enough light for others to follow. Take rest when you need it and let your lunar spirituality eclipse for just enough time for the stars around you to shine. Either way, be the light … the light of the world … the light no darkness overcomes.
Debbie Royals is Pascua Yaqui from Tucson, AZ, a sister, mother to two wonderful young men and grandmother to four. She is an Episcopal priest, author, retreat leader and educator. She serves as the Canon for Native American Ministry in the Diocese of Arizona and is developing a “new church community” called Four Winds serving Indigenous people. Debbie serves as the Coalition’s Chaplain. Her passion for restorative justice and binding community is evident in every aspect of her life.
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