Depending on where you sit, it is hard to look out at the world right now and feel that we are bending toward the light. So much feels unknown, chaotic, and bleak. On the one had, the dark can feel comforting, soothing, and known. On the other it can feel nihilistic. A favorite theologian, Catherine Keller challenges us to see the dark as neither “soothing nothingness” nor as “nihilism,” but as profoundly creative, ‘a churning, complicating darkness’ that does not disappear. She reminds us that the dark is not a beast to be tamed but a mystery to be experienced. Without the dark, without facing it, we can’t ever fully know the light either. We remain in a hazy nowhereness.

The spirit of Meister Eckhart’s words flow nicely here:

Some imagine there is no light
in their life but only a long darkness.
I say that the light is never absent,
always seeking to flow forth within
the ground of the soul, but we block
it in our confusion and fail to see
how it ever shines and burns in us.
So if you want to know the light,
you must first face the darkness
that is in you. Only then will
the light overflow your soul and
dance with radiance in your life.

Eckhart was accused of heresy for saying such things. But what if he was right? What if it’s the light within us that needs to be birthed? The light that can only make itself known by also sitting with and acknowledging the darkness? These are the themes we explore as we explore Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus. It’s an inside job, y’all, and if we do the work we can change the world.