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From Rev Ruth Scott, Anglican Vicar in Richmond:

As a child I was scared of the dark and could only fall sleep if my bedroom door was open and the landing light left on. For some months I remember being afraid to put my legs between the sheets because I was convinced there was a tarantula lurking in my bed. Darkness is something many of us fear. It’s where our worst nightmares come to life, or we become overwrought with anxieties that don’t trouble us during daylight hours. When our lives fall apart, as they sometimes do, we talk about going through ‘dark times’. Perhaps that’s why those who taught me about Christianity focussed on light overcoming darkness, and associated night with devilish things or divine punishment. It may seem strange that I should be talking about darkness as Christians begin the season of Advent when we prepare for the coming of light into the world at Christmas, but as I’ve grown older I’ve come to see darkness with different eyes. Key moments of painful but important transformation happened in the darkness of night to biblical figures like Abraham, Jacob, Moses and Jesus, and God is seen as the God of darkness as well as light. The anonymous author of the fourteenth century mystical classic, The Cloud of Unknowing, even went as far as suggesting it’s only in darkness that we can have any real experience of the divine. Whatever we do or don’t believe about God, there’s wisdom in recognising we need darkness as well as light. At a basic level, it helps to keep us physically healthy. The stillness of night has often brought me comfort when I’m suffering from sensory overload. More importantly, so-called dark times have taught me important lessons I wouldn’t have learnt when life was hunky-dory. Through them I have developed courage, resilience and deeper compassion. I have come to understand that, like stars, there are rich resources of wisdom which can only be discovered in the dark night of the human spirit.