Luminous Darkness
Deborah Eden Tull and others on tending our lives fully
This post is free and comments are open to everyone. I’m thinking about opening up a few more posts a week, because frankly I miss hearing from people all the time (lol). I know we are all busy, and while I will be over here typing about dishes and compost each morning, I don’t know what rhythms people prefer. Feel free to let me know your ideal reading choices in the comments. Once a week = plenty? Or I’d like a few more veggies, please.
As always, thanks for being here.
The other night, my five-year-old built a “mouse museum” at the library (and actually went rogue with materials, abandoning the program for a more compelling leap into snowflake sculpting). I sat with him and tried to read a book by Deborah Eden Tull called Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown.
I didn’t get very far, because there were crayons on the table. I cannot resist the siren call of a crayon, but I intend to put this book in the rotation of books-I-look-at-longingly-while-living-my-current-ADHD-vibes. My personal chart from the library of books I’ve completed to reach 100 is stuck at zero, while my children zoom past. The other day, my daughter inquired about my progress. When I reported the facts, she offered to read picture books with me so I can cross off some numbers. How sweet and sad is that?
I do love a good picture book, though. Maybe I’ll take her up on the offer.
On my first day after spring break, I did the dishes for the first time in recent memory while listening to an interview with San Quentin death row inmate, Jarvis Jay Masters, on Dan Harris’s Ten Percent Happier podcast. I’ve read about Jarvis via Pema Chodron, but loved hearing stories in his own voice. I teared up several times, which felt like a revelation after cruising through a week of [what-did-I-do-with-those-kids-for-days-on-end-again?] on a kind of chipper but numb autopilot. Masters talked about learning to undo ideas of toughness and masculinity and how “being real” is as Buddhist as he sometimes gets externally. Will That Bird Has My Wings be added to the cheerful piles haunting my floors and nightstand and tables? Stay tuned.
In spite of Dan Harris’s intense, clipped voice, I generally enjoy Ten Percent Happier interviews. However, since my sister-and-law and I have been bandying about the concept of 1% improvements to our lives, a goal of ten percent seems greedy, Dan!
I went back to that Jane Hirschfield interview on The Ezra Klein Show, and heard this:
“We will save this world and its beings because we love it. We love them. We love life. We love being alive for the moment or two that we are, in the immense span of time.”
At another point in the interview, discussing a poem about her skeleton she says: “I forgot to be grateful that the bones in my feet are all working.”
It makes sense to me, if this is how Jane Hirschfield thinks, that she writes poetry. (That sounds like a knock, but I mean it as a bow to poets.) I recently wrote something similar to her words about loving life here, about loving the earth as a means of understanding how to care for it.
It is the same for our spirits. What makes you happy? Anyone who spends three hours with children knows that it varies for each of us, and the answers are mysterious, illogical, but also knowable. (I touched on this topic in my post about Thomas Moore.) There are natural energies you can study in yourself. Do you get super excited in the Target candle aisle? Buy yourself some candles, sweetheart. Food cravings, dressing to match your mood, watching a certain movie: all these are ways of attuning to your spirit.
Glancing at the intro to Luminous Darkness, I vibed right away with these words:
“Darkness has been my greatest teacher. Mine has been a path, not of seeking illumination but of finding wholeness through surrendering to the fertile and dark emptiness from which revelation arises.”
There’s a lot of shaming that happens—internally and externally—when we find ourselves in tight spots. But when I finally relax into those spaces in my life, I find so much useful information there: what makes me angry, what I hope for, what I grieve, and this information makes me stronger, more in tune with myself. Such times are also where prayer is at its purest, the mind stripped of plotting, knowing, or cunning. The heart steers by moonlight, and knows how to move with and around and into shadows far more safely than many of us are ever taught.
I am excited to see so many books on grief bloom in our culture - I’m thinking of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and It’s Okay That You’re Not Okay: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture that Doesn’t Understand to name only two - because grief is a somewhat brutal teacher with a deeply gentle aim: when worked with skillfully, it can teach us to sit more comfortably in ourselves, to get cozy in our hearts where the real safety resides.
In her introduction to Luminous Darkness Tull writes: “There are hidden powers within us that we have forgotten that await us in the presence of darkness. True vision is received through learning to see in the dark.”
Get cozy with failure. Get cozy with losing your way. There are signposts in thick woods, but you might have to discern them using your animal self, which is far more trustworthy than your rascally, fearful, whirring squirrel mind.
Trust your body, trust your heart. Trust yourself. There are more directions here than you can see with your eyes. Listen for them. Wait for them. In the meantime, eat some snacks. Settle yourself. Help is coming, but you might have to call out and give your location. Let others know how to find you by daring to raise your voice.
Sending patience and kindness your way today. And this glorious piece about being with seasoned souls at the community pool. It’s called I Am Not 80 Yet, but Among These 80-Year-Olds Is Where I Like to Be. I whole-heartedly agree.
“The heart steers by moonlight, and knows how to move with and around and into shadows far more safely than many of us are ever taught.” Thank you for this poetry I needed today. I’m doing a wonderful course ‘Creative Energy’ with Gauri Yardi & had the privilege of being coached in a 1% change. Eye opening how hard it was to scale the steps down to 1% - and how much effort it required to do that 1% this week. Also totally worth it. I hope you take your daughter up on the picture book sessions. I highly recommend Bark, George by Jules Pfeiffer, I Swim an Ocean In My Sleep by Norma Farber & Eliven Savadier, and If You Love a Bear by Piers Harper. (If your library has them.)
Thank you for sharing the snippets from Luminal Darkness. I too have stacks of books on my nightstand and other places waiting for me. Yesterday I started a new book which means I got three pages into the preface before somebody needed something. But reading a book slowly and in pieces isn’t such a bad thing, right? The few words we read marinate more that way?