Darkness

waning moon

I did not myself notice a possible meaning in the way the prayer was worded.  So, at first I thought the Iroquois prayer was a simple prayer of gratitude, perhaps used at bedtime to relieve anxiety about the night ahead:

"Great Spirit who puts us to sleep in darkness,

We thank thee for the silences of darkness."

I had even liked saying the prayer, finding that it helped bring upon me a grateful spirit, so as to overcome worried thoughts about the day ending or the day to come.

But one day my wife made a comment that made me see in the prayer a possible added dimension.  She said, "It implies that the night has more than one silence."  Indeed, the wording was plural:  "silences of darkness."  I had taken the plural to refer merely to the many nighttimes we experience, one following the other, periods of darkness separated by each day.  But could the prayer's idea be that each night has more than one silence?

The image of a series of silences brought back to me the first night my wife and I camped in a state park in east Texas.  Taking longer than usual to get to sleep because of the unfamiliar feel of the air mattress on the uneven ground, my ears were particularly sensitive to the unfamiliar sounds of Nature around me.  As I tried to drop off, my mind was brought back to keen attention with each click or scrape or seeming moan I heard.  What was it?  Was I safe?  And after I did at last fall asleep, my rest was interrupted time and again by the silence being interrupted by sound (including the local raccoon's making the rounds of the park's trash cans).  Oh, how I would have enjoyed having the night be a single long, uninterrupted silence.

What trust a person would have to have to choose to live in total darkness!  If we imagine not being able to see anything (as many of the legally blind cannot), it should be no surprise that one of the Bible's most powerful symbols for ignorance is darkness.  And the very word "Buddha" is a title meaning "en-lightened one."

Earth's regular darkness

That night camping, however, reminds me that Nature's world is not dead even when people are, as we say, dead to the world.  For many creatures, the night is the time to truly live!  Not just that raccoon, but also bats, moths, and countless other creatures.  The biologist Francisco J. Ayala has described evolution as being "opportunistic." Life on earth began with bacteria that evolved sensitivity to light, followed by plants that required light for photosynthesis.  However, the alternate world of nocturnal life opportunistically evolved the ability to take advantage of darkness.

Darkness is thus essential to this planet's biodiversity.  Moreover, this planet itself would have burned to a crisp on one side long ago if it did not rotate frequently, thus bringing nights of cooling darkness.  We should not be in the dark about the importance of darkness to this Earth.

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How do you use your nights?