The Path of the Night

 The Lebanese mystic and poet, Khalil Gibran, once wrote, "Dawn can only be reached by following the path of the night."

Dawn is one of my favourite times of day - if I'm awake in time to witness it. The night sky begins to lighten slowly as the sun begins to rise. Sometimes gold, sometimes orange, sometimes red, sometimes purple, and all the shades inbetween - sometimes, I stand at my bedroom window for minutes together and watch the eastern sky change before my eyes. It is never the same twice and always a source of gratitude and wonder. Here is one from a month ago (although my photo does not do it justice):

I think the point that Gibran is making is that we will not really appreciate the beauty of the sky at dawning unless we have experienced the darkness that comes before it. And as in the real world, so in the spiritual world.

I do not know anyone who has not gone through dark periods in their lives, companioned by gloom, depression and despair. Which makes the return of the light even more precious, because we know what it is to be without it. 

And I think we can take his words as a promise too - that there *will* be a time of light and beauty after the darkness, that our night will not last forever. But that we have to walk along the path of the night to get there, have to do the shadow work first.

Which is probably one reason why I find such value in stories - the stories in which the hero/ine has to go through all kinds of trials and tribulations before attaining their goal. But at the end, the goal is reached or achieved and the light can return. Reading such stories is a promise of future light to come, that the darkness will have an end, if we have faith in the possibility of dawning. I know that when we are in the middle of the darkest passages of the night, the darkest times of our lives, it can be difficult to believe that better times are ahead. But they always are. We just have to hang on to hope, hang on to faith.