I am starting a new book for the summer ...

Learning to Walk in the Dark, by one of my favorite writers,

Barbara Brown Taylor.

Just to give you a glimpse of the theme,

and the beauty,

here is what she writes:

"Darkness is shorthand for anything that scares me -

either because I am sure that I do not have the resources

to survive it 

or because I do not want to find out.

If I had my way, I would eliminate everything from chronic back pain

to the fear of the devil

from my life and the lives of those I love.

At least I think I would.

The problem is this:

when, despite all my best efforts,

the lights have gone off in my life,

plunging me into the kind of darkness that turns my knees to water,

I have not died.

The monsters have not dragged me out of bed

and taken me to their lair.

Instead, I have learned things in the dark

that I could never have learned in the light,

things that have saved my life over and over again,

so that there is only one logical conclusion.

I need darkness as much as I need light."