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."