To Know the Dark by Wendell Berry
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
Winter is not my favorite season.
Even knowing that the winter solstice marks the point at which daylight begins its slow return, this promise of light–this reassurance of the sweetness of summer–feels theoretical at best. This turn toward light should bring me comfort.
Most years, as American Thanksgiving approaches, I mobilize a familiar set of strategies—part ritual, part cognitive reframing—to prepare myself for winter. I read about seasonal rhythms and the symbolic meaning of the solstice. I cultivate coziness: warm soups, layered blankets, the stack of unread books waiting next to my bed. Last year, I even got a dog to get me outside more. But this year, with more than a foot of snow already on the ground and the longest night of the year approaching, winter feels heavier. The cold feels more insistent. The dark feels more raw. I can’t seem to find comfort–or hope–in the dark of winter.
Part of this is the sheer accumulation of grief and loss. This year has been marked by what could be described, in sociological terms, as clustered losses (a new term I learned thanks to Google)—multiple deaths occurring in close succession. This year, my husband and I each lost an aunt. Two close friends lost their fathers. My brother lost his father-in-law; my nephews and niece lost their grandfather only two years after losing their mother. Two extended family members experienced the sudden loss of their babies. My uncle, still grieving the death of his wife, lost two close friends within weeks. This is a long list, and the emotional density of it has taken away my ability to mobilize my typical rhythms and strategies for the cold and dark of winter.
Then there is our broader cultural context: democratic erosion, rising rage-driven discourse, the breakdown of civic norms. It is difficult to locate comfort in winter when the surrounding world feels increasingly unstable. It feels like darkness is growing.
There is, simply, a great deal to mourn.
I have never liked the term loss when referring to death. When my father died suddenly at age 62, telling people that I had “lost” him felt inaccurate. He was not lost. I knew where he was. He just wasn’t where I wanted him to be. But then I had a reframing: in talking about grief and loss the other night, my most trusted friend said, “I didn’t lose [my mom]. I lost who I was when I was with her.”
This reframing captures grief’s dimension. Death does not only remove a person from our lives; it removes a version of ourselves shaped by proximity to them. In that sense, I have lost who I was when I was with my father and my aunt. I have even lost the version of myself who believed deeply in democratic institutions and civic stability.
Here winter becomes a meaningful analogue. Winter asks us to pause; grief forces us to. Both impose a kind of temporal and emotional stillness—an interruption of normal rhythms. Both create a liminal space, a threshold between what was and what is not yet.
Winter asks us to pause. Grief forces us to.
This pause–this stillness–can feel both sacred and unbearably heavy.
The winter solstice is the most literal manifestation of this liminality. It is a moment suspended in the in-between: no longer descending into darkness, not yet rising into light. Grief lives in this same suspended state. It is the interval between the life we once inhabited and the life we must now learn to navigate—a life altered, fragmented, and fundamentally unchosen.
Winter does not pretend. It doesn’t soften itself to make the darkness easier to bear. Winter, and the winter solstice, presents the darkness in its full, unfiltered reality.
Grief operates similarly. There is no romanticism in its initial impact—no tidy arc, no soft illumination. It hits like cold wind to the face, piercing and biting. It leaves you with the raw fact of absence and the unfamiliar contours of your altered self. You are different because you have to be different. But it’s rarely a gentle reframing or reimagining. It’s rather more like rocks eroding to sand because of harsh winds and freezing ice.
The winter solstice, contrary to popular interpretations, does not immediately usher in noticeable light. It marks a pause—a bottoming-out—a moment when the Earth’s tilt slows just enough to reveal where we are: between what was and what will be, between identity lost and identity emerging. The already and not yet.
Contemporary grief models often emphasize resilience or post-traumatic growth. Yet such frameworks can obscure the reality that grief’s work is often not progress but survival. Most days it looks like breathing without apology. Winter makes no demand for transformation; it demands only endurance. Not hope exactly. Not light.
The solstice teaches one thing with certainty: darkness has a beginning and a middle. Whether it has a definitive end—like grief—we do not get to know.
Winter is unadorned in its honesty, and grief mirrors that honesty back to us. No embellishments. No performance. Only truth.
And the truth, at least for now, is this: We are still here, inside the longest night. And for this season—for this year—that may be enough.
23 Responses
Perfectly, brutally, Advent.
Thank you!
I agree with Daniel. Thank you for these words.
You have spoken what ails me and possibly others. The “winter of our discontent” has made me struggle to show heartfelt empathy, quick with harsh tongue, and restless. Grief also enters in as a beloved nephew and partner in crimes of late nights, vacations, and cards leans into his final journey towards home. Thank you for your last paragraph, which brings a measure of shared comfort.
Janice:
Thank you for your response. And I’m so sorry for your journey. May you and your family see some small glimmer of Light as you love your nephew toward Jesus.
Grief’s work is often not progress but survival. Thank you for this insight.
We sometimes forget that the image of darkness in Scripture is multivalent. The people of Israel affirmed that God dwelt in darkness at the beginning of time and portrayed this truth in the architecture of the temple, with God dwelling in the darkness of the Holy of Holies above the ark. I think Wendell Berry captures it beautifully in the poem you quote. Darkness blooms and sings.
Tom:
Thank you for your reply!
I didn’t know that the Holy of Holies was (would have been) dark…or at least I hadn’t thought of it that way.
God is in all and through all…
Truth is its own form of consolation. Thank you for writing it so well. It helps.
Thanks, Kathryn, for reminding us that the holidays are a tough time for many people. Thanks for validating the feelings many of us are experiencing–sadness in our personal lives and outrage in our public lives. This is the theme of Blue Christmas services: we wait in lament and hope.
“I didn’t lose [my husband]. I lost who I was when I was with her (him).” Pardon my personalizing your words to what I am feeling more and more. I’m saving your honest and revealing post in my Notes to read again and again as needed. Thank you it feels Spirit led.
Joyce:
Yes! Use them!
I’m so sorry for your loss.
It’s a gift to me that you might find a bit of comfort in this post. I’m finding that grief and lament are better in community, so I’m glad my words can be part of your journey.
I have lost several long-time good friends in recent years, but my loss pales in comparison with their spouses’ —witnessing their grief is devastating, and how might I even pretend to dare to share my tangential loss to theirs.
Thanks for this piece, for Advent and beyond.
Jeff:
I’m learning that I (we) want to know that others are remembering too. Your grief may not be the same, but it’s real and important.
Don’t hesitate to share that loss and grief!
I’m sorry that you had to experience such loss.
Kathy,
Thanks for this profound, moving reflection on something that touches all of us at some point. So many of its lines will stay with me, especially, “Winter is unadorned in its honesty, and grief mirrors that honesty back to us. No embellishments. No performance. Only truth.”
Thank you, friend.
This is raw & beautiful! & this – “The solstice teaches one thing with certainty: darkness has a beginning and a middle. Whether it has a definitive end—like grief—we do not get to know.
Winter is unadorned in its honesty, and grief mirrors that honesty back to us. No embellishments. No performance. Only truth.”
Louis Armstrong’s rendition of “What a wonderful world” includes a tribute to “the dark sacred night” among the wonders of the world. Love that song and that you have reminded me of that wonder once again.
Gerald May writes: The dark night is a profoundly good thing. It is an ongoing spiritual process in which we are liberated from attachments and compulsions and empowered to live and love more freely. Sometimes this letting go of old ways is painful, occasionally even devastating. But this is not why the night is called “dark.” The darkness of the night implies nothing sinister, only that the liberation takes place in hidden ways, beneath our knowledge and understanding. It happens mysteriously, in secret, and beyond our conscious control. (from his The Dark Night of the Soul, quoted by R. Rohr in the daily meditation on Dec. 7)
Thank you for this, Deb! I’m keeping it.
A section of my estate notebook contains quotes, texts, and blogs I’ve collected that I hope will bring perspective, understanding, and peace to my children upon my death — my last gifts that aren’t preceded by a dollar sign. Thank you for writing another important one for them.
This means so much to me, Ruth. Thank you.
I appreciate your naming so much of this darkness of our winter, Kathy. Tying it in with the sense of cumulative grief does make it seem weighty and oppressive. There are many aspects of being closed in that make for a season to do other things–read books, watch movies, drink White Russians, play games. These are not just survival strategies for this time, but I try to see them as alternatives to the activities of the other seasons, a sort of balance. Maybe that’s too giddy of a way to look at those things!
I very much look forward to the solstice as the time of turning so, so slowly toward more light. And, crazy Michigan woman that I am, I appreciate having snow because it makes the world brighter and lighter.
I wonder, too, about the grief experience that makes it seem like the rest of the world is spinning by, continuing its pace and actions as if not noticing the huge gaps in the lives of those who experience loss (or death, rather than “loss”). That’s where I think the darkness of winter does seem very much a different threshold, as you name it.
Thank you. There’s so much in this piece that I appreciate!
Thanks, Kathy! I really appreciate your comments which are oh so true and much appreciated as I am feeling it especially this season! Will save it as I wait…
Sandy