Week 84 - Sitting in the Power

Embracing Possibilities by Guest Host, Nancy Bragg

As humans on the planet earth, we are meant to live in a balance of sunlight and moonlight. Our circadian rhythms are in sync with the natural cycle of day and night; light and dark. 

I got out of sync when I heard my husband’s cancer diagnosis. I dropped immediately into the darkness of expectation that he would die soon.

Society tells me that both death and darkness are scary. Instead of using my energy to fear darkness, avoid it, fight it, and flee from it, I chose to face darkness, accept it, and experience it. It’s been an opportunity to see, feel, and ponder aspects of my life that often remain hidden during the daylight.

Like the liminal space between insemination and birth, I have been incubating in a snug and secure dark womb. Darkness has offered me a sacred calm. Darkness has offered me a blanket to curl up in.

I knew something was germinating within me. What did the darkness have to teach me?

It’s been a process of becoming reacquainted with my soul. It’s been a process of rediscovering my inner divine light. I need inner nourishment to grow and bloom. Both my darkness and divinity have been good teachers.

It has been over a year since that cancer diagnosis. My expectation, that my husband would die soon, did not happen. I was surprised by my feelings of disillusionment. My expectation was false. Now what?

This path has been a chrysalis stage for me. I have been transforming from one who expected my husband’s immediate death, to one who sank into darkness, to one who was disillusioned when my husband did not die, to one who was unclear what to expect, to someone who is now embracing expectancy.

It feels exciting to be in a state of expectancy sparking multiple divine possibilities. I sense I am about venture out the peephole into the light and sacredness of the world.

Instead of being stuck in my head-based expectation of immediate death, I can be in my heart-based expectancy of being receptive and accepting of what comes, and how it comes.

There are many exciting possibilities for my husband and I as we embrace expectancy. We can ride the waves coming into us, as well as initiate ripples going out into the world.  

I read these two lines from Wendel Berry’s poem, To Know the Dark

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings.

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.