Waiting in the Whispering Dark by Sarah Steinke

To be awake in the dark is to be alert in a wholly other way. We’ve just passed through the darkest night of the year and anticipate but do not yet know the growing light. This season of night is one of deep vulnerability, where the mind of daily tasks and to-do lists eventually gives way to something more lunar, less solar; here, we find a hush that blankets our daytime sensibilities with something like the acoustics of snow and allows what’s quiet during the day to become loud. This is the only time I hear my husband’s breathing. And I’m reminded that in the dark, we hear what has been with us all along.

Night is also anxious making, fear provoking—we’ve all known nightmares—and what if the ache that's slowed us down and brought us here is bottomless? What if we hear the monsters that since childhood have lurked under the beds, who whisper, "Look at what you’ve done, and there is no forgiveness," or "It's all too broken, and there's no fixing it.”

We’ve all heard these whispers. They come when we’re most vulnerable. But these aren’t the only whispers. There’s something even more true here in the dark.

The Canadian poet Lorna Crozier, in paraphrasing Nietzsche, said people do not like to be alone as they are afraid that something will be whispered in their ears; by contrast, artists wait with fierce attentiveness for that whisper. The truth is, we all are artists, we all are makers. And we all have reasons to doubt this. Partly because we’ve been told in our waking lives by too many people that what we make doesn’t really matter.

This is a lie. And partly because it’s frankly easier to consume rather than create. Because the act of creating calls us to confront our own dread, and our own dreaded hope. But woven into the cloth of our very being is this—we are made to create, no doubt about it.

You are a maker. And you have what it takes—whether you make poetry or paper snowflakes, clear clutter or ivy, sing the most haunting music or longing howl, maybe you draw or dance or color or entrain with the ocean, maybe you dig with your hands in the earth, or work at teaching your children that we all are neighbors, even the trees. Whatever draws you nearer to life, do it. It matters.

This is poiesis, making something that is not yet. Every time we live out our poiesis, we grow our capacity to listen, to see, to know that wholeness includes and incorporates the dark.

Emmanuel. God is with us. Maybe even especially in the dark. Crozier says that every work of art begins and ends with silence. Can we bare the silence? Can we lean into the dark? For it’s here that we see how even the smallest light pierces. Shine.

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Wonder resides in places of quickening, those moments where new life is first felt, and where words often fall short. And wonder, for Sarah, is what compels her to stay and listen. And then to enter more fully, senses alert. As a yoga instructor and poet, she finds these are both practices of quickening. She believes the longer we tolerate this place beyond words, the more deft we become to movement—allowing what needs to drop to the ground to drop, and allowing shape to what needs to take shape. Sarah’s yoga and writing practices reflect her commitment to the poetry of the ordinary, and she invites others to awareness and connection, the places of quickening in their own lives.

Sarah’s teaching has had the benefit of much practice—over twenty years of writing and editing experience, and ten years of yoga practice. She is a RYT 200 certified yoga instructor who received her MFA in poetry from UW. She currently teaches yoga classes in a local studio in Silverdale and corporate sessions in Seattle. Her work has appeared in the Laurel Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Crab Creek Review, the Other Journal, the Southern California Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Words Could Not Make It More True, was published in 2014 by Finishing Line Press. Find out more about Sarah at her website. 

Sarah will be guiding daily yoga sessions on the North Beach of Iona, Scotland for the 2018 Waymarkers Iona Pilgrimage. If you would like to engage your personal poiesis and with a guide who will assist you in listening to your own quickening,        register for the Iona Pilgrimage today!  

Quietly Waiting (Advent)

I anticipated having a lot more creative inspiration during these early Advent days. I assumed that because of both the personal challenge to write reflections and the richness of this season that epiphanies would be snowballing me. This has not been so. In fact, it has been uncharacteristically quiet. This isn’t to say that my daily activities have been still. My interior home-life has all the markings of December; my children and I have been enjoying creating in the kitchen, and our freezer full of Christmas delights speaks to this. My knitting needles are keeping up pace with the envisioned gifts I have still yet to make. Christmas canticles have been sweetly singing and candles are aglow throughout our days and evenings, and indeed, we are all very much aware of the deepening darkness in these weeks leading up to the Winter Solstice and the celebration of the Christ child. Try as I might to center in on all the rich symbolism of the season and capture an essence of the deep truths that annually call us out to celebrate, squeals of boy-children laughter, running-on-hard-wood-feet, and sibling drum circles (six hands chaotically attempting to play along with The Little Drummer Boy) dissipate the reverie and my inner-writing-voice is, again, quiet.

Beyond our doors the urban streets surrounding our home in Southeast Seattle are far from quiet; they are full of life and noise. Our city’s light rail train runs just one block from our front door and our home resides directly underneath SeaTac International’s most popular flight path. The road in front of our home is a main arterial to Seattle’s interstate highway and hospital; the wailing sirens of ambulances, police cars and fire engines charge this street at all hours of the day, in every season of the year. Christmastide doesn’t lessen these lights of pain and sorrow; if anything, the blinking rainbow Christmas strands alighting these city-homes seem an ironic backdrop to the grand-scope reality of urban life. It is a practice to offer up a murmured prayer for the ones impacted by the siren’s story; but the high-pitched decibel of these warnings leaves me aching for peace and silence.

But just behind our house is a small parcel of forested land. When the banter of the children grows too big for the confines of our home, or when we are needed to exchange the concrete under our feet for the soft, spongy feel of the earth, we dress for the weather and go into the woods. And it is most often here, in this green space that is adjacent—and under! —all the aforementioned urban realties, that we find a deep sense of quiet and Nature silently offers up testimonies affirming this Advent season.

This past weekend, while giving a tour of our recent trail work to a volunteer, we were discussing the mutual frustration at the lack of creative writing during this wintertime. During our walk through the woods, I observed how quickly the forest had quieted into its dormant stage—it was just a few weeks ago that these self same woods were vibrant with the flaming colors of autumn. Heedful of a surfacing truth, I felt a message from the woods settling into a deep place in my heart: it is this time of year when the earth goes quiet. It is in this season that all of creation huddles inward; drawing its energy to its core as it awaits the time to unfold again into new life. This isn’t the time of creative displays of springtime colors or the heady scents of sultry summers. This is the month of darkness; this is the month of quiet dormancy. This is the tide of wordless waiting. I felt a comforting invitation from the trees: “Wait with us”, they seemed to say, “as we do not wait passively in vein!”

A popular prayer poem that comes by way of the Iona Community in Scotland begins:

When the world was dark and the city was quiet, You came. You crept in      beside us. And no one knew. 

It is easy to expect much from this time of year (and so we should!); the lights, the music, the bows—all seem to loudly proclaim the Life that is to come. These merry seasonal accoutrements, while certainly pointing to the day when the Ultimate Gift was given, can also be that which confuses the energy with which we move through these Advent days. With every Christmas light, tree or gift we see, we find the anticipation growing, the excitement mounting, the frenzy swelling, until—just like the energy of our home with three small children drumming along to carols—we have an emotional spiral in complete contradiction to the season of Christmas. I expected that all of the preparations and plans would inspire and nurture creativity; that the cookies and canticles would give me a fresh perspective on Christ.

Yet this prayer poem, with great simplicity, describes the ideal context for the Christ child to come: “When the world was dark and the city was quiet You came.” Our greatest Gift, our deepest Inspiration, the seat of our conceiving comes to us not because of the fanfare of Christmas, but out of the quiet, expectant, hope-filled waiting to which we are called. The One for whom we wait WILL come…will we know? Will we allow ourselves to be still enough to sense Christ’s presence? Perhaps if we accept the invitation to dark quiet from the trees, we will be among those who know of The Arrival.