Descending into Darkness

The darkest night of the year (December 21st) is fast approaching, with the days growing shorter in anticipation. Here in New England, it feels like a descent into other place, with the trees bare, the snow falling, the sky grey, and the night beginning at 4:30pm. At this time of year, the awareness of the darkness is acute, as is the yearning for light.

How apt that reader Suzanne Reed e-mailed me to recommend “The Descent of Inanna: Light Yields to Darkness,” a sermon on the Mesopotamian myth of the goddess Inanna. Preached by Rev. Gail Seavey at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville, this sermon explores the multiple meanings of Inanna’s journey into the underworld and subsequent re-emergence into the world above.

I followed the link in Seavey’s sermon to Wikipedia’s page of Inanna, and it was fascinating. Inanna was a powerful and passionate woman.

For ambiguous reasons, Inanna choose to go into the underworld, a vicious place where she was abused and murdered. Her allies from the world above searched her out and brought her back to life. She re-emerged from the underworld and returned home, giving mercy to those friends who had been loyal, and punishing those who had not.

This is not a tale for the faint of heart, nor is it one with a clear moral message.

Seavey suggests that this and other myths can be understood from “four different perspectives: as metaphors for the processes found in the natural world; as descriptions of religious rituals that enable people to grow spiritually; as metaphors for the processes of human psychological growth and integration; and as reflections of large cultural changes.”

I would add that these four perspectives are intertwined. When one experiences physically the changing of the seasons — including changes in warmth, light, and food — the abstract meanings of seasonal stories are easier to understand. As the Velveteen Rabbi put it in a recent post titled “Looking for Light”:

I never really understood Christmas lights until I moved to New England…These days, where I live, the sun rises after seven, and sets during the afternoon. Hebrew school begins in the twilight, and when it ends the world is pitch-black. There’s a lot of darkness here at this time of year, and that’s changed my relationship with Christmas lights in a pretty fundamental way.

The physical world at this time of year has a significant impact on our understanding of religious meaning. Rituals and stories take on new significance as we live them out in our descent into darkness, with the accompanying awareness of light up ahead.