I'd never realized how much I'd miss those green computer router lights signaling contact with the Outside World. I spent time reading but every so often I'd stand up, ready to go into my study and check out my Facebook friends or my Weebly blog statistics, and I had to stop myself. Maybe, I confessed to myself, I'm a little addicted!
Yet with my computer screen darkened, I felt a certain amount of new freedom. I had more time to get small chores done around the house. I relaxed more because I didn't feel obligated to write a new Blog post. I didn't feel obligated to keep up with all my Facebook friends' current "doings." I had the time to make phone calls, hear actual voices.
A new little light sparked to life in my mind: I wondered suddenly if this was what my life had been like B.I. (Before Internet.) I wondered if maybe a dark computer screen was a message to me to use my technological gifts more wisely and with more inner freedom. The Lord our God was using this small darkness to teach me a life lesson: to be more attentive to the ways in which I used my precious gift of time. To prioritize. To value people over machines.
Sometimes our lives seem on-again, off-again, times of lightness and brightness followed by waves of darkness, times of the brightness of love followed by the darkness of loss. All of it is unexpected and unpredictable. We prefer to see our way clear in the light, but the darkness, when it is enlightened by God, provides its own vision, its own way of seeing.
For example, families without electrical power can either curse the darkness or choose to discover the joys of board games by candle light. Suddenly, in the flow of conversation, the competition of clever moves, everyone is able to see unexpected sides of other family members, aspects of their unique personalities that may have been hidden in quiet living rooms holding only the sounds issuing from tv programs and video games. In this case, the loss of power and electrical light leads to the bright power of the light of family love shining in the darkness.
There are more palpable forms of darkness we all endure. This week our parish is mourning the deaths of three of our senior citizens. Yet, in discussing this sadness with one of our other seniors I received a light of revelation. "She was a kind lady," Eleanor said, speaking of Teresa. "Isn't that the best we can say about people when they die? That they were kind?"
What simple, heartfelt wisdom. Why does it seem to take the darkness of death to put into perspective the kind of people we should be to be lights to the world? Kind people. With kind hearts, kind words, kind deeds. Pope Francis calls such kindness "encounter." God rejoices when we connect with people in every day circumstances in a loving way, with the down to earth light and warmth of a cheery candle burning on a mantel in the midst of a power failure.
I guess that's what I'd term the darkness of pessimism and cynicism that pervade society today: a power failure. A failure to recognize our own power by failing to allow God to light up our hearts so we can be those candles of kindness. Yet when we do allow God to set us on fire, what light we can throw into that darkness!
Paradoxically, because of the darkness around us, we shine so much more brightly! Brightly enough to encourage others to allow themselves to be set ablaze, sturdy candles reminding us of human values. The value of intimate family life in a world obsessed with "virtual communication." And the value of day-to-day ordinary kindness in a world in which the power and light of loving-kindness is too often an on-again, off-again, affair.