Dark Feet & Dark Wings: Wendell Berry’s Wisdom in Difficult Times
Robin B. Zeiger, Ph.D.
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 travelled by dark feet and dark wings
— Wendell Berry
This week I find myself waking up a bit off — like something isn’t just quite right, but I can’t put my finger on it. My dreams are filled with troubling images. A strange woman insists upon a pet tiger, and I am frightened that I might be devoured. In another, akin to a refugee, I am alone in a strange land. Something ominous leads me to run and hide underground. I wake up associating to the fear of nuclear war.
I am sure my sense of something not quite right is related to the shaky sense of our current world, touched and troubled by a devastating pandemic, a horrific war, and traumatized refugees.
I find myself returning to one of my favorite poem’s that of Wendall Berry. Akin to good art, the creative work of poetry allows us to weave and re-weave our own meaning within the creative images of the verses.
I am afraid of the darkness. It is a visceral and primitive fear that all humans share. Yet, my fear of the current darkness and my night-time journey underground hint at something much bigger.
War and political unrest are a part of this darkness. I see images in the news. I hear stories of colleagues at the forefront working with refugees in my country and abroad. And I weep with the current dark clouds. This is yet another failing, another blackness in our modern history of the human race.
As my dream hints at, I struggle with an impulse to run and hide in my busy life. This is not possible. We are truly members of a “Wide-World-Web” Yet, if we do not enter the darkness, we cannot discover what is the in the shadows.
We must know what is to be found in the dusty cellars, basements, and attics of our existence. It is possible we will only discover brokenness amidst the rats and spiders.
Yet, dusty, old places also call to us. Here I am reminded of all the mysteries I read as a child that took place in the hidden and dark recesses of the house. Here is the abode of hidden and forgotten treasures of a rich history.
The darkness holds the seeds of transformation. The tiny seed begins its life as a plant in the darkness of the earth. Symbolically the dark and the underworld are connected to the unconscious. The night-sea journey of the dream not only brings evil, death, and fright. Our dreams and our unconscious are also the place of creativity.
Too often our stance as human beings is to keep doing things the same old way. We fight aggression with aggression. We fight war with war.
The Other becomes the enemy and the enemy becomes the Other.
As I have listened to stories of individuals directly caught up inthe current war, again and again I hear of family members, and friends living in the Other place. Russians have friends and family members in Ukraine. Ukrainians are in contact with colleagues on the other side who do not subscribe to the war. Brothers and sisters are fighting against their beloved siblings.
Berry’s poem hints at a necessary journey in our collective human existence. If we really want to see in the dark, we are commanded to do something different. We must lay down our familiar lantern and torch. With courage, we must enter the dark alone without any light.
I have no answers, only questions. Yet, I know we must go deep and ask how and why? Like the blind, we then become sensitive to a different reality. It is my hope and prayer that our collective world can go deep and dark and find a new weapon that does not include destruction.
Read one of my newest articles Time-Out is Not a Punishment: It is an Act of Peace.
Please follow me and discover articles on mindfulness, finding peace in difficult times, Jung, longing and the Little Prince, Black Lives Matter, Amanda Gorman’s poetry and grand-mothering. For more on childhood nostalgia of lighthousesand ice-cream trucks.
Robin B. Zeiger is a practicing Jungian psychoanalyst, a certified sandplay therapist, and a free-lance writer.
She is a member of the:
International Association of Analytical Psychology and the Israel Institute of Jungian Psychology. She can be reached at rbzeiger@yahoo.com.
