The Spring Equinox was more than a month ago, and although this year has had a slow spring thaw, the daylight is now noticeably longer. Some years, I didn’t even stop to recognize this global experience: the two annual equinoxes are the only times both the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere share the same amount of sunlight and night. In the northern hemisphere, since the fall equinox, there has been more night than day, and this is when that balance shifts. For several years, I’ve used the spring equinox as a meditation on equality and the ways that inequality shapes our world.
The trap that one can fall into when talking about equality around the equinox is to associate light as good and dark as bad. This construct, even subconsciously, can reinforce racial stereotypes. It also reinforces fear of the night, when the nighttime can be a source of restoration. After all, it is the time of dreams. The night reminds us that at the edge of where our senses know and experience is where mystery begins.
The construct of light and darkness as good and evil has a particular history. It can be traced back to Babylonian, Zoroastrianism, and Manicheism beliefs and philosophies, which all looked to solve the problem of suffering by affirming that a co-dominant force (evil) existed in the world. These beliefs were especially prevalent and influential for the early Christian community. Ideas of heaven in the sky, full of light, and hell as ‘down below’ as dark and fiery also likely took hold from these dualistic beliefs. This either/or, good/evil framework rarely accounts for the gray areas of this thing we call life, yet as a belief, it has proved tenacious. People John Paul II even tried to dispel this by teaching that heaven and hell are not physical places at all; they’re states of being. The impact of choices that hurt others is not about a future world of eternal damnation, but describes the consequences of living with injustice and moral anguish in this world now. Hell is the state of living
in disconnection.
I take the spring equinox as a time to meditate on the dawn and the dusk. I take time to consider how I am capable of doing harm and being harmed. My deepest grief allows me to be a comfort for those grieving. This is a time of year when I think of the nature of grace, and how we can be loved and loving despite doing that which is unlovable. I think of the paradoxes of forgiveness; it is so much harder than holding onto anger. If hell is a state of being and is caused by disconnection, where can I eliminate hell right now for myself or another?
Roots and insects, bulbs and worms are beginning to awaken. Frogs are crawling out of their frosty mud homes. It is a very dynamic time, and perhaps you feel the push and pull, the thaw and freeze, that all of life on this part of earth is experiencing. May the sacred dark and the energized light of this time of year inspire you on your path to keep healing, and keep mending yourself and the world.