On Chanukah, as we light candles into the deepest dark of the winter, we can also take some time to light an internal candle into the darkest parts of our inner lives, into the places that hold sadness and loneliness and despair and grief, the parts that see the dark side of the world, the parts that ache with old and new wounds. Chanukah teaches us of our capacity to enter those places, like a shadowy cave or a dreary house, to hold up a lantern, a nes – literally meaning “banner” – a signpost of hope, and to say to the little ones inside us who live in those dark places: I see you and I am here with you. You are not alone in the dark.
What is this light? Where does it come from? The light that you shine into these dark places is both your own presence and God’s presence, the inner point where the two meet and are one. It is the divine light that flows through you, the particular color of the divine that wants to manifest through your existence.
On Chanukah we have special access to this inner divine light. Chanukah light is no ordinary light, by which we might count coins or do worldly business. Kodesh hem – we say of the Chanukah candles. “They are holy.” The Chanukah light remembers and therefore partakes of the sacred light of the Temple, of the menorah and of the ner tamid, the eternal light. The Chanukah light is also understood to be the or haganuz, the original divine light of creation that God saw was too sacred for the world and therefore hid away for the righteous. Where did God hide this light? Inside each one of us. We are the righteous for whom it was saved. Or perhaps better, we become the righteous for whom it was saved by finding it inside and using it to light up the dark.
Hidden, ganuz, inside each of us is this eternal light that cannot be dimmed. At times this light becomes so covered over that we may not even know it is there. We may need to search hard to find it, like the Maccabees searched for that one last jug of pure oil. The last vestige of this sacred light inside may also be lost and hidden from sight, but always there remains a little jug, a remnant..
Sometimes it is precisely in the darkest moments, like at this time of year, or at our lowest emotional points, that we do get a glimpse of this or haganuz inside us. It is as if the light is called forth by the darkness, as if the dark is asking for it, desperately asking for it in all its suffering, and through this asking, through this desire, the or haganuz is drawn out of its hiding place. Included in the ache is its solution.
But it takes practice. It takes practice not to be swallowed up by the darkness, but to allow the darkness to call forth our inner light. And so we practice. Night after night, we practice. The word Chanukah is related to the word chinukh, education. We educate ourselves, we learn to cultivate this light inside us in the face of the darkness, to practice and learn how to do this, how to find our or haganuz in the dead of our inner and outer winter.
And as we practice, each night we do get a little stronger, a little more confident in our ability to find the hidden light, each night a little more sure that, though it is hidden, it is still there, each night able to shine our hidden light a little more brightly.
And maybe slowly, over time, over eight days and over a lifetime, we become more whole through this process. We don’t so much banish the darkness as learn to sit in it, learn to accompany it with our light, learn to hold both at once inside us, both the throbbing of the pain and the comfort of the light, trusting both and living in their wholeness.
And maybe also, as our light grows, it goes outward, too. It begins to reach others in their dark places. It stands as a nes, a banner, a signpost, a lighthouse, each of us reminding one another of the way home through the darkness, seeing one another’s or haganuz, like candles in a window, and remembering our own, finding it again and again, that little jug of oil that is never entirely lost and is somehow always enough.
Photo by Lara Jameson at Pexels
