So one thing the Advent season tells us is that it will get darker before it gets light. Advent then begins in the dark. Our natural inclination is to want to live in the light, not in the darkness. We associate darkness with getting lost, and being out of control. Although we speak throughout Advent of the coming of the light, the constant and startling message of our Advent texts is that we, belong to a long line of people who have learned not to be fearful of the darkness.
Darkness can be a transforming and thus a healing place.
Indeed, Advent can be understood as the season which puts a different spin on darkness and sees darkness as a kind of paradoxical gift. Think of how one gift of the darkness is the power of rest. Just as the darkness of winter covers the farmer's fields, giving the soil a necessary time of rest, of just being, in order for new growth and the nurturing of crops to take place in the spring, so darkness can be a condition for new birth and beginnings for ourselves. We have just witnessed the baptism of three children. The beginning of life itself for Cailee and Alison and Aidan, started in the dark reaches of their mother's bodies.