An article for The Cathedral Times
by Dan Murphy, Director of Communications
When I was 17, two friends and I took a day trip to northwest Georgia. There are caves there. We were headed to one particular cave, with an entrance in the middle of the woods, not three feet wide. We were going on an adventure underground.
It was my first time in a cave like this, and it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. In fact, I still couldn’t see much: first a huge room, earth and rock all around. Darkness, but for the sliver of light from the entrance behind us. Then a small passageway, on to a smaller room. My friend, the leader among us, a Boy Scout who had made this trek before, told us to turn off our headlamps. It was pitch black.
I quipped that it would take a few minutes for my eyes to adjust. “There is no adjusting to this,” he said. “Our eyes can’t adjust on their own, this far from daylight.” Lamps back on, deeper we went. More passageways, some so narrow we had to take our backpacks off and push them ahead of us. Eventually, we reached an underground stream, which led us deeper in. More rooms to explore. More darkness.
And then, in the depths of the cave, our third friend’s headlamp went out. As we started to search for the replacement batteries, my lamp started to dim too. We rushed to change both sets with what little light we had. In our haste, we fumbled over the baggy and dropped all the extra batteries in the mud. We felt the darkness creeping in. All we could see was what our leader friend was looking at, the only one with a lamp. Everywhere else it was total black. To one side, a slippery rock down. To the other, the muddy path out. Maybe. But for what teenage boy bravado we had left, we were scared.
First, we blamed. “Why didn’t you put fresh batteries in the lamps before we got here?” “How could you possibly drop them at a time like this?” “What do you mean, you think you can get us back out?”
Then, we panicked. What if we didn’t get back out? What if we were stuck in this mess forever?
Then, we followed the light. Our leader friend had checked his map, cleared his head, and started walking from where we came. He was cautious but surefooted. “It’s going to take some time, but I’ll light your way.” Room by room, passage by passage. Walking, sliding, and crawling. First one, then a passed backpack. A steady lamp showing just a few steps at a time. And then, through that final passage and into the big room, we could see for ourselves: a sliver of daylight in the rock. Up and out we crawled.
We can’t get out of the darkness alone.
The first letter of John tells us that “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another” (1 John 5-7).
There is plenty of darkness for us to get out of these days, from the mundane to the seemingly impossible to overcome, from inner struggles of who am I to public clashes of which side are you on. Each of those struggles is harder if I do it alone.
Alone, I’m scared. Alone, I panic. Alone, I blame. “If only I knew the right answer.” “If only my family would act differently.” “If only the people on the other side of the aisle would think like me.”
How, then, do we turn ourselves toward the light?
Perhaps, we work to follow the Great Commandment, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind. And then, we follow the second one, to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Together, we can find peace. Together, we can know love. Together, we can see the way to the light of the Kingdom of God.
It helps to remember who has the lamp.