Dark Night Path

From "Christian Curse": "Where are you now, / our dark night path" (Beorh 7).

I found Skadi's comparison of Christ to a dark night path moody and realistic.  So much emphasis is placed on the light in modern Christianity, I have a soft spot for the darkness.  God made the night and the day.  Surely both are good. 

I have stopped being afraid walking in the middle of the night along an isolated path in the woods because, really, this is often what following Christ is like.  You do not know where you are going.  You do not know what lies to the left or to the right or ahead of (or even behind!) your path.  You do not know if there are twigs across it you could trip on, wild animals that could bite you, bad-intentioned humans lurking . . . Maybe, as in the darkness, you catch a vague glimpse as conditions align just so of where you are going and what is around you, but mostly you are blindly, carefully, placing one foot then the other down with 90% of your associations belonging to a five foot radius. 


As much risk may be involved with following a dark night path, a dark night path is also a blessing.  It carves out a way through the unknown, it contains you, leads you, and follows you so you can turn around and go back without having to remember your own footprints.