When I was little, waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom was scary. In one house we lived in it was especially scary because there was a long hallway from my room to the bathroom. As a kid, I was bound by unspoken rules, one of which was that I couldn’t turn on the hall light after a certain hour. At night, I would brave the ominous hallway with hands outstretched, hoping to catch or touch objects I couldn’t see clearly. Sounds that may have been familiar in the daylight were magnified and heightened by my imagination so that they were no longer recognizable.
As an adult, not much has changed for me. Now turning on the light might look like a phone call to my friend Matt late one evening because it’s dark, a little scary and my bus isn’t showing up. Matt wasn’t close enough to come by, but at least I had someone on the other side of the line. I’ll never forget what he once told me: “Everyone gets scared when they’re alone. The darkness doesn’t change, but when someone is with us, it seems more manageable.”
Reflecting on his words today I’m reminded of one of my favorite places in the world – the Bioluminescent Bay in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. Bioluminescent broken down means “living light.” I remember the first time I saw these living lights.
I’d hopped into a kayak with my sisters one night and we paddled off the coast following a group of people deep into the darkness of the tangled mangrove trees. The further into the bay we went, the darker it seemed, until I began to notice lights similar to those glow-in-the-dark stars and planets people stick to their ceilings but infinitely more vibrant to the point of being electric. There they were, the bioluminescent, the living lights! With every stroke of my paddle, every point of contact between them, the mangrove and the force of the current, they shined until we cleared the mangrove and floated into the bay.
Light coming from the city nearby dimmed the darkness and the glow became a glittering sparkle. Then I heard someone say, “If only we had a small shower now it would be like fireworks!” I looked up, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, instead it was dotted with stars, as if someone had smeared cookies and cream across the sky.
Reminded of Matt’s words, I thought to myself, the darkness doesn’t change. As it is in daily life, darkness is either present or it isn’t. We are the ones that change in the dark. When we are able to connect with others in that darkness, light happens.
In connecting with others, we are given the opportunity to see the living light of God’s love in all creation.
