The Shadow Is Not Sin.

In my little newsletter app, Substack, I have no less than five half-finished pieces that I intended to send out to you all this summer. Writing is like oxygen to me, the words are a mask dropping from the ceiling, allowing me the clarity I need to hopefully put a mask on another every once in a while.

But sometimes—and a lot lately—I shove that mask back up in the overhead compartment. Who am I to breathe? Who am I to speak? Sometimes it feels like an incredible act of self-importance to put your words out into the world, believing that they are something other than one more inbox nuisance. And then silence becomes a habit. The words get stopped up, and you have to dislodge the dam for the truth to come back out again.

If you’ve noticed this week, I’ve re-upped my commitment to myself and to you to get these words out. Several of you have been very kind in sending emails and texts about them being a welcome return. I’m so grateful. There is always a part of us hanging out in the shadow life. These quarantine days have made those shadows seem extra long. But today, I wanted to share with you about how I learned to accept but not empower the shadow voices—the self-doubt and the silencing—and the long-road of applying that learning… even and especially on days like today.

An Old (Unwelcome) Friend

Self-doubt has been a constant companion throughout my entire life. I can remember being a 4th grader worrying about every possible thing, and certain that I was the one person ill-suited to face the challenges that 5th grade would certainly require.

I’ve had my share of successes in life, but they were always tainted by a heavy dose of imposter syndrome. And through it all, I’ve thrown every tool in the kit—therapy, prayer, spiritual direction, dieting, meditation, acupuncture, non-cognitive biofeedback (yes that’s a thing)—and while there have been seasons of relief, the familiarity of self-contempt has always been nearby.

I know many of you out there know what I am talking about. One of the great challenges of our shadow side is its insidious ability to isolate us, convince us that we are the only ones who feel this way, and—therefore—it’s imperative to stay silent.

I grew up in the light-addicted version of Christianity, where shadows and darkness were a sign of weak faith, and so I’ve spent many years being trained that true faith should expel them all. That journey has had gallons of consequences, none of them particularly good. But something shifted in me when I started to ask something else of the dark—instead of simply asking it to go away.

In His Shadow

He that dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. — Psalm 91:1

The Spirit of God casts a shadow. From the beginning of the Bible, where God’s Spirit is passing over the Deep to Jesus’ commitment to His own Messianic secret in the Gospels, the shadowy night has always played a role in a rich spiritual life. It’s just that no one seemed to tell American Christianity.

Our life is hidden with Christ in God. Our most vulnerable selves are shadowed in His hiding place, therefore we do not have to hide. We do not have to amend ourselves to the attention or preference of others. We do not have to run from the shadow. It is a reminder of our vulnerability. And our vulnerability is a reminder of how much we are being held close.

I get a little cringy when I hear phrases like “embrace your shadow side.” It sounds nice and is well-intended by masks over a deeper truth. We do not embrace shadow, we are embraced by it. We are held in the womb-like creative dark of the God who from the dawn of creation gives darkness an equal job with light.

I cannot embrace my self-doubt. It is ephemeral and avoids containment at all costs. But I can acknowledge and enter into it. I can discover what the Christian mystics for centuries have called the Luminous Dark, realizing that self-doubt is my own manifestation of vulnerability. And vulnerability is what is required if we wish to be loved.

If God has a shadow then so do we, as God’s Image Bearers. The shadow is not sin, it is the fullness of time in us. The beginnings and endings and middles pregnant with exposed possibility we cannot control.

Waking to a Song

Several weeks back, I woke up to a song running through my head I’d never heard. It had been repeating and repeating in my dreams all night long. I had the forethought (rare) to write it down, thinking I may need it. I’ve returned to it many times over the past weeks, and this essay seems like the logical time to share it with you:

Then he called me by his shadow.
Then he called me by his light.
Then he called me—
Called me by my name and I am no longer frightened in the night.

We from God and to God we are returning. In God, the duality of light and dark are subsumed into One Holy Presence. A presence that for us today, in the fragile present, fractures into the bright days and the shadowed nights. But we are called to His hiding place in both shadow and light. Not to abolish the one for the other, but to experience His love, fully manifest in both. We don’t have to hide because we are hidden in God.

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