Learning to Walk in the Dark
book study group closing
October 5th 2015
June Martin
"Come inside now, it's getting dark"; "At best I can remember,
my parents did not teach me to fear the dark"; "My father would take
my sisters and me out into the backyard, where we would lie on our backs,
without talking and watch for falling stars";" Our parents took us
camping a lot". These quotes from Barbara Brown Taylor' book got me
thinking about my early memories and as I shared in a discussion group two weeks
ago I cannot remember ever being afraid of the dark and I wonder if it is
because I grew up in London during the war when we had total blackouts, no
streetlights of course and not a chink of light to be seen from a window.
Wardens patrolled the streets making sure. Of course we could not do anything
about the moon which sometimes gave us too much light. I spent many a night
going outside to our underground damp dark shelter at the bottom of the garden,
whilst people from apartments headed to their nearest underground railway
station. Barbara Brown Taylor talks too about feeling afraid inside the house
of monsters under the bed and the like. I am not an imaginative person and I
have never had any time for any of that; never participated in the telling of
ghost stories or read those types of books or went to those films. I still
think it strange that one of the questions I was asked when I went for an
interview to be admitted to a prestigious school was "Do you believe in
fairies?" Of course I said most emphatically "Of course not".
The headmistress said, "Now don't you be so sure." I got into the
school anyway!
Getting further into the book, Barbara Brown Taylor is writing about other
kinds of darkness besides the physical one and I think you will agree that
September 11th 2001 is one such darkness. This leads me to remember what I was
doing on that morning and for the days following. I was a Girl Guide Trainer
for leaders in this Province and I was in charge of Stage 3, or Wild Rose
training. This was, and is, a Human Relations residential training at a camp
site.
The one is question was on September 13th -- 16th 2001 at Gull Lake Baptist
Church Camp. On September 11th I had an idea to buy a memento for the
participants and I phoned a friend to ask where I get this particular item. She
was horrified by the triviality of it and said "Don't you know that
America is being attacked?" I decided a week ago to look up m evaluation
of that camp and to read parts of it to you, hoping that you might be
interested.
"This was a very different Wild Rose from others I have been privileged to
train or coordinate.
Who would have thought that the tentacles from the tragedy affecting America on
September 11th would reach out to our small Wild Rose event at Gull Lake. Several of the participants were from the military
base at Cold Lake, two actually in the military and others with husbands in the
military. On September 12th ! received
a phone call warning the team that it was unlikely that these ladies would be
able to make the training because the base was on high alert.
Fortunately the next day all but one arrived and the training went ahead.
Thursday evening went well with everyone trying hard to put the events of
September 11th behind them. Friday was declared a day of prayer so our
reflections in the morning were lengthy, somber and emotional with a two
minutes silence observed. After this I told everyone to go for a walk and to
reconvene in 15 minutes for the team building session. I definitely needed to
compose myself before the light hearted exercises began. Later in the day the
outside world intruded upon us again when the RCMP arrived to tell some of the
participants that their husbands had been ordered to scramble the planes and
had gone to secret destinations. These Guiders were visibly upset and the other
participants rallied around them. It was hard for the teams to keep their minds
on the topics at hand. Saturday stated with another emotional
reflections and finished with a lovely candlelight walk. So the evaluation
goes on but getting back to physical darkness I want to explain our candlelight
walks because when I was organizing they were a wonderful part of every Wild
Rose Training.
Early in the day the training team maps out an area of forest trails with a
clearing at the end.
Later sand is placed in paper bags and a candle lit in each bag. These are
placed alongside the trail at every corner and then a ring of them in the
clearing. After dark participants are sent out in single file
with a space between each to walk the trail in total silence. Each
person carries a flashlight to put onto their feet if the trail gets rough.
Usually one's eyes adjust quickly to the dark. They also need a flashlight to
take turns reciting a poem, a prayer or a reading, sometimes stopping at one of
the candles, or at the end, in the clearing.