What Holds In The Dark...And The Doubt

We’ve arrived at the longest night of the year.

And with it, a kind of stillness that feels both comforting, honest and/also in certain cycles of our lives, maybe hard to hold. The earth leans away from the sun, and everything in the natural world slows down, withdraws, goes quiet. But many of us don’t, or can’t.

We tend to reach for answers. For direction. Toward resolution. Even in spiritual spaces, there’s a panic that can arise when things stop moving. We call it a block. We call it doubt. We call it lost.

But what if we're not lost at all? What if what we are experiencing is exactly what is necessary?

What if stillness, disorientation, lack of clarity... what if these aren’t mistakes or failures, but exact conditions? Not things to fix or bypass, but seasons to move through?

Inspiration isn’t always light-filled. Sometimes it begins in silence, or grief, or boredom that stretches too long.

The solstice isn’t a celebration of light’s return... not yet. It’s the moment before that. The point where we sit longest in the dark. And I think that matters. I think it’s worth staying with.

There’s something real here. Something that doesn’t need to be dressed up or resolved. Just felt.

Perhaps faith isn’t the opposite of doubt. Maybe they arrive together like shadow and light, one not possible without the other. Maybe what’s sacred isn’t only what lifts us out of darkness, but what helps us remain inside it without turning away.

This isn’t a message about hope, exactly.

It’s about the usefulness of winter. The truth of it. The way the natural world stops trying to bloom and lets everything unnecessary fall away.

That kind of clarity is rare. But it does come.

Sometimes after the longest night....

Thread One ~ What I'm Reading

Devotion by Patti Smith I saw Patti Smith in concert last month at the Orpheum in Boston ... her 50th anniversary tour for Horses. At 78, she was electrifying. One of the most co-creative live music experiences I’ve ever been part of. She didn’t just perform, she co-created. Every response, every silence, every cheer, she shaped it in real time, feeding us and being fed simultaneously. She owned the stage and held the space with that rare kind of presence that’s earned by a true artist and creator. The whole night felt both raw and reverent, like being in the presence of someone who’s never stopped making meaning out of everything.

Since then, I’ve been down a bit of a Patti rabbit hole.

Devotion is a small, wandering book. Not just memoir, fiction, or essay... it's more like a notebook you find tucked inside someone’s coat, scribbled with half-thoughts and sudden clarity. It holds pieces of travel, memory, a short story, and a meditation on why we write at all. She moves through Paris with her notebook and her camera, visiting graves, watching films, letting the world imprint on her. It moves with a kind of intuitive, unpolished rhythm, and that’s what makes it feel so alive.

Toward the end, she writes: “Why do we write? … Because we cannot simply live.”

That line stayed with me. Especially now, in this strange, still season, when clarity can feel far away. Devotion doesn’t offer answers. But it reminds me that meaning often begins in the quiet, not in resolution, but in attention. In keeping close to what’s moving, even when we’re not yet sure where it’s taking us.

bone, by Yrsa Daley-Ward This one cuts deep. Spare, sharp, and often too honest — in the best way.

This is a collection of poems that feel less like crafted language and more like something pulled straight out of the body. The poems are short, visceral, and often uncomfortable in their cutting clarity and there’s beauty in that.

It’s a book that doesn’t shy away from the dark... grief, depression, hunger, longing, silence... but meets it with a kind of deep attention. And that’s why it feels right for this season. For Solstice. For the pause before the light returns. She doesn’t rush through what hurts. She sits with it, and shapes it. She lets the wound speak.

There’s one stanza I keep returning to:

I am always becoming.

Being ruined and built again.

And I am always aware of it.

That speaks to winter for me, a suspended season where everything is changing below the surface, even if we can’t yet see it. It’s not hopeful in the traditional sense, but there’s a kind of fierce devotion in it ... to presence, to transformation, to being human without flinching.

bone is not a gentle book, but it’s a true one. And right now, that’s exactly what I need.

Thread Two ~ What I'm Listening To

MUSIC

Atlas: Revere, the newest EP from Sleeping At Last, a favorite artist of mine, was released recently, and it’s offered me a space in which to reflect comfortably on my own recent experiences of existential and spiritual questioning.

The three songs Doubt, Believe, and Double Down (Pragma) move like a liturgy. Not in the religious sense, but in the way they open space for something to unfold. Together, they explore what it means to sit inside uncertainty, to feel the fragile flicker of trust, and to choose love anyway.

Each track was recorded live in a real, intimate space: Doubt in a cathedral; Believe in a playroom; Double Down at Abbey Road; which only deepens the rawness and reverence in the music.

Spending time with these songs in the lead-up to the Solstice inspired a playlist of my own, one that holds the arc from uncertainty to quiet devotion.

So I made a playlist. It starts, naturally, with Doubt, not just as a feeling, but as a threshold. And it ends with As Beautiful as it Hurts by Cloud Cult, one of my favorite bands. Their music always feels like emotional alchemy, taking the unbearable and turning it into something radiant, and authentic.

The playlist follows that arc from shadowlands to truth. From questioning to staying. From fracture to the kind of beauty that doesn’t resolve the pain, but includes it.

Hence the title: As Beautiful as it Hurts.

PODCAST

One of my longtime companions when it comes to meaning, purpose, creativity, and spirit is the On Being podcast with Krista Tippett. I first encountered it over a decade and a half ago, back when I was working in public radio, and was lucky enough to help host an event with Krista here in New Hampshire. Her presence then was exactly what it still is now: spacious, thoughtful, deeply listening.

Recently, I revisited an episode from 2018 that feels especially resonant this time of year. It’s called Wondrous Doubt, a conversation with Buddhist teacher and writer Stephen Batchelor, who speaks beautifully about doubt and questioning — not as obstacles to a spiritual life, but as its very foundation.

“To not know is not a failure. It’s a beginning.”

That spirit, of staying open in the not-knowing, runs through this whole Solstice thread for me. Through doubt, and devotion, and all the ways we choose to remain inside the dark without needing to resolve it.

If you have time, I always recommend listening to the unedited versions of On Being episodes. They hold something softer, slower, more human, which feels like exactly the pace for this season.

Thread Three ~ A Simple Winter Solstice Ritual

A candlelit moment for honoring the dark and the turning

This is a ritual for being with what is; with stillness, with uncertainty, with the slow unfolding that lives in winter. It’s an invitation to name what you’re carrying, root into what matters, and plant an intention for the season ahead.

You’ll need:

• A candle

• A match or lighter

• Something to write with

• Paper or a journal

The Ritual

1. Enter the dark with care. Dim the lights or let the natural dark of the evening hold you. Let this be a gentle arrival with no urgency, no fixing. Just a settling into the quiet.

Take a few slow breaths. Let your body soften. Let your thoughts stretch out a little. You don’t need to be anywhere else.

2. Light your candle. As you light the flame, let it mark the moment and a shift from doing to being. A soft glow of attention.

You might say quietly: I welcome this light to guide me inward.I welcome the dark as a place of truth and rest.

3. Listen inward. Let this be a space for honesty, for naming what’s unclear, tender, or unfolding.

Ask yourself:

• What am I sitting with right now?

• What questions are alive in me?

• What am I being asked to notice, or release?

  
  

Write what comes. You don’t need to explain or solve, just witness it. Let the candlelight hold it with you.

4. Set an intention. From this place of listening, ask: What do I want to root into this season? What value, feeling, or way of being do I want to move toward, slowly, gently, authentically?

This is about alignment. Let the intention come quietly, if it wants to. Write it down when it arrives. It's powerful to write the intention in the present tense as if it is already true. Tuck it somewhere meaningful, a reminder to return.

5. Close with stillness. Blow out the candle with intention. Feel the return to shadow not as an ending, but as a deepening. Let the darkness feel full, not empty. Trust that something has begun.

Take a final breath with the space you’ve created.

The Solstice marks a turning into the beginning of light’s return. May this ritual offer you a moment of clarity, reverence, and quiet devotion to what’s becoming.

Weaving it All Together

Everything shared here, the music, the books, the ritual, the questions, circles around the same quiet possibility:

There are seasons that ask us to pause. To pay attention without rushing to interpret. To let doubt, restlessness, and longing be part of the landscape.

This is a time for deeper listening. For allowing meaning to arrive in an integration of fragments - over time. For trusting that not all turning points are understood except with hindsight.

Even confusion and the most deeply unsettling existential doubts have something to teach us, if we remain with them long enough to receive the wisdom.

This, too, is part of the path.

With so much love and gratitude,

Tara

P.S. for local folks: Here are my upcoming classes at Evergreen Healing Arts in Bradford, NH through the end of the year through March, many of which touch on these same themes: dreaming, presence, rest and integration. I'd love to see you!