Never hide.

Because it’s time.

Now is the season. The season when we celebrate the light shining in the darkness. The season when the anointed has been revealed and is made manifest in us. Each of us a light already shining.

Even though it’s dark. It seems so dark.

Many of us remember that small infectious idea about our lights.

(The lights we carry inside of us,
the ones which shine.)

And we’re told to let them do their thing. Let ’em shine. Shine on you crazy diamond!

Or we sang it in Sunday School:

This little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
Oh, this little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
Hallelujah
This little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

Hide it under a bushel? they’d ask

And it was fun to shout

NO!

And the fun of the song printed over its place, its history, its origins as a negro spiritual. A history of overcoming darkness and pain. Of dignity and life and lights during the darkest days. Like “Kumbaya” has come to be seen as a pathetic call for peace

when it’s really

the cry to God in those last moments, a spontaneous prayer “come by here” before the civil rights heroes faced the beatings and abuse of an angry white status quo.

Heroes in survival, in martyrdom to a just cause of equality.

But then, they were young, scared, unsure they’d survive. Many were college students, calling home.

“If I don’t see you again, remember I love you.”

Then they returned to the group and called to God, saying “come by here.”

Don’t hide it.

Under a bushel basket. Don’t hide it. Suffocate it. Let the light die out.

Those people meeting heroes before they were heroes, demanding the lights be doused. The principals in school doors and legislators crying foul to maintain a right to discriminate. All these people saying

Hide it.

Hide the light. A light of justice and hope. Of equality, not punishment. Of life in the midst of certain death.

Hide that light they say. Hide it and never let it come out.

The world will figure this out without you. Just let it.

But that song based on that scripture says to let it shine. Don’t hide it. Don’t hide your own light under a bushel. But somehow this always seems disembodied from us.

Don’t hide the real you or the good stuff, that’s your light.

People don’t ask you to hide the things they think are good. Just the things they dislike.

The things you think are good, they think are horrible.

Or destructive. Or causing them pain.

Like those heroes fighting for rights

to water fountains,
lunch counters,
bus seats,
school supplies and
equal funding,
the vote.

Full freaking citizenship.

And somehow that’s pain. Somehow that’s darkness in the midst of light. Somehow wanting to be treated as an equal with dignity and decency is too painful. That it strips away too much from the powerful. That any means are necessary to contain it. Destroy it.

Like a goddamn funhouse freak show where up is down and being asked to not be a dick is of equal weight to not being hit with a water cannon. Wanting to actually be treated like a 5/5 human is an opinion one can oppose.

And where love is expanding and friends are able to come out of the closet they hide in, they’re met with new abuse. As if the abuse they’ve taken, the rage endured is just. Or the death threats received, and suicidal thoughts they’ve overcome isn’t enough pain. They’ve only now found a precious few of us in the faith willing to love them as brothers and sisters, fellow children.

And somehow being honest with who we are is equal to assault.

That’s what we hear. It’s equal. Dousing your light. Putting it out. Hiding it. Hiding you. Who you are. Like it isn’t sin to lie. To run away from love and decency. Or sin to assault women, deprive rights to our neighbors, strip them of dignity. And somehow we manage to call that equal.

Perhaps it is a sort of equal. Maybe their light went out long ago and they want others to feel the same. Or they love the dark. The land of secrets, where thieves bump and monsters prowl. Maybe your light is a problem to them. Because you have one. You can see them for who they are.

Most people of faith forget that Jesus came to overturn the way humans order the world. It didn’t happen once: one and done. We forget that this is what we do. We create darkness and snuff lights. And we forget, too that we even have a light.

But when we remember the light, something happens. We remember that it is inside us. Not deep down, locked in one of the chambers of our hearts. But in our skin, tissue, eyes, ears, and lips, this light is always there, radiating no matter what happens to us.

When we remember that it’s always on, we’re always lit, even when we’re not feeling it, then we know that it can’t be hidden. We remember that the light is us.

They can’t make us hide.

Or cover up. To wrap our heads like Moses and keep that shine away from the people.

When we remember that we’re always shining, then there is no hiding. No turning around.

All we need is to remember. To remind each other.

Sing with your neighbors, locked hand-in-hand, marching to the sound of human voices giving strength we didn’t know we had. Voices which lift our feet and guide our hearts from the darkness out there, to the light cascading through those around us. Children, prophets, and saints standing together, the dozens or thousands or millions lighting up the night.

Their light, like a sound, somehow both low roar and whisper: You’ve got this.