Rather than religious dogmas, I really like the metaphor of light and dark, which is used many times in the bible. Light, we can all agree, helps us see, gives some clarity, and is generally good. We need sunlight to be healthy. Plants need sunlight to grow.
In a spiritual sense, the same metaphor is helpful: ‘Light’ helps us to flourish, and spiritual ‘darkness’ breeds destruction and hatred. I play with these ideas regularly in my artworks, particularly the lighbulb personified as a whimsical character which represents Jesus (as described in the bible as the ‘light of the world’).
‘The Cost Of Holding Back The Darkness’ 2025
Several influences sparked this:
-I made my husband watch True Detective (season 1) which has two of my favourite actors. It is a really powerful story. There’s a dialogue between Matthew McConaughey’s nihilistic, philosopical character (Rust) and Woody Harrelson’s character (Marty) right at the end (so stop reading; spoilers lol) in which they look up at the night sky and discuss light and dark (good in the world vs the evil they have just encountered through the season).
Here’s the dialogue:
Rust: “I tell you Marty I been up in that room looking out those windows every night here just thinking, it’s just one story. The oldest.”
Marty: “What’s that?”
Rust: “Light versus dark.”
Marty: “Well, I know we ain’t in Alaska, but it appears to me that the dark has a lot more territory.”
Rust: “Yeah, you’re right about that.”
Rust insists that Marty help him leave the hospital, and Marty agrees. As they head to the car, Rust makes one final point to his former partner.
Rust: “You’re looking at it wrong, the sky thing.”
Marty: “How’s that?”
Rust: “Well, once there was only dark. You ask me, the light’s winning.”
I’ve been siting with that conversation and thinking about the cost that comes to those who engage with that battle to keep darkness at bay. In the fictional show, Rust nearly loses his life while bringing to justice a serial murderer. The cost is high.
Real Life Costs
I just finished reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s 2007 autobiographical novel Infidel, in which she chronicles leaving Somalia and fighting for the rights of Muslim women in Holland. It’s intense and eye opening. Ayaan talks about the brutal murder of her friend, the Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, due to his association with her (for collaborating on a film about Muslim women’s rights). Ayaan was in fear of her life and was forced into hiding. The cost for her to expose some of the deep darknesses she experienced in her culture and community was high. I found this really inspiring, as a reader in a Western country, surrounded by a general sense of apathy about right and wrong, good and evil. These ideas are either rejected as being too dogmatic, in favour of relativism: “who’s to say what’s right and wrong? You do you” “Everything depends” or a kind of hesitancy to address evils for fear of being seen as some sort of “phobe (“That’s just culture, don’t be racist”)
This drawing is also inspired by my pastor, Mari-Shell Scott, because she has shared publicly parts of her story about darknesses she has experienced in her life, and has taken up the responsibility and cost of holding the curtain back for others too.
Some of the elements I want to highlight in this image:
The mouths represent the sneering that comes from some places when you get involved in the light. Dennis Prager said something that resonated which is this:
“Those who don't fight evil hate those who do; and those who don't fight real evils make up little evils”
There will always be people who lurk in the dark, and enjoy it there, and who try to obstruct those who have stepped out of the dark. That tension seems perennial.
There are monsters hiding behind the stairs and claws ready to grab. This speaks to the ongoing existence of real, genuine evil in the world: and a challenge to those who love the light to not be fearful, and to not ignore the existence of evil. It might require some skin in the game, some toughness, some courage to challenge it rather than shrink away and pretend we don’t see what people in our communities are facing in their darkness. The darknesses might be domestic violence, serious mental health challenges, drug issues, a kind of spiritual and existential emptiness, voids of meaning, relational poverty, loneliness, it goes on…the ‘dark’ is there, whether we face the other way and pretend not to know or we have the courage to look at it squarely as courageous people. This challenge is to do the latter.
The room is crumbling, despaired, damaged. The extent of the decay probably isn’t even fully visible until the curtain is pulled back. This room is a metaphor for the consequences of darkness: it shatters us, damages us and those around us.
The hot air balloons- a sense of adventure, of momentum waits: not stagnant, not boring: the Light comes with a call to adventure, challenge, goodness.
The figure holding back the curtain: reminiscent of Jesus being wounded to the end of his life on the cross. The figure represents anyone who picks up the challenge to stand up, do something, care about justice, fight the darkness.
It also occured to me afterwards that there was a curtain in Jesus’ death story too:
Mark 15: 37-39 (MSG) “But Jesus, with a loud cry, gave his last breath. At that moment the Temple curtain ripped right down the middle. When the Roman captain standing guard in front of him saw that he had quit breathing, he said, "This has to be the Son of God!"
I know there are other things going on in that story of the temple curtain ripping in half, but I like the idea that the curtain tearing takes my drawn idea to the next level: The curtain isn’t just held back, temporarily, it’s destroyed, ripped, finished. That to me speaks of hope. Hope, like the dialogue in True Detective suggests, that despite the territory the darkness claims: light is winning; it has won.
