Sing When The Sun Is Gone

When I was a little girl, I heard a Chinese myth, about a day when the sun didn’t rise.

I don’t know why I liked it so much. Maybe because it’s another story about supernatural darkness and a pack of noisy demons, but much more hopeful and interesting than those hideous three days of darkness. 

The story concerns a phoenix who lives somewhere to the east of everything. In China it’s a phoenix who carries the sun on her back every morning, all the way across the sky to the western edge of the world. She stores the sun in a cave overnight while she sleeps, or at least she used to.

It seems that one night, when the phoenix was sleeping, an envious demon snuck into the cave and stole the sun. He took the sun back to the place where demons live– hell, I suppose– and hid it in the deepest cavern they had. And then all the demons started to celebrate and dance, because they had successfully stolen the possibility of there being another morning. The world would be dark and cold like their domain forever.

The phoenix awoke to find the sun gone, the morning indefinitely delayed. Fortunately, somehow, she knew what must have happened. She flew, through the prolonged twilight, over the ruined world, to the place where the demons lived. She went down into the depths of their cave complex, right to where the party was being held. She stood into their midst. She transformed into a beautiful, well-dressed woman. And she began to sing.

She sang of the world and its beauty, the mountains and the seas, the beaches, the forests, the animals and plants, the people, the children who woke to see the sun every morning. And she sang about how this was all gone, because the sun hand been stolen and there would never again be a tomorrow.

The demons started to cry.

By the time her song was finished, they had cried until they filled the deepest crags of their hell with salt water. And as the canyons and caves filled with water, the light from the imprisoned sun refracted out to where the phoenix could see it. So she dove into the deep trench of tears and down into the deepest part of hell, and came up carrying the sun. She carried it into the sky, a little late but none the worse for wear, and the day came anyway, and perhaps no one even noticed that it almost hadn’t.

If you wake up just before dawn, when everything is cold and dark, you might see a bright morning star near the horizon. That is the phoenix, guarding the sun, so the morning will never be stolen again.

I realize lately that I’ve been trying to be a phoenix for a long time.  I’m no good at it, but I don’t know how to stop trying either.

If you are in darkness and the light has been stolen: if you have been abused, if you have been traumatized, if you have been struck with a very deep anxiety or depression– if, in any way, your sun has been stolen and the morning won’t come– I know of nothing to do except sing.

Stand in the darkness of hell, with your enemies exalting all around you, and sing.

Sing of everything you’ve lost, everything that’s good, everything that ought to be but isn’t, everything that might be if only the impossible could happen.

I don’t know if this will work or not. But in theory, according to the myth, that’s what reveals the sun. And if you catch a glimpse of where they hid your sun, you can dive into the deepest dark and get it back.

I have been trying to get it back for so long.

It’s been sixteen years since I left the spiritually abusive situation I was raised in and came to Steubenville, thinking I’d have a refuge. My mother informed me as we drove up to the Franciscan University dormitory, “I just hope this place can do something for you, because we give up.” And I have lived in the bowels of this new, worse, spiritually abusive hell ever since.

I have been singing.

I have been singing about everything I know that is good, everything that ought to be but isn’t, and the tiny bits of good I can still find. I have been singing about everything I’ve lost. I have also been singing about my despair. And my despair has been bad lately, and I’m thankful for people who put up with my singing. It has kept the tiny glimmers of light visible.

Maybe the myth will come true, and I can dive into the depths and get the sun back.

If you are in despair and the sun is gone, I hope you sing today.