Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is known as “winter blues” depression that can leave the victim in a dark cave until spring’s return. Energy is drained. Apathy takes over. The main treatment for SAD is light therapy.
Light does more than just enable us to see. Light induces the hypothalamus to produce hormones and neurotransmitters which affect mood, sleep, energy, appetite, and desire.
It’s fascinating that the completely blind—lacking the eye’s photoreceptors known as rods and cones—also experience SAD. They retain retinal ganglion cells the stimulation of which with light is thought to treat SAD symptoms in blind patients.
Spiritually too, there are times when our faith wanes, our internal light dims. Even those who lack complete faith feel an emptiness which is filled with the beauty of the Chanukah candles, even as they deny its mystical powers.
In the beginning God’s Light was everywhere, but the solar system, physical light, came about later. Out of deep love, God withdrew, contracted through a process Kaballah names “tsimtsum,” in order for us to have room to shine. How can a small candle be seen near the Source of All Light? As the chosen, it is our job to co-create that light when darkness sets in. We are a people that light candles, each time declaring the following.
How wonderful it is that we can insert light into the dark, but never dark into the light. So, we add light to this world.
We recall that God stepped out of center stage, creating room for us to show our light. We are important, full of potential.
Every light creates a shadow, reminding us that our work is never done, emphasizing the need for humility within our perceived powers.
Even though the candle is consumed, like the God that appeared in the Bush to Moses, our spirits will burn forever unconsumed.
The light is placed in the windows, not to show off, but to light the path of those who walk in the dark, reminding them that behind each window lives a neighbor with contagious hope.
We see the face of the person in front of us. God’s Spark is there. We say “I see You.”
We declare our belief that in the end, goodness will drive out evil.
In the same way that light is detected from distant planets that are no longer, the light we shine will echo into the Universe for eternity.
The miracle may be in how long the oil lasted, but greater yet is our recollection of that event years later, and our stubborn will to live, to believe, and to celebrate a good God, despite the difficulties and torments of daily life.
If you are SAD, Chanukah is just what The Healers of Shattered Hearts ordered.
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