Скачать или смотреть "How Darkness Can Bring Us Closer To God" | Jan 25, 2026 | With Rev. Kelly Crouch

This week, our Spiritual Entrepreneur Fellow, Kelly Crouch, will be offering the message. Reverend Tafel will be in the chapel if you’d like to join in person, and we’ll plan to get dinner afterward.

Kelly’s message will reflect on how darkness can draw us closer to God. Rather than something to be feared, the darkness and stillness of the winter months can become an invitation—creating space for quiet, inward turning, and deeper attentiveness to God’s presence.


[ Biography ]
Kelly Crouch is a recorded Quaker minister in the Religious Society of Friends and a member of Friends Meeting of Washington in DC. They are a graduate of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Kelly has spent many years engaged in advocacy and spiritual care for LGBTQ+ Christians through the Ohio-based organization LOVEboldly and the Queer Christian Fellowship. They also bring a background in public service, having worked in policy and community development roles at the local, state, and federal levels, most recently as a staffer on Capitol Hill.

Kelly enjoys helping others deepen their inner life through reflective discussion, contemplative practices, and vocational discernment. Kelly draws inspiration from Christian mysticism and its connections to other wisdom traditions.


[ Readings ]
Old Testament Reading
Psalms 139:11-12 (NIV)
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

New Testament Reading
Mark 1:35 (NIV)
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.

Swedenborg Insight
Arcana Coelestia
When man is in temptation he is in interior thought, and is thus withdrawn from the exterior thought which is proper to the body... In this state man is nearer to the Lord.