The Hour of the Wolf

Many of you will know that one of my spiritual guides is Richard Rohr.  I try to read his Daily Meditations https://cac.org/ regularly - if not quite every day.

One of the recent Daily Meditations spoke of the “hour of the wolf” which is that time when we seem to be most susceptible to our doubts and fears and our defenses are at their weakest. Rohr describes it this way,” in the middle of the night when I awake and cannot get back to sleep during what some call the “hour of the wolf,” between 3:00 and 6:00 a.m. when the psyche is most undefended. (Others simply call it “insomnia”!).”

For me that connected with the Aboriginal teaching of the two wolves which are in each of us - you could call it a proverb. 

An grandfather told his grandson: “My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy and truth.”

The boy thought about it, and asked: “Grandfather, which wolf wins?”

The old man quietly replied: “The one you feed.”

In my experience the one which comes into my consciousness in that hour of the wolf is not the one that resonates joy and hope and love.  The night demons are all my regrets and incriminations which I have accumulated over my life and have not forgiven others or myself for.  Richard Rohr speaks of a way to feed the wolf within that will lead to peace and acceptance.  I quote Rohr at length here: 

First, “take God at face value, as God is. Accept God’s good graciousness, as you would a plain, simple soft compress when sick. Take hold of God and press God against your unhealthy self, just as you are.” 

Second, know how your mind and ego play their games: “Stop analyzing yourself or God. You can do without wasting so much of your energy deciding if something is good or bad, grace given or temperament driven, divine or human.” 

Third, be encouraged and “Offer up your simple naked being to the joyful being of God, for you two are one in grace, although separate by nature.” 

And finally: “Don’t focus on what you are, but simply that you are! How hopelessly stupid would a person have to be if they could not realize that they simply are.”  

Hold the soft warm compress of these loving words against your bodily self, bypass the mind and even the affections of the heart and forgo any analysis of what you are, or are not. 

“Simply that you are!” 

I like this practice because over time it can become an embodied experience of what we’ve been talking about this whole week: knowing and unknowing. By repeatedly placing whatever it is you think you “know” at that hour of the night under “the soft warm compress” of God’s loving presence, your own body becomes a place of relaxation and inner rest. You know that you don’t know, and you trust that you don’t need to know. You are simply in God’s loving care.  

May you have the blessing of peace on your journey.