Reflections on the Dark Night of the Soul

 As Advent draws to a close and Christmas is upon us, I thought it would be helpful during these hectic days to reflect on the darkness of Advent in our time of preparation.  Darkness can reveal much that is obscured in the light.

The Incarnation always brings good news, but it never minimizes the realness of our pain. Advent declares the hope that a light is coming, but first it declares the truth that the world right now is so very dark. —Stephanie Duncan Smith

Song of the Soul  By John of the Cross, trans. By Mirabai Starr

On a dark night, inflamed by love-longing. O exquisite risk.  Undetected, I slipped away. My house, at last, grown still.

Secure in the darkness, I climb the secret ladder in disguise.  O exquisite risk. Concealed by the darkness, my house, at last, grown still.

That sweet night, a secret, nobody saw me. I did not see a thing.  No other light, no other guide than the one burning in my heart.

This light leads the way more clearly than the risen son to where he was waiting for me. The one I knew so intimately, in a place where no one could find us.

O night that guided me. O night, sweeter than sunrise.  O night that joins lover with beloved. Lover transformed in beloved.

Upon my blossoming breast, which I cultivated just for him, he drifted into sleep.  And while I caressed him, a cedar breeze touched the air.

Wind blew down from the tower, parting the locks of his hair.  With his gentle hand he wounded my neck, and all my senses were suspended.

I lost myself, forgot myself. I lay my face against the beloved’s face.  Everything fell away. And I left myself behind, abandoning my cares among the lilies, forgotten. 

Have a blessed and Merry Christmas

Letting God Love Me More

The issue – if I can call it that – of what we can do when God seems to be absent in our lives, has been presented to me frequently in the past week or so.  This is true in my personal life and with a couple of people raising that with me.  This has also come up a few places in the messages I receive regularly from different sources.  There are times when God does not seem to be making God’s presence known to me.  These raises (or perhaps begs) the question, how can I help God to be more present in my life?

One of the Daily Meditations by Richard Rohr from last week was on point: 

Seeking to experience God’s love more fully, spiritual director Colette Lafia asks a monk with whom she is friends, “How do I let God love me more?”:  

Without missing a beat, Brother Paul answered in his joyful tone, "God cannot love you more. God already loves you infinitely. You just need to become more aware of [God’s] love … by becoming more present to it. It’s like hearing birdcalls. By paying attention and delighting in it.”  

The Advent Reflection by the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine was also applicable:

If we aren't paying attention then that narrow space between pleasure and anxiety can trip us up, and just like a crack in the pavement, cause our steps to stumble and our resolve to falter. Henri Nouwen reminds us, "The Lord is coming, always coming. When you have ears to hear and eyes to see, you will recognize him at any moment of your life. Life is Advent; life is recognizing the coming of the Lord." SSJD Advent Reflection 2025

This brought to mind the line from Leonard Cohen’s song, Anthem, “there is a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in.”

I have believed – known - for quite a while, that God is always present n our lives.  God makes Godself known to us in many ways.  However, because of who we are and how God created us to be - ironically – we are blind and deaf and dumb to many of these ways.  Due to who and how we are, we are not open to many of the ways in which God is present to us.  This is, in part, because of our personalities and in part because we are often unavailable to God presence in our lives.  If we quiet ourselves and pay attention, we may be able to discern more clearly God’s presence in ways that are familiar to us or even ways that are not familiar to us.  For me, I am not usually attuned to the outer world around me – walking in nature does not do much for me but I am working on that. 

I will close with another message that I received this morning from Richard Rohr:

Marabi Starr offers this stirring description of the Dark Night of the Soul, in which God moves from dynamic presence to loving absence:

Say what’s secretly going on is that the Beloved is loving you back. That your first glimpse of the Absolute was God’s first great gift to you. That your years of revelation inside his many vessels was his second gift, wherein, like a mother, he was holding you, like a child, close to his breast, tenderly feeding you. And that this darkness of the soul you have come upon and cannot seem to come out of is his final and greatest gift to you.

I would disagree on one point.  It is not a case of God {the Beloved} loving us back.  It is a case that God always loves us, and we have to opportunity to love God back.  It is not a question of God being more present in my life?  The question is, how can I be more aware or God’s presence in my life?  When I do, how can I respond? 

I hope we can be blessed to do that on our journey. 

 

 

 

The Stations of the Cross Adapted from www.preachingpeace.org

It seems to be human nature that we want to leap over the challenging times of life and get to the good parts.  That is understandable.  However, I believe we need to not avoid the dark nights of the soul and embrace, or at least not deny hose times.  What can we begin to know something of ourselves and of God when the dark times engulf us and threaten overwhelm us?  What can we learn from those times when everything including God seems to have abandoned us?  We desire to quickly move from the despair of Good Friday to the joys of Resurrection Sunday.  I used an adaption of the Stations of the Cross on our Good Friday service.  Here are the first five stations.  I will finish the journey with Jesus to Golgotha in my next edition.

 Station I: Jesus is condemned to die

Pilate said, “I find no fault with this man,” but when the crowd grew loud, he grew silent. “I wash my hands. You deal with him.” Pilate had the knowledge and the power to stand and say no to the world as it sought to crush the Lord of Life. He didn’t use either.  How many times do I have the knowledge and the power to say no, and stay silent? How many times do I participate, by my silence, in the Passion of Jesus? Who will die because I do not say no?

 Station II: Jesus takes up his cross. 

 This cross has been thousands of years in the making. Its weight grows greater each time I look for someone to blame for the pain in my world. Each time I insist that sin must be punished, I add an ounce to the burden Jesus carries for me.  This is the cross he carries, the cross of blame, of vengeance.  When have I said, “Well, he certainly deserved that!” or “It’s only fair. Look at what she did!”  When have I failed to forgive as I have been forgiven. When have I laid more weight on your blessed shoulders?

 Station III: Jesus falls the first time

The laughter at your first fall is transformative, Jesus. The gathered “I’s” surrounding you laugh together, becoming a “we” for the first time. We laugh together; we reduce you to a joke, to something less than a man. Your first fall is the fall of my “I.” I am lost now, in the collective “I” of the mob.  How many times, Lord, have I sacrificed my “I” as I took satisfaction or pleasure in the fall of another?

Station IV: Jesus meets his mother. 

We want to make you a clown. We want to isolate you completely, but your mother will not permit it. She withstands the blows of taunt and sorrow to be present for you along the way. She alone remains to give you courage, to remind us that you are someone’s child, just like we are.

 How many times, Lord, have we watched another suffer, but from a safe distance? How many times have you looked out through the eyes of another for comfort, but were unable to find it?

 Station V:  Simon helps Jesus carry the Cross 

We need you to die, Jesus, but our rage has gone too far. You are too weak to continue on to the head of the mountain because we have beaten you so severely. When you can’t go on by yourself, we look for a solution that won’t involve us too closely. We mustn’t touch the cross ourselves, but the process must go on. Then we find our answer. A stranger, someone who obviously has no idea who you are will carry the cross. He knows nothing of your innocence. ow many others have we called on to do our violence for us? How many soldiers pulled triggers because we could not? How many executioners pushed buttons for us? 

Give Thanks to God in all things or for all Things

 

Ephesians 5:20,  giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

That passage from the letter of Paul to the church in Ephesus is very clear.  We should give thanks to God for all things.  Well, as hurricane Teddy was quite the anticlimactic event here on P.E.I., I can certainly agree that I can give thanks to God for what didn’t happen.    But would I have done the same if it had been as bad as forecast, with damage and devastation and power outages as it was for many people.  It would have been very hard to do that.  As with many events in my life, that certainly didn’t seem to be good things, I have found it difficult – actually impossible - to thank God.  Why should I give thanks for the bad things in life despite what the bible says or what is often preached?

I have resolved that quandary by deciding I can give thanks to God in all things rather than for all things.  Regardless of what happens, I can thank God for all God has given this world and all that I have been given in this life.  For, if I thank God for the good things that happen, I have to give God credit for the bad things as well so I arrive back where we started. 

Well, that seemed to settle the matter for me; but of course, it didn’t.  The important things in life don’t seem to be that simple.  I am currently rereading The Dark Night of the Soul, by Gerald May.  This is a very good commentary on the spiritual classic of the same name by John of the Cross.  In exploring that part of the spiritual journey, which was named the dark night of the soul, by John of the Cross, he, John, holds that we often cannot understand God’s purpose behind those deep, dark, spiritual experiences which can be transformative.  The purpose of these dark times is obscured and hidden from us because that is necessary if we are to travel them.  If we believe that we can see where we are going – what path to follow in spiritual matters we will probably be on the wrong path.  As May says:

sometimes the only way we can enter the deeper dimensions of the journey is by being unable to see where we are going…But in spiritual matters it is precisely when we do think we know where we are going that we are most likely to stumble. 

In my understanding, our egos will not allow us to enter these times if we can see what lies ahead.  The ego wants to be in control above all and will do all it can to not follow a path which it must give up that control.  As May states, “the night is dark for our protection.  We cannot liberate ourselves; our defenses and resistances will not permit it, and we hurt ourselves in the attempt.” 

In view of this, I must reassess my view of giving thanks to God.  There have been times and events in my life that seems to be bad or even disastrous.  In these times, there was no way I could bring myself to give thanks to God for what was happening.  However, upon reflection and given some space, I can see God’s hand at work and that it has been something to give thanks to God for.  That is not to say that bad things are always for the best, however, we can still give thanks to God in those things.

Blessings on your journey including those dark nights as well as the bright days.