Dark night of the soul

Not everyone has to go through hard times in order to see the beauty of what they can be. Sometimes I imagine what life might have been like if certain events hadn’t occurred, certain abuses, pains, rejections. Would I still be the same person today? Maybe. Maybe not.

All I know is that the things that have happened, have happened. They simply are. How I choose to understand them, live into the complexities of meaning, that’s where life is interesting. In fact, that’s really where life is.

St. John of the Cross, sixteenth century Spanish Catholic mystic, wrote a beautiful poem with no title, though it has been given a title since: Dark Night of the Soul. John wrote about the darkness one experiences when God feels distant, unknowable, unreachable. He also wrote about the immeasurable love that filled his entire being once Divine light appeared next to him, the peace and joy that rippled through him.

The final stanza of the poem puts it so sweetly:

I remained, lost in oblivion;

My face I reclined on the Beloved.

All ceased and I abandoned myself,

Leaving my cares

forgotten among the lilies.

What I often wonder is whether these “dark nights” are necessary in spiritual life. Is it necessary to know so deeply in one’s soul God’s absence, that the craving and yearning become a distant memory once the light reveals itself again? Maybe. Maybe not.

For me, what I now hold onto is the truth that even if I go through another dark night, even when I’m in the midst of the chaos and confusion and aloneness, the light will return. God’s presence will be known again deep in my bones.

Having enough of these times in my life has also revealed to me that, even when I felt as though God was absent, even when the Beloved seemed to have abandoned me, all along it was my perception that had become dimmed — often through spiritual neglect or negative assumptions. I needed new eyes to see.

God was working and reworking in me a new way to see the power and presence of Divine love surrounding me, holding me, opening new avenues of joyous possibility within me. It is such a gift. And it is why I finally said “yes” to entering ministry. This gift is one that we all are given and often don’t know it. My “yes” is to be part of what the Divine Beloved is doing to reveal this gift to all people, but especially, to particular people. The people here in this blessed quirky community.

Perhaps we can journey through dark nights together, being collectively part of what God is doing to invite us to see differently, to have the eyes to see and ears to hear the reality of God’s presence right here. Who knows how participation in this gift might heal and transform us all?