Senses.

learning to walk in the dark, Advent 3.

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 climbed 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.

~ “Songs of the Soul: One Dark Night”

Long before Kellie and I moved to the North Carolina mountains, I was staying alone at my granddad’s mountain house and writing my second book When God Waits. In the ubiquitous winter fog, I ventured outside and later wrote this reflection…

Cabin fever struck and I launched out for an early-morning walk in the park-like acres behind the house. I could see twenty to thirty feet in front of me, plenty to follow the path on its circular mile-long jaunt through woods and meadow. It was an eerie yet enticing atmosphere that invited adventuresome images as I zipped my fleece pullover up around my neck.

The thing is, the same obfuscation of vision that feels adventurous one moment can turn threatening the next. My walk was uneventful, but such blindness is disorienting at best. My journal continued…

Waiting seasons almost always incorporate a thick fog that rolls in upon our established channels of communication with the Father. Suddenly, overnight even, the timeworn passage we have walked between heaven and earth in our spiritual journey appears sealed before us. Twinges of panic tug at the corners of our mind as we seek to steady ourselves on the shifting ground. That which has anchored and secured and imparted meaning feels to have vanished before our eyes.

Darkness can be sweet, and darkness can be ominous. For those trying to walk its shrouded path, there is perhaps no better guide than the Spanish mystic John of the Cross. In 1577, John was captured by a group of friars committed to the institutional church’s resistance to John and Claire’s attempts at reform. After nine months of daily floggings, John managed a miraculous escape and emerged into a profound ecstasy of soul from which he penned the poem that begins with the lines at the top of this post. Later his monastic brothers urged him to write a commentary, which became what we now know as The Dark Night of the Soul.

The concept is so universal in scope that many of us Protestants are well familiar with the phrase and tend to use it casually to refer to our own times of emotional and spiritual suffering. But John’s vision of the dark night is something far different from a hardship, no matter how severe, that is to be endured and withstood. As you can see in its poetic origins, John experienced the dark night as a romantic tryst that carried him through grievous sufferings into spiritual transformation. Not something to be merely survived, but something to be desperately desired. A journey that would bring us, not just into maturity but into union with the Beloved. Wow.

John envisioned two dark nights actually. The first he called the Night of Sense, and it refers to the loss of all perceptions of God’s presence. No prayer, no worship, no icons, no humble service can elicit an awareness of God’s love or care. This is darkness indeed! And yet, even here, especially here, John whispers a fierce hope that we are being wooed by the Eternal Lover. That this is “an exquisite risk!” And if we can lean into the darkness rather than flee or fight it, we will be “simultaneously annihilated and immeasurably strengthened” according to Mirabai Starr, guide, scholar, and translator of John’s work.

In our final Advent post next week, we will look at John’s second night, and see if it too holds any clues for learning to walk in the dark.

growing the soul

Consider for a moment your own perhaps diminished senses of God at this time. Can you describe the change, the absence, the distance you feel? This is real. And John intimates that this loss is in fact an invitation toward a divine intimacy you’ve never imagined. Can John’s vision be trusted? I’m inclined to believe so, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

serving the world

I find myself wondering if there might even be a cosmic dimension of John’s dark-night-transformation. What do you think?

takeaway

Lean in.