Dark Night of the Soul-Intro
Gregg’s Reflection
I’ve encountered a number of Christian friends in the past years who are struggling with life and find God has fallen silent. It is a hard place to be when you are facing testing and trials and can hear nothing from God. I have spent my own difficult time wandering in the spiritual desert. I have encountered seasons of separation from God myself with some regularity over the years.
I remember a saying from attending a spiritual retreat called Cursillo (now Via de Christo) many years ago, “If you feel distant from God, guess who moved?” Over the years, I have come to know that my own willfulness distances me from God. Often, when I am reluctant to let something go, my own stubbornness brings distance in my relationship.
But, I have encountered other seasons where I think God is distant for other reasons. There are times when I am standing at the edge, looking at the shapes in the mist, asking, “God is this really the next step?” And I hear nothing. Only when I have taken a step out in faith do I hear confirmation.
We humans would like to see where the trail will end up before we start. God just asks us to trust him and take the first step, without seeing further. If God’s word is a lamp unto our feet, it will never illuminate more than the next two steps, until you start moving. The end of the trail is lost in the mist and darkness. Will you trust and take a step. Quiet moments of deciding.
Then there is the dark night of the soul. Times when we wander in the spiritual desert, thirsting, longing for God’s presence and hearing nothing in the darkness. It is reassuring to learn that even the saints experienced these times, these seasons of silence, dwelling out of any awareness of God’s presence.
I wonder if these times are not God’s way of exercising our faith muscle? I’ve heard it explained this way. God reveals himself to us and through an experience of God, we come to believe. Early in our Christian walk, God graces us with His presence more often, deepening our commitment and faith. Then, as we walk with God for some time, he periodically draws away for periods of time. During these times, tests and trials will come that call for faith to overcome. Our faith is tested when God draws away, and our faith muscle is strengthened in the process.
The funny thing is, even our faith is a gift from God. It is God’s touch on our lives that gives us faith in the first place. So, it might be better to say we discover in these times that God has graced us with the faith to endure. Each time we endure such a season, we come to trust it will end. While it continues, each day we can pray to the Spirit for the faith to trust God even when he’s absent. We learn to lean on His promise in scripture that, “I am with you always,” even when we can’t sense or hear anything.
And, one day, hope will turn its face to you, and your dark night will come into a new dawn. So, take heart, friends, you are in fine company as you wander in the spiritual desert. All the saints have trod there before you. Sara Groves is one of the most talented Christian songwriters I’ve heard. She describes this journey beautifully in her song, “It might be hope.”
Find the full post here. And, here is a short audio introduction:
Journaling Prompts
How do you keep going when God is distant and has fallen silent? What have you learned from time in the Dark Night? How has your faith grown stronger in times of God’s absence?
Scripture
Moses entered the darkness where God dwelled.
Exodus 20:21
The Lord has said he would dwell in thick darkness.
1 Kings 8:12
Because of his love for us, God urges us to grow up. His love is not content to leave us in our weakness, and for this reason he takes us into a dark night. He weans us from all of the pleasures by giving us dry times and inward darkness. Through the dark night pride becomes humility, greed becomes simplicity, wrath becomes contentment, luxury becomes peace, gluttony becomes moderation, envy becomes joy, and sloth becomes strength. No one will ever grow deep in the spiritual life unless God works passively in that soul by means of the dark night.
John of the Cross, RENOVARE Bible notes on Job, OT p. 766
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul , and have sorrow in my heart all day long?But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord,Because he has dealt bountifully with me.
Psalm 13:1-2, 5-6
God made the darkness his dwelling place.
Psalm 18:11
You’ve kept track of my every toss and turn through sleepless nights, Each tear entered in your ledger, each ache written in your book.
Psalm 56:8 The Message
He said: In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.
Jonah 2:2, Jonah’s Dark Night of the Soul
Ancient Writings
We pray that we may come into this darkness that is beyond light, and, without seeing and without knowing, see and know what is above vision and knowledge through the realization that by not-seeing and by not-knowing we attain true vision and knowledge. This is like those who, carving a statue out of marble, abstract and remove all the surrounding material that hinders the vision which the marble conceals and by that abstraction bring to light the hidden beauty.
Dionysius, The Divine Names, Chapter 2
Do not fear if for a little while he turned his face away from you. These things all work together for your good, and you profit from his coming in and from his withdrawal. He comes to you, and then he goes away again.
He comes for your consolation, he goes away to put you on guard, for fear that too much consolation should puff you up, and that you should begin to attribute consolation not to his grace but to your natural powers. And so he withdraws himself.
He is absent that he may be desired more, that being desired he may be sought more eagerly, that having been sought for he may at last be found with greater thankfulness.
Guigo II, The Ladder of Monks, trans. College, p. 77
A deeper enlightenment and wider experience than mine is necessary to explain the dark night through which a soul journeys toward that divine light of perfect union with God that is achieved, insofar as possible in this life, through love. The darknesses and trials, spiritual and temporal, that fortunate souls ordinarily undergo on their way to the high state of perfection are so numerous and profound that human science cannot understand them adequately. Nor does experience of them equip one to explain them. Only those who suffer them will know what this experience is like, but they won’t be able to describe it.
St John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Prologue, 1
I can’t seem to resist thinking that those who make such a big deal about periods of aridity as being somewhat lacking in humility.
St. Teresa of Ávila, Interior Castle, trans Mirabai Starr, p. 72
Modern Writings
In this greatest perfection of faith the infinite God Himself becomes the Light of the darkened soul and possesses it entirely with His Truth. And at this inexplicable moment the deepest night becomes day and faith turns into understanding.
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness. They point each other to flashes of light here and there, and remind each other that they reveal the hidden but real presence of God.
Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 11/3/20
John of the Cross says that the dark night is God’s best gift to you, intended for your liberation. It is about freeing you from your ideas about God, your fears about God, your attachment to all the benefits you have been promised for believing in God, your devotion to the spiritual practices that are supposed to make you feel closer to God, your dedication to doing and believing all the right things about God, your positive and negative evaluations of yourself as a believer in God, your tactics for manipulating God, and your sure cures for doubting God.
Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 2/4/21
The dark night, which deprives us of our customary ways of experiencing God, draws us into an infinitely richer, more luminous, and ultimately boundaryless way of experiencing God, of finding our way to perfect union through love.
James Finley