Reflecting on the wisdom of the mystical traditions, theologian Douglas Christie writes of spiritual darkness:
“In a dark time, the eye begins to see,” says Theodore Roethke. [1]… This brings us close to the heart of how Christian mystics have long understood the task of seeing, especially the seeing that becomes possible in darkness. Gregory of Nyssa refers to this as the “seeing that consists of not seeing.” [2] Dionysius the Areopagite speaks of the “brilliant darkness” that one enters “through not seeing and not knowing.” [3]… The contemplative gaze nourished in the night is open, receptive, and free. Darkness subverts the all-too-common inclination to determine (or overdetermine) reality to fit our own narrow understanding of things. It invites instead a way of seeing rooted in simplicity, humility, and awe….
Is this perhaps a kind of faith? Not simply a denial of faith or an assertion of faith’s impossibility, but a way of thinking about and struggling with the most difficult questions, especially those arising from fragility, pain, and absence?…. What emerges instead is an awareness that we must let them go and learn, as the author of The Cloud of Unknowing put it, to “rest in the darkness.” [4]
This sounds, perhaps, too simple. As if such rest can be found without difficulty, or that all the night asks of us is to let it surround us with its gentle, healing presence. There is little in our experience to suggest that this is so…. The experience of the night can be terrifying, bewildering, less a place to rest and heal than a dispiriting struggle with pain and absence. Still, there is also something about the enveloping darkness, its silence and stillness and depth, its inscrutability and ineffability, that comforts and soothes, that releases us from our compulsive need to account for everything, explain everything. [5]
Translator of the mystics Mirabai Starr guides us in the wisdom of Spanish mystic John of the Cross (1542–1591):
When the dark night descends on the soul, its radiance blinds the intellect. She can no longer formulate concepts; she doesn’t even want to. It is tempting to consider this inability to engage the intellect as a failing. It is easy to assume that you are wasting time.
Do not force it, John wrote. Stop trying to figure it out. Drop down into a state of guileless quietude and abide there. This is no time for discursive meditation, no time for pondering theological doctrines or asserting articles of faith.
Your only task now is to set your soul free. Take a break from ideas and knowledge…. Content yourself with a loving attentiveness toward the Holy One. This requires no effort, no agitation, no desire to taste her or feel her or understand her. Patiently persevere in this state of prayer that has no name.
“Trust in God,” John wrote, “who does not abandon those who seek him with a simple and righteous heart.” By doing nothing now, the soul accomplishes great things. [6]
References:
[1] Theodore Roethke, “In a Dark Time,” in Selected Poems (Library of America, 2005), 116.
[2] Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses 2.163, trans. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson (Paulist Press, 1978), 95.
[3] Pseudo-Dionysius, The Mystical Theology 1.1; 2, in The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (Paulist Press, 1987), 135, 138.
[4] The Cloud of Unknowing 3, ed. James Walsh (Paulist Press, 1981), 121.
[5] Douglas E. Christie, The Insurmountable Darkness of Love: Mysticism, Loss, and the Common Life (Oxford University Press, 2022), 29, 30.
[6] Mirabai Starr, Saint John of the Cross: Luminous Darkness (CAC Publishing, 2022), 69.
Image credit and inspiration: Niko Tsviliov, untitled (detail), 2023, photo, Ukraine, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Just as the moon dances with shadow and light, remaining herself throughout, we also dance with shadow and light, reflecting her wisdom rhythms.
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