What If?
Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. (1 Corinthians 13, NLT)
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
(2 Corinthians 4, NIV)
There was a time I believed God had left me. It was the second semester of my sophomore year of college that I first experienced a night so long, a darkness so deep, that I despaired of life itself. I prayed to the God I couldn’t feel, trust, or see to take me out of this world, because the mental and spiritual anguish was unbearable. It was only afterwards that I came to understand that this was a spiritual experience with a long history, something 16th century mystic St. John of the Cross termed “The Dark Night of the Soul.” For centuries, Christians who have tried to make sense of their very real felt experience of God’s absence have found solace in St. John’s work and ideas. Likewise, when I encountered his poetic treatises on darkness as a purgative vessel through which the soul ascends to a greater intimacy with God, I began to wonder if there was more to my experience of depression paired with ‘God’s absence’ than I originally thought.
Today, after receiving a letter from a friend who insists that God does not answer his prayers nor is God doing much to alleviate his depression, along with an email from someone I have never met voicing similar sentiments, I found myself wondering this:
What if our felt experience of God’s absence
is merely the shell containing a Presence
so thick it takes a lifetime to apprehend?
Those who have known the Dark Night know that it cannot be explained in neat and tidy theological treatises or helpful terms. Perhaps this is why St. John chose poetry as the best expression of his ideas. Like dancing around a black hole, the best we can do when trying to articulate our experience of the Dark Night—which St. John would argue is fertile with God’s presence—is to describe it as absence. Our friends in the Eastern Orthodox tradition have a helpful way of approaching God through apophasis, or the via negativa, asserting that the best, holiest, and humblest way to begin describing the deep but dazzling mystery of God is to describe God in terms of what God is not. For example: God is not darkness, but the God who created both darkness and light—for whom darkness is as light—does dwell in deepest darkness, even when we cannot feel the Presence we once found easier to detect in the light.
Because I care about my friend and even the stranger who messaged me, I am compelled to wrestle with the question, “Does God actually forsake God’s children and leave them alone in the dark?” My automatic response is “No,” but I also cannot ignore those who insist that God has, in fact, forsaken them because they can detect no evidence of God’s presence in their lives. All I can do is point to my own experience of un-believing God’s goodness and love, which did result in a deeper intimacy with God along with a keener conviction that God does indeed companion us through even the darkest night—although it has taken me years to develop this conviction.
Today, as one who has known the darkness of suffering yet continues to stumble into the light, I humbly offer this:
Sometimes, the wall of God’s absence turns out to be a door opening to a richer, deeper, truer, more mysterious sense of God’s presence. And if we have eyes to see, we will realize that for some reason, this deeper Presence could not have been made known to us any other way than through the wall of Absence. If darkness is as light to God, then maybe—just maybe—Absence and Presence are two sides of the same holy reality, too.
What do we do when we run into the wall of God’s absence? We keep knocking until it becomes a door. And when we are too tired to stand and knock, when all our strength is gone and we slump to the floor with our backs and heads leaning against this wall, may we know the deep rest which accompanies not having to know, the peace that Mystery affords.
If you find yourself lost in the dark today, please don’t give up. What if there is more to this Night than you could possibly know? What if, in spite of all the evidence, you are currently being held by a strong and silent Love that beholds you with such tenderness, it would take your breath away to see it?
What if?
Going deeper: Consider this quote from Quaker author Thomas Kelly. What does it stir in you? Where do you feel resistance? What makes you want to lean in?