Dark Night of the Soul

This summer a number of folks connected with The Center for Christian Spirituality read Gerald May's Dark Night of the Soul for our Summer Reading Series. We discussed the book last week, sharing stories of our own interaction with the book.

In the book May interprets and clarifies the work of 16th century Spanish mystic John of the Cross. For many people John's writing is difficult to grasp, full of theological language foreign to modern readers. May cuts through much of the difficulty and provides a very accessible and helpful interpretation of the dark night of the soul. This was my fourth reading of his book and again I found it extremely beneficial.

In the aftermath of this most recent reading, I find myself grateful that my own experience has broadened enough to make some sense of the dark night of the soul. For years I tried to read John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, knowing they were important spiritual guides, but really clueless about what they were telling me.

Over the years, though, as my own experience has grown, as I've explored wider and wider interior terrain, I've come to have personal, inner confirmation of the truths they speak of. It is not that my own experience validates John of the Cross or Gerald May . . . they don't need my validation. The validation happens within me and for me, in order to help me make some sense of my own spiritual journey.

There have been moments over the last fifteen years when I've felt crazy. (It's likely that I was crazy!) It's the feeling that I'm out there at the end of the limb all by myself, that I've finally drifted too far off center, I've crossed over a line beyond orthodoxy. Then I read a John of the Cross, a Gerald May, a Teresa of Avila, a Richard Rohr . . . someone speaking a truth with which my own experience lines up. And within me rises up an internal validation of my own life-experience, a validation of the life-path I walk.

I sometimes read what someone else writes or speaks and within my deepest being -- the soul of me that is most alive and attentive -- something shouts out, "I KNOW this is true because I've been there . . . my experience has confirmed this reality for me!"

The bottom line is that spirituality is not about concepts and ideas and understanding. Spirituality is about a lived experience, about life in all its rawness. So it is not enough to sit idly on the sidelines, thinking lofty thoughts, or imagining what the spiritual life is all about. Spirituality is encounter, authentic engagement with God, self, others, and the world.

So when my own experience aligns with what I believe to be true about life and God and journey and relationship and transformation and illusion, then there is a validation and an integration of that truth woven into the fabric of who I am. That kind of thing has happened to me with the material on the dark night of the soul. My experience has said to me, "At least for you, sojourner, this is truth."