walking into the darkness with trust...

When I look back in time at the ripening of my heart - the deepening of my spiritual practices and the awareness of the sacred within the ordinary - I see my increased comfort with darkness. Mystery. Unknowing. I have known two seasons of what some call the dark night of the soul. They have been profound and even illuminating in an upside down way. More consistently, however, is an incremental appreciation of the via negativa - the apophatic path of knowing - a spirituality of silence and waiting given a Western expression by John Henry Newman, the 19th century poet and priest:

They watch for Christ

who are sensitive, eager, apprehensive in mind,

who are awake, alive, quick-sighted...

who look for him in all that happens, and

who would not be surprised

who would not be over-agitated or overwhelmed,

if they found that he was coming at once...

This then is to watch:

to be detached from what is present, and

to live in what is unseen. 

I may prefer another word rather than detached: in this I am not in agreement with the old master, preferring instead to use relinquished in relationship to our present moment in time. To watch, then, becomes an intentional letting go of my addiction to certainty so that the darkness might mature. Or evolve and become its fullest self. This is how mystics speak of contemplation: not as navel-gazing or obsessively withdrawing from reality; but, rather, as creating space on a regular basis to take a long, loving look at reality. To listen and feel the truth beyond the obvious. To practice trusting the unforced rhythms of grace even when there is no discernible evidence . Barbara Brown Taylor confesses in her marvelous book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, that she has:

learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light... new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark. If I have any expertise, it is in the realm of spiritual darkness: fear of the unknown, familiarity with divine absence, mistrust of conventional wisdom, suspicion of religious comforters, keen awareness of the limits of all language about God and at the same time shame over my inability to speak of God without a thousand qualifiers, doubt about the health of my soul, and barely suppressed contempt for those who have no such qualms. These are the areas of my proficiency.

The via negativa is a humble spiritual path than honors doubt. It encourages questions. And practices silence rather than proclamation. In Western Christianity the via negativia and the via positiva - the apophatic and kataphatic practices -both  find expression in the liturgical year. The Paschal Triduum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Feast of the Resurrection on Easter morning honors the obscurity of God's loving presence as well as the bold and bright albeit equally undefinable blessings of new life. 

A similar cycle takes place in the spiritual journey of Advent into Christmas and

then Epiphany. Advent takes place in the night. In the silence. In the mystery. It asks us to practice waiting which is likely the reasons Americans ignore it. One of the spiritual formation master teachers of our generation, Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, writes that the practices of Advent are qualitatively feminine. By living into them we all learn about balancing the inward/outward journey. We find ways to honor both the holy feminine and the sacred masculine, too. She note in her brilliant To Dance with God, that in the West:

our masculine confines want to blast away waiting from our lives. Instant gratification has become our constitutional right and delay an aberration. We equate waiting with wasting.  So we build Concorde airplanes, drink instant coffee, roll out green plastic and call it turf, and reach for the phone before we reach for the pen. (NOTE: this was written before the advent of so-called smart phones!) The more life asks us to wait, the more we anxiously hurry. The tempt of haste in which we live has less to do with being on time or the efficiency of a busy life - it has ore to do with our being unable to wait. But waiting is unpractical time, good for nothing but mysteriously necessary to all that is becoming. As in a pregnancy, nothing of value comes into being without a period of quiet incubation: not a healthy baby, not a loving relationship, not a reconciliation, a new understanding, a work of art, never a transformation. Rather, a shortened period of incubation brings forth that which is not whole or strong or even alive. Brewing, baking, simmering, fermenting, ripening, germinating, gestating are the feminine processes of become and they are the symbolic states of being which belong in a live of value, necessary to real transformation. 

Advent is my favorite time in the church calendar. It is saturated in mystery. Its music hints at the holy and lures me gently away from busyness without ever being pushy or brash. It is all about chants and candles, rather than trumpets and bonfires. It invites us to the birth of a baby whose very vulnerability tells a truth about the Lord if we're willing to watch and wait. And Advent into Christmas happens at night. A prayer from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer, A Litany of Darkness and Light, offers an apophatic corrective to the triumphalistic proclamations of so much of Western Christianity.

We wait in the darkness, expectantly, longingly, anxiously, thoughtfully. The darkness is our friend. In the darkness of the womb, we have all been nurtured and protected. In the darkness of the womb, the Christ-child was made ready for the journey into light. It is only in the darkness that we can see the splendor of the universe - blankets of stars - the solitary glowings of distant planets. It was the darkness that allowed the Magi to find the star that led them to where the Christ-child lay. Int the darkness of night, desert peoples find relief from the cruel, relentless heat of the sun. In the blessed desert darkness, Mary and Joseph were able to flee with the infant Jesus to safety in Egypt. In the darkness of sleep, we are soothed and restored, healed and renewed. In the darkness of sleep, dreams rise up. God spoke to Jacob and Joseph through dreams - and God is still speaking. In the solitude of darkness, we sometimes remember those who need God's presence ins a special way - the sick, the unemployed, the bereaved, the persecuted, the homeless, those who are demoralized and discouraged, those whose fear has turned to cynicism, those whose vulnerability has become bitterness... Sometimes, in the solitude of darkness, our own fears and concerns, our hopes and visions, rise to the surface. We come face to face with ourselves and with the road that lies ahead of us. And in that same darkness, we find companionship for the journey. We know you are with us, O God, yet we still await your coming. In the darkness that contains both our hopelessness and our expectancy, we watch for a sign of your hope.

Tomorrow is Christ the King Sunday in the Western Church - the close of the Christian year - the Sunday before Advent begins. It asks me to give up my desire for quick solutions and magic bullets. Christ lives as Messiah not because of race, class, gender or power, but because he chooses the way of quiet compassion for all of us. He shares small moments of tenderness with those in need and then asks that we do likewise. "Follow me" he teaches, "and your joy shall be full." Complete. It is the logic of his upside down kingdom that helps us grasp that by giving we receive, that by dying we find true life, and by living into the via negativia we are filled from the inside out.