Where is God in the darkness?
I have been keeping you close to my heart this past week in prayer and thought. I am still amazed at the searching desire you have for truth—especially truth as lived and experienced within authentic relationships. Truth, where it should be nourished, at home, in charity…in love…I can’t fathom the full extent of the pain you feel in reconciling, or at least desiring to reconcile with someone so close to you—psychologically, biologically, emotionally, symbolically—who may have no concept of the distance, be it physical or psychological, that has set in over time because of the weight of sin…sin being any form of denial of love, of intimacy…any action that favors chaos over peace; lifestyle choices that promote discord instead of deep, intimate bonding. It is a life of accusation as opposed to a life of joyful tension, where each is accorded their own share of downfall and misery, all at once welcomed by understanding, and most importantly: mercy…
When we last talked you mentioned being upset with God, or at least a difficulty in not knowing how to relate to God in the midst of this life-changing circumstance. You mentioned how your own conception of God had developed from that of the “mob boss” to one who is for you, with you and desires your good… but how can God be at work in the midst of your sorrow, your misery, your difficulties to bring you closer to Him, to life, to your ultimate fulfillment? That’s the question that every heart, including my own, asks incessantly…how can an all-loving God really love me if I am struggling, suffering, under siege in this or that way?
I can’t tell you how exactly God is at work in your life…I wish I could, but I can’t even tell you how He is at work in mine! There are glimpses, of course, of grace, of His action in and among us…but it is all a mystery. Today, I realized the overwhelming necessity of this point: God is beyond. He is transcendent. Our language fails to enthrone the immensity of who, of what, God is…even to call God “He” undercuts the reality of his nature as something entirely beyond our humanity…but the fact is God is BEING itself…and the early Israelites knew this, as much as they could…when God revealed Himself to His people as “I am who am…” to Moses at the sight of the burning bush. It is this God whose very being as Being has laid the foundation of Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought and belief…of course, the nature of God in Christianity utterly falls in upon itself—we could say, “fleshes” itself out, through the mystery of the incarnation. The entirety of God’s presence, alive in the flesh in Jesus Christ: two natures, his humanity alongside his divinity. God becomes man, so that man might become, participate in the life of God, in the life of being itself…but I digress, theological fancies you can tell I don’t have time to express too often.
But back to the point of God’s transcendence: today, we visited a Byzantine (Eastern) Rite Catholic Church. The experience of the liturgy was so overwhelming! Everything was sung—chanted…there were cantors in the back of the Church constantly calling upon the mercy of God and the intercession of Mary, the saints…we must have sung, “Lord have mercy” at least 30 times…we could not see the altar like we would in a Roman Catholic Church (Latin Rite)…note on the Rites: Latin rite refers to the Catholic faith and liturgy as it developed in western countries; the Byzantine Catholic Rite is one of many Eastern rites as it developed in countries like Turkey, Hungary, Russia, Greece, India etc…we could not see the altar because we are meant to mediate, to lock eyes with the eyes of the saints, the icon on the iconostasis:
There was incense constantly being smoked upon the images, upon the congregation, a streaming vestige representing, some might say even carrying, our cries, our prayers unto God who is beyond us…sealed beyond the wall of the icons, alive in the life of those who have achieved a life deemed worth of the title: saint. Sanctimonious men and women who have denied the wiles of the world, the ways of wantonness, who have rejected a life of slavery to sin (as mentioned above) and have yoked themselves to the propagation of peace, of love, of light and life which is truly the kingdom of God, here at hand, as proclaimed by John the Baptist, that wild man wearing camel’s hair and honey in the desert regions of the Jordan river, biological cousin of Jesus Christ, the last of the prophets believed and accepted to be the final voice sent to prepare the way of the Lord—He, like those holy witnesses, are voices crying out in the desert, the arid regions of our world, of our lives, of our hearts…calling for mercy, calling for love, calling from a place of weakness, longing to be heard…
And it is here where I come back to the question that often sits in our hearts: where is God in my suffering? Where is God in the silence? Where is God in a world that wants nothing to do with incense, images, and ideals of hope, holiness, and heaven?
For people like me and you, God must be found in the heart—no longer in any intellectual debate or foreign palisade…God must be encountered in the living, beating, sanctuary of our souls…and we needn’t know what or how a soul is other than the fact that it simply is, as that space which represents the most intimate parts of ourselves…where our love abides, where our memories reside, where our will springs forth, where we struggle to understand…a soul that is deeply integrated with the truth and integrity of our human person, a person that has a brain, a body; as one who is conscious, yet conscious all the more of a side of his or her self, yes, his or her soul, that is entirely, one must say: spiritual.
For people like me and you, we must speak the language of the heart: this language is a language of love, and the most intimate language of love is not physical, is not voyeuristic, it is a loving gaze given in silence. Yes, as we’ve said before: silence is the language of love, the language of God, of a God, who I hope you come to know as Love. As nothing else but love…for the deepest mystery remains here, a mystery the world does not dare to accept: that God is love. God is not some old-bearded man with a scepter summoning showers upon nations…God is not some distant deity dancing around us in our sorrows…God is not the dollar sign or the naked body…God is love, and love is much more than pleasure…Love, true love, life-giving love, does not always feel good...for love manifests itself in sacrifice. Love is the labor pains of a mother. Love is the sacrifice of leaving home to find work to provide for your wife and children. Love is the act of laying down your life for a stranger, so that they might have life, and have it abundantly… For a God who is Creator, who is Love, He gives of Himself in making us…and in making men the greatest sacrifice has been made: a gift of life entrusted to a race of free men and women who may or may not choose to recognize, return, the gift of love to its source…that is sacred, that is scary, that is sacrifice, it is love…
For people like me and you, we can learn how to love through the difficulties of this world by prayer, by speaking to God…and the ancient Jewish tradition has left us with a treasury of prayers, of psalms, songs of praise, of petition, of lament, of thanksgiving, that give language to the heart. In order for us to sit in the silence of God, to receive the grace and life that He does indeed desire to give us, we must first speak, we must surrender all of our feelings, our resentments, our joys, our fears, everything, in order to truly empty ourselves, so as to sit in the silence of God, so as to be filled with the very life of His Spirit.
This past week I could not stop thinking about you and our conversation as we were learning about the psalms. The psalms were presented to us as a “gymnasium of the soul” (from the words of St. Ambrose)—a place where every human capacity and emotion could be exercised in its completeness. The psalms validate the whole range of our humanity: our emotions and experiences…but they don’t stop with us…they are not meant to draw us simply into our own hearts…from the space of our heart, the psalms orient us into dialogue with God. And the heart is the space, the place of this encounter.
The psalms tell us that it is OK to be angry with God. You can be upset with God. You can doubt God. You can tell God your fears, your anguish, your anxiety…the psalms remind us that no one knows the depth and range of our human experiences more than the creator…
There is a chilling psalm that strikes exactly at the depths of what you may have felt or have been feeling recently… Psalm 88. It is a lament…an experience of anguish…
LORD, the God of my salvation, I call out by day;
at night I cry aloud in your presence.a
Let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry.b
For my soul is filled with troubles;c
my life draws near to Sheol.
I am reckoned with those who go down to the pit;
I am like a warrior without strength.
My couch is among the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave.
You remember them no more;
they are cut off from your influence.
You plunge me into the bottom of the pit,
into the darkness of the abyss.
Your wrath lies heavy upon me;
all your waves crash over me.d
Because of you my acquaintances shun me;
you make me loathsome to them;e
Caged in, I cannot escape;
my eyes grow dim from trouble.
All day I call on you, LORD;
I stretch out my hands to you.
Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do the shades arise and praise you?f
Is your mercy proclaimed in the grave,
your faithfulness among those who have perished?*
Are your marvels declared in the darkness,
your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?
But I cry out to you, LORD;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
Why do you reject my soul, LORD,
and hide your face from me?
I have been mortally afflicted since youth;
I have borne your terrors and I am made numb.
Your wrath has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me.g
All day they surge round like a flood;
from every side they encircle me.
Because of you friend and neighbor shun me;h
my only friend is darkness.
The experience of the psalmist is one of utter darkness…their only friend…what does this anguish, this emptiness mean for our relationship with God? Our formation director asked us this very question…and he cited a Poor Clare nun’s response, and here I paraphrase: Well…the person is still in dialogue with God…the problem arises when we break this dialogue.
In the midst of your struggle, my prayer for you is not that your problems would “go away”…that is shallow and it is secular foolishness…I fall into it all of the time whenever I tell someone: “Oh, it’ll work out!” or “Everything will be okay!”…Perhaps your situation does not change, perhaps the one who is wounded in your life will continue to wound you…what matters then is how you respond, how you receive and react to this situation.
I’d say that our response must boil down to one of two words: misery or mercy. We can either remain trapped in the darkness of God, and truly silence ourselves by shutting the door of our hearts to God’s truth, his life, his light, his grace…this is non-being, this is a life lived in slavery to sin, to darkness, to despair, an attachment to self-loathing and misery. Or we can open wide the doors of our hearts—IN THE MIDST OF—misery…for God does not love his children in spite of our sins or errors, but God loves us in the midst of our woundedness…in fact, in our weakness, our utter inability to heal our own broken natures, we have an even greater right to call out, to cry for the mercy of God…and mercy is the medicine of the soul…in its Latin root, misericordia or mercy, means giving heart to the miserable…God meets us in our darkness not with fire and brimstone, not with judgement, but with mercy…and as we receive, so we can give…and as we give, so we come to enlarge our capacity to receive this great gift of love all the more…we cannot eradicate the reality of our misery or the misery of the world…but we can, no…we must call upon God who is merciful to continue in HIS BEING AS CREATOR, to bring light out of darkness, life out of death, all things out of nothingness…
God has created us and placed us before the mountain of this life. He begins with us up this mountain, He continues with us throughout our progress…the ascent steepens, the climb becomes more challenging…we approach a precipice, does God now leave us behind? When the going gets tough? Never…God is eternal, His Being unchanging…in our flippancy our grip upon his hand loosens…and we become afraid…and we forget He will always provide us a way through…surprising as it may be…
It’s like you told me once before, many weeks ago: our names are written upon the palm of God’s hands…he holds us in the palms of His hands…
So He does now, in our darkness all the more. Do not be deceived by the strength of turmoil you feel…trust in our God who is Mercy, who is Love. The psalms might provide a language through which your heart can speak, can abide in the midst of this difficulty. But do not despair, even in the midst of your desperation. There is hope, there is hope in Love; of this I am assured…and all we need are the eyes of faith to see…
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