Faith grows. Which means faith does not stay the same. Which
means sometimes when we look to those familiar places in our minds and hearts for
our accustomed faith, it’s not there. Something unfamiliar has taken its place.
Usually, when we come to these moments in our spiritual lives, we’re so struck
by the absence of familiar faith we
forget to remember that this is how growth works. New wineskins for new wine!
New shells for growing crabs! New experiences of evolving faith!
The longer we live, the more chances we have to remember to
remember.
Following is another passage from Gerald May’s book,
The Dark Night of the Soul. He describes aspects of this experience of growth lovingly
and perceptively.
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The deeper, more penetrating—and usually more
painful—dimensions of the passive night of the spirit (an aspect of the dark
night of the soul) have to do with changes in people’s habitual sense of
relationship with God.
A common experience, often confusing but not too painful, is
that the word “God” loses its meaning. That word, which used to bring forth
familiar images and feelings, now seems inadequate and somehow even wrong. And
there seems to be no satisfactory substitute. One learns experientially what
John and Teresa continually affirm: no words, not even the divine names, can
ever adequately portray the Reality.
A much more unsettling experience is the loss of the sense
of God’s presence, which can often feel like being abandoned by God. Many
people are used to a consistent and long-lasting feeling of the presence of God
in their lives. It may be a distinct sense of presence, of companionship
everywhere. It may happen more in relationship with children, spouse, or other
beloved people. It may occur in special places, as in church or outdoors in
nature. Even more often it is just too subtle to describe at all. Whatever form
it takes, however, it is sensible, palpable, and deeply meaningful. Then,
sometimes, it disappears.
Though we don’t realize it at the time, when habitual senses
of God do disappear in the process of the dark night, it is surely because it
is time for us to relinquish our attachment to them. We have made an idol our
images and feelings of God, giving them more importance than the true God they
represent. This can happen with any image or sense of the Divine. For example,
some people have a long-lasting sense of God as distant, harsh, and judgmental.
Others feel that God absolutely controls their destiny; they have nothing to
say about it. Others feel much the opposite: that if there is any God at all,
it is a God who leaves them alone to fend for themselves. Still others carry
with them a steady sense of God’s loving presence, comfortable and reassuring
but static, never inviting challenges or risks. No matter what specific form
they may take, all such rigidly held feelings about God restrict our openness
to the incomprehensible divine reality.
The passive night of the spirit serves to loosen our hold on
such expectations, to leave us more willing to accept God’s being as God will.
As with other changes occurring in the dark night, this process can sometimes
feel delightfully liberating; bright new vistas of possibility open as we let
go of old habits. More often, though, it feels as though the foundations of
faith are being shaken. It is easy to understand how devastating such an
experience might be. For people who are deeply in love with God, the loss of a
habitual sense of God’s presence can seem like a greater abandonment than the
loss of human love. Here again, people are likely to feel it is somehow their
fault; they wonder where they went so wrong to cause the divine Lover to disappear.
And when this loss is accompanied by lassitude and emptiness in prayer and
other spiritual practices and lack of motivation for them, a person may easily
wonder, “Do I even believe in anything anymore? Do I even care?”
When the spiritual life feels so uprooted, it can be almost
impossible to believe—or even to consider—that what’s really going on is a
graceful process of liberation, a letting go of old, limiting habits to make
room for fresh openness to love.
Therein lies the wisdom. Teresa and John both say that we
easily become so attached to feelings of and about God that we equate them with
God. We forget that these sensations are only speaking to us of the divine One.
They are only messengers. Instead, we take them for the whole of God’s self,
and thus we wind up worshiping our own feelings. This is perhaps the most
common idolatry of the spiritual life.
I remember having an almost continual sense of God’s
presence as a very small child. The feeling receded as I grew older and other
things occupied my attention. Later in life, when I embarked on my intentional
“spiritual journey,” I realized how much I had missed that feeling of continual
companionship. I sought to recover it in prayer and meditation, and I prayed
for it to return. I experienced the Holy through other people, through nature,
and in many other mediated ways. But what I longed for was that old non-mediated,
immediate sense of direct, palpable relationship. I searched and prayed for it
for nearly twenty-five years. Then, when I was very sick as a result of cancer
chemotherapy, it came back to me. And since then, that sense of presence has
never left me. I can feel it anywhere, anytime. All I have to do is turn my
attention toward it. I love it and surely would hate to lose it. It’s the
answer to a very long prayer. But I know it is not God. It is only a sense of
God. I don’t think I make an idol of it, so I don’t imagine it will need to be
taken away. If at some point I do lose it again, I hope I will be given the
wisdom to continue to trust God in the absence of any sense of God.
God is always working obscurely within us. And, even more
mysteriously, some part of us is saying yes to God’s invitations to go where we
do not want to go.
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Another hymn we sing at St. David’s is below. It’s
about this freedom we have to grow in faith--how it’s possible to find our way in our growing experience of God. If you want to sing it, the tune is Sursum Corda.
There are no fences in the fields of God,
an open country greets an endless sky;
but there are landmarks to direct a step
and vivid features to engage the eye.
We find good pasture on the highest hills
and streams between alive with water sound
and groves of trees to shade a sun-scorched back,
the rich ecology of holy ground.
No staff is raised to snatch a wandering sheep;
we are not branded, hobbled, bound or belled.
But when we stumble over rock or ledge
we have a certain sense of being held.
There are no fences in the fields of God,
to come and go is an abiding choice;
but like the flock before we’ve come to trust
the supple tether of a shepherd’s voice.
