The Dark Night

Recently, I read The Dark Night of the Soul by Gerald G. May, M.D. I don’t know about you, but before I read this book when I heard someone talk about the “dark night,” I understood that to mean a season when a person was experiencing great suffering, things in their life were probably pretty miserable, and they might also feel disconnected from God.  

In May’s book, he takes insights from Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross and invites us into a historical glimpse of the dark night while giving us language to understand this idea better today.  

Both Teresa and John were born in Spain—Teresa in 1515 and John in 1542. Since they both spoke Spanish, the original wording for the dark night was noche oscura. May says the word “oscura” is translated as dark, but its root meaning is obscure, and he invites us to think about the dark night as an actual night that is very dark, obscuring our vision.  

While reading this, I was reminded of a trip our family took several years ago. My husband wanted to take pictures of the Milky Way. To get these pictures, he mapped out the best time of the month to go—when the moon wouldn’t be visible in the sky, making the sky as dark as possible. Not only did he choose the darkest night, but he also chose a campsite far from any city light.  

As we walked out into the field he had selected to take pictures in, the night was pitch black. There was no light for miles around, and the horizon was dark. We had to walk very slowly so that we wouldn’t fall or run into anything, and the darkness obscured our view.  

Yet, once we got settled and looked up into the sky, what we saw was nothing like I’d ever seen. It was breathtaking. The Milky Way was visible to our naked eye, and the magnitude of stars we could see was spectacular. This view would not have been possible within the city with all the shining lights. We needed to be in the darkness to appreciate it.  

Early in the book, May writes about the dark night: “It is a deep transformation, a movement toward indescribable freedom and joy. And in truth it doesn’t always have to be unpleasant.” 

Later, he writes, “The process just keeps going on. As far as I can tell, the dark night of the soul is endless. This is, for me, the most hopeful thing about it; the dark night is nothing other than our ongoing relationship with the Divine. As such, it must always remain mysterious, dark to our understanding and comprehension, illuminated only by brief moments of dawning light. And as such it never ends; it just keeps deepening, revealing more and more intimate layers of freedom for love.” 

The beauty of the dark night is the invitation to slow down and pay attention differently. If you’ve ever driven on a dark highway with no street lights for miles, you know you have to slow down as you approach turns that are unfamiliar to you. You have to leave time to observe the road as it comes into view.  

The idea of darkness ebbing and flowing feels hopeful. In some seasons, we can see so clearly ahead of us; the light of day radiates around us, and we can see for miles, but at other times, the darkness is so thick that we seem to slow almost to a stop while we explore what we cannot see.  

May continues, “As our dark nights deepen, we find ourselves recovering our love of mystery. When we were children, most of us were good friends with mystery. The world was full of it and we loved it. Then as we grew older, we slowly accepted the indoctrination that mystery exists only to be solved. For many of us, mystery became an adversary; unknowing became a weakness. The contemplative spiritual life is an ongoing reversal of this adjustment. It is a slow and sometimes painful process of becoming ‘as little children’ again, in which we first make friends with mystery and finally fall in love again with it. And in that love we find an ever increasing freedom to be who we really are in an identity that is continually emerging and never defined. We are freed to join the dance of life in fullness without having a clue about what the steps are.” 

I resonate deeply with his idea that mystery became an adversary; unknowing became a weakness. I feel I’ve been on a long road of discovery back toward embracing mystery as a friend.    

~  Melissa