Cal Roeker's comment on last week's blog - that we are often left alone with anger - dovetail's with a comment made by a woman in a prayer group that I recently attended. She had read somewhere of a "fall into the abyss of God," and thought it a beautiful expression: "You just let go and fall into God's love!" I, too, liked that idea, but that is not what I have read by those well along on the spiritual path. Rather, most (but not all - St Francis's "abyss" followed another path) relate that, after the calling has been heard, and then a personal relationship with God is established, comes a great challenge: that which St John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul." We have talked of it before here, but I think it is too often dismissed as a time of simple doubt and retrenchment. From what I have read, it involves far more than that, and we see it not only in the lives of the saints, but in more average lives like most, if not all, of those reading this (and he who writes this).
Finishing the book The Shadow of the Valley of Death by Kermit Alexander et al., we find that, after the murder of his mother, sister, and two nephews in 1984, he had to undergo 30 years of living hell before he could truly pull his life together, even after the guilty were apprehended and sentenced, either to death or to life without parole. For him, this gave no closer. Rather, he had to fight his anger, an anger that was first forged by perceived racism towards blacks in America and later encouraged in his work, professional football. This continued until his near death decades later while alone and sick in a motel in the Great Plains. It was shortly after this that, at age 69, he married a blond-haired, blue-eyed white woman (his description), and adopted five desolate children (brothers and sisters) from Haiti. We are left to wonder if the marriage ameliorated his resentment (hatred?) of white people, but we are left with no doubts about the healing affects of his adopted children. He felt, at last, that he was making a concrete contribution to the same kind of people - poor black youth - who had killed many in his family - and thus was helping to end the cycle of poverty and crime. He also felt that the love of a large family had brought him back to the love that had been lost with the murders. We are left feeling that life was, at last, not only good for him again, but better than it ever had been - but also that the road to this redemption was hell itself. He had fallen into the abyss and recovered, but we understand that we would never choose this path for ourselves. Ever.
Last week I saw the movie, "The Letters of Mother Teresa," and (as I had already known) we were told that in her greatest years of charitable work, she had felt abandoned by God, left alone and miserable. In fact, it was this, as much as the miracles that came after her death, that told the Vatican that M Teresa was a saint, for that IS the saint's pass - to lose everything, even the notion and feeling of the presence of God.
That is the abyss that I believe the woman in my group was unwittingly referring to. It is a true abyss of terror and hopelessness, of utter abandonment (My God, why have you forsaken me?) that most who truly are close to unity with God must suffer. It is so, we are told by those who know, not because of a perverse side to God, but because everything we think we know about God is wrong in its incompleteness. Like the natural athlete who has to unlearn what he has known to become truly great under a top-notch coach, so the natural athletes of the soul must lose every notion of God before they can truly become one with God. So it was as well that Kermit had to struggle with his anger for 30 years until near death, before he could come out the other side.
As I told this woman of these things that I had read, I finished with something that seemed obvious in my own experience: "The good thing is," I told her, "is that most of us will never have to undergo such trials. Most of us simply will never get that close to God (or, I add here, most will not have to revise their entire life's direction, as did Kermit). She responded as I would have if I had not read so much about the paths of the saints:"But I want to!"
If one is touched by God, or the "force" - whatever one wants to call the unknowable - one DOES want to draw ever closer. In fact, with time, everything else seems less and less important, and that is a good thing. I think, however, that for whatever reason, most of us were meant to live out our human-centered lives, at least until death. It is there, or just before, that I believe we all meet our own dark night of the soul. Where this leads - to heaven, purgatory, another dimension - I cannot say, but it, too, will be like nothing we have known. To find it, we must literally die to ourselves. This is not only symbolic, but the very real way of life that none can avoid. FK
Finishing the book The Shadow of the Valley of Death by Kermit Alexander et al., we find that, after the murder of his mother, sister, and two nephews in 1984, he had to undergo 30 years of living hell before he could truly pull his life together, even after the guilty were apprehended and sentenced, either to death or to life without parole. For him, this gave no closer. Rather, he had to fight his anger, an anger that was first forged by perceived racism towards blacks in America and later encouraged in his work, professional football. This continued until his near death decades later while alone and sick in a motel in the Great Plains. It was shortly after this that, at age 69, he married a blond-haired, blue-eyed white woman (his description), and adopted five desolate children (brothers and sisters) from Haiti. We are left to wonder if the marriage ameliorated his resentment (hatred?) of white people, but we are left with no doubts about the healing affects of his adopted children. He felt, at last, that he was making a concrete contribution to the same kind of people - poor black youth - who had killed many in his family - and thus was helping to end the cycle of poverty and crime. He also felt that the love of a large family had brought him back to the love that had been lost with the murders. We are left feeling that life was, at last, not only good for him again, but better than it ever had been - but also that the road to this redemption was hell itself. He had fallen into the abyss and recovered, but we understand that we would never choose this path for ourselves. Ever.
Last week I saw the movie, "The Letters of Mother Teresa," and (as I had already known) we were told that in her greatest years of charitable work, she had felt abandoned by God, left alone and miserable. In fact, it was this, as much as the miracles that came after her death, that told the Vatican that M Teresa was a saint, for that IS the saint's pass - to lose everything, even the notion and feeling of the presence of God.
That is the abyss that I believe the woman in my group was unwittingly referring to. It is a true abyss of terror and hopelessness, of utter abandonment (My God, why have you forsaken me?) that most who truly are close to unity with God must suffer. It is so, we are told by those who know, not because of a perverse side to God, but because everything we think we know about God is wrong in its incompleteness. Like the natural athlete who has to unlearn what he has known to become truly great under a top-notch coach, so the natural athletes of the soul must lose every notion of God before they can truly become one with God. So it was as well that Kermit had to struggle with his anger for 30 years until near death, before he could come out the other side.
As I told this woman of these things that I had read, I finished with something that seemed obvious in my own experience: "The good thing is," I told her, "is that most of us will never have to undergo such trials. Most of us simply will never get that close to God (or, I add here, most will not have to revise their entire life's direction, as did Kermit). She responded as I would have if I had not read so much about the paths of the saints:"But I want to!"
If one is touched by God, or the "force" - whatever one wants to call the unknowable - one DOES want to draw ever closer. In fact, with time, everything else seems less and less important, and that is a good thing. I think, however, that for whatever reason, most of us were meant to live out our human-centered lives, at least until death. It is there, or just before, that I believe we all meet our own dark night of the soul. Where this leads - to heaven, purgatory, another dimension - I cannot say, but it, too, will be like nothing we have known. To find it, we must literally die to ourselves. This is not only symbolic, but the very real way of life that none can avoid. FK
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