Day 28

'If you can't get out of it, get into it.'

Outward Bound is a non-profit educational organization that invite people to experience self-discovery and personal growth through a life-changing wilderness experiences. Whether true or not, I once read a story that indicated the title quote was one of their unofficial 'mottoes.' When I read it, I thought it wouldn't be a bad personal motto.

To think that we might live long life without ever experiencing the 'winters' of failure, betrayal, depression or death is delusional at best. While we need not circumambulate the globe of personal experience in pursuit of these winters, it's equally inadvisable to chase the 'summer' sun.

In one of her spiritual memoirs, When the Heart Waits, Sue Monk Kidd writes about her personal winter experiences. Quoting TS Eliot, she began, "I said to my soul, be still, and let the darkness come upon you. Which shall be the darkness of God."

In a chapter titled, 'Incubating in the darkness,' she continues,

"I feel as if a candle has blown out inside me. Earlier today I read a passage from New Seeds of Contemplation in which (Thomas) Merton said that if the person who has come upon the spiritual dark night is carried away with impatience, ‘he will run away from the darkness and do the best he can to dope himself with the first light that comes along.’ That’s my temptation. This idea of remaining in the darkness is foreign to me. I'm a light-seeking creature and an impatient one at that. But could it be that
seeking light, real light, not the artificial stuff, comes only by dwelling for a time in the dark? Dear Lord I don't think I can stand more paradox!

...The darkness gets excruciating. In fact, the other word that sums up my
darkness is tension. In the dark cave of my own being, I'm brought into sharper
contact with my pain. At night shadows that I cant see in daylight play on the
wall. I see my wounds, my conflicts, my incompetencies, and my longing in
heightened outlines on the walls of my soul.

I'd like to be rid of this darkness. To unwrap the cocoon. Get busy. Do something to take my mind off my ‘suffering,’ latch onto some easy, neon answer that will camouflage the shadows. But I have the sense lurking inside that there’s a mystery unfolding in the darkness that can't come any other way.

Could it be that this is a holy dark?"

Considering the many biblical images of darkness, we might do well to embrace the dark winters and see what emerges: Jonah's three days in the darkness of the great fish; Saul's three days of darkness before his sight regaining conversion; and of course, Jesus' three days in the darkness of the tomb.

As we encounter our own dark days of winter, may we feel the warmth of others nearby, even if we are still unable to see them.