regarding what can be called the post-honeymoon phase of spiritual journeys. For many people who have an adult conversion experience, and probably many who come to faith in youth - I just cannot speak to that experience, they find the initial years in their young relationship with God vibrant, exciting, and emotionally charged. Often times that rich experience fades to a dry, emotionless and dull one. This is what John of the Cross called the dark night of the soul (I haven’t read his book by that title yet, but it has been bumped to the top of my list).According to Chan and some old school Christians whom he cites, this dark night of the soul can be a long and arduous experience. A common response to this period is to set aside the practice of prayer and live the rest of life in this spiritual comatose. I have to admit that I have begun to walk down that path, hanging up any real notion of spiritual discipline because, to be frank, it isn’t as enjoyable.
A popular belief in many Christian circles today is that if we aren’t enjoying our time with God, then we are doing something wrong. That may be true in some limited instances, but if our spiritual ancestors like John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila are correct then unenjoyable spiritual discipline is a crucible in many believers lives that must be met with grit and dedication, not self-loathing and shame. If we believe in the perspective that says that a healthy relationship with God must be marked with happy and emblazoned emotions, I think we might be doomed for failure when we hit the dark night and find that no amount of effort can squelch our dissatisfaction or even outright displeasure in prayer. However, if we approach this displeasure as an acceptable fact of life, and not a symptom of a disingenuous faith, then we can meet it with greater perseverance and drive.
Chan and John of the Cross do not paint a dreary picture in which no end is in sight for the dark night of the soul, but the end may be a long ways off and the other side may still not look like the emotionally charged puppy love of the believers first years. According to them, the other side is often still a sober, but more mature and even richer relationship with God than the honeymoon. We must spend the time in between with a faithful and disciplined life of prayer, despite any displeasure, to find that matured faith.
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4 comments:
Ross your Blog is Awesome! I totally agree with you in regards to spritual discipline regarding prayer and how improtant it is to maintain in those Dark nights of the Soul.
In C.S. Lewis's autobiography, 'Surprised by Joy' he describes moments he has in his life that he calls brief but profound spiritual connections to God. He defines those moments simply as "Joy." It's the desire for the numenous something that is always just beyond our grasp.
I think a big challenge for Christians today (including myself) is the feeling that we need to hold on to and define those moments of "Joy" as an end in itself. What I mean is that we try to merely embrace the feeling of "Joy" instead of drinkning in and drawing close to the cause/source of "Joy". I also think that a challenge I personally face is to try to (greedily) reproduce that feeling of "Joy" only to never find it. The Irony is that whenever I am not looking for it, perhaps in those Dark nights of the Soul, I always seem to find it in the distance returning to me and drawing me in. I cannot Manufacture those moments I must allow them to happen, usually I find them in my moments of prayer, solitude, silence, or in the wilderness. Apologies if this got too long, but I just found your blog and figured a bit of Lewis can always contrubute. Love!
Thanks for the contribution (and the compliments on my blog), Nick! I totally agree with you that we cannot manufacture those profound moments. I wonder if that desire and false notion that we should be able to produce those moments whenever we desire is in someway connected to our ability to have on demand experiences through readily accessible entertainment (Movies, Ipods, TiVo, etc.). If I want to experience thrill I can pop in the latest installment of the Freddy movies (or would that be humor?). If I want to experience romantic emotions I can bring-up Sinatra, or Fergie for some I suppose, on my Ipod. Spiritual experiences of joy just aren’t the same though. Just like any human relationship (marriages come to my mind as a good example), we cannot expect those profound and beautiful Kodak moments to arise on demand.
I have to include the caveat that I think we can and should make ourselves available to experience those profound moments with God (through things like what you mentioned - prayer, solitude, silence, etc.). But we cannot be consumer spiritualists expecting to produce profoundness on our terms. I am of course guilty myself of this consumer spirituality.
Ross, well said. This is a challenge Heidi and I have with our High School Youth Group Kids who have grown up in the "Instant Gratification"/"God is my Cosmic Vending Machine" type of world. The notion of listening, quieting everything around us, finding God in the margins of our daily life and bringing him in are lost in the, as you call it, On Demand culture we live in. I'll have to tell you about the Backpacking Trip I just got back from where Heidi and I took 7 Calvary kids to the Colorado Mountains. Some very interesting observations were had out there in "The Wild"
One of the tough parts for me (and I imagine for Christian youth also) is taking the discipline and time to make ourselves available to God to experience those profound moments while acknowledging that most of the times we sit with God no profundity will show-up.
It's like trouncing through the wilderness looking for wildlife. The ratio between time spent in the woods and time spent seeing interesting wildlife is not a very even one. How many trips do you make, how many hours do you hike, how many ticks do you accumulate before you actually see something really cool?
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