Dark Night of the Soul

Listening to this audiobook as part of the KC Public Library Winter 2013 Adult Reading Program 'While the City Sleeps' ( )

Songs of the Soul

On a dark night,
Inflamed by love-longing -
O exquisite risk! -
Undetected I slipped away.
My house, at last, grown still.
Secure in the darkness,
I climbed the secret ladder in disguise -
O exquisite risk! -
Concealed by the darkness.
My house, at last, grown still.

That sweet night: a secret.
Nobody saw me;
I did not see a thing.
No other light, no other guide
Than the one burning in my heart.

This light led the way
More clearly than the risen sun
To where he was waiting for me

- The one I knew so intimately -
In a place where no one could find us.

O night, that guided me!
O night, sweeter than sunrise!
O night, that joined lover with Beloved!
Lover transformed in Beloved!
Upon my blossoming breast,
Which I cultivated just for him,
He drifted into sleep,
And while I caressed him,
A cedar breeze touched the air.

Wind blew down from the tower,
Parting the locks of his hair.
With his gentle hand
He wounded my neck
And all my senses were suspended.

I lost myself. Forgot myself.
I lay my face against the Beloved's face.
Everything fell away and I left myself behind,
Abandoning my cares
Among the lilies, forgotten.

Upon a darkened night
The flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern bright
I fled my house while all in quiet rest...

I was first introduced to this famous poem by 16th-century mystic St. John of the Cross through Loreena McKennitt's song on her album "The Mask and Mirror." It's a beautiful piece of work describing the soul's union with God, and I was interested to read the theological treatise he wrote later in his life about it. Unfortunately, the poem is much better read by itself than painstakingly expounded.

The "dark night of the soul" is a term that denotes a period of spiritual dryness, when all devotional activities feel particularly flat and stale, and the soul is assailed by doubts and confusion. As a description of spiritual drought — something I think every Christian experiences — it's excellent, but where I just don't follow St. John is in his insistence on the details of every stage of the dark night. His wandering, belabored descriptions quickly become tedious, and the result is irrelevant to the vigorous pursuit of holiness taught by the New Testament.

Biblically speaking, is the dark night supposed to be the defining theme of the Christian life? I'm not convinced it is. In the New Testament, Christians are urged to live wisely, serve one another, grow in knowledge and wisdom, work hard, examine themselves, bear fruit, be humble, and love faithfully. One thing we aren't told to do is spend our lives analyzing our spiritual depression and contemplating the vicissitudes of our inner man. Focusing so much energy and time on what's going on inside seems a little narcissistic, even if it is a spiritualized introspection. The Bible doesn't emphasize the experience of spiritual dryness and I think it's a mistake for us to do so. I'm not denying that spiritual dryness exists, but I think wallowing in it encourages a focus on self to the exclusion of other things like serving others and being faithful regardless of our feelings.

St. John's biblical exegesis is weak; he only quotes Scripture when it supports his point (rather than Scripture being the starting point and his point being drawn from it), and he often has to twist it dreadfully to make it mean what he wants it to. Occasionally even the interpretations he wrests from his spare lines of poetry are also a stretch; at times he is extremely literal and other times the meaning is, of course, highly symbolic. There is no consistency in his interpretative principles.

What I'm gathering from the Catholic mystics I've read thus far is that they are just like mystics of any other religion: they spout lots of man-made ideology and structures, they are absorbed in their own spiritual lives to the point of being self centered, and occasionally they say something that is true and beautiful. For the Christian seeking biblical truth, this will not satisfy. ( )

St. John of the Cross was born Juan de Yepes at Fontiveros, near Avila in Spain and died in 1591 at Ubeda. He was beatified in 1675, canonized in 1726 and declared "Doctor of the Church Universal" in 1926.

from back cover: "It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that the verse and prose works combined of St. John of the Cross form at once the most grandiose and the most melodious spiritual canticle to which any one man has ever given utterance. The most sublime of all the Spanish mystics, he soars aloft on the wings of Divine love to heights known to hardly any of them. . . . True to the character of his thought, his style is always forceful and energetic, even to a fault. . . . These treatises are a wonderful illustration of the theological truth that grace, far from destroying nature, ennobles and dignifies it, and of the agrement always found between the natural and the supernatural--between the principles of sound reason and the sublimest manifestations of Divine grace."

Beutiful poetry even for a novice like myself. The depth would be unreachable without Johns outstanding commentary. ( )