John the Dwarf and Moses the Black

Who are two of the more colorful desert monastics quoted by Rowan Williams in his book, Where God Happens, which begins this way, in a chapter titled "Life, Death, and Neighbors":

One thing that comes out very clearly from any reading of the great desert monastic writers of the fourth and fifth centuries is the impossibility of thinking about contemplation or meditation or "spiritual life" in abstraction from the actual business of living in the body of Christ, living in concrete community. The life of intimacy with God in comtemplation is both the fruit and course of a renewed style of living together.

Archbishop Williams next cites Anthony the Great, "earliest and most influential of the desert monastics," who said:

Our life and our death is with our neighbor. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ.

Further:

Moses [the Black] is credited with a series of summary proverb-like sayings about the monastic life written for another great teacher, Abba Poemen, one of which seems to pick up the language of Anthony yet give it a twist that is at first sight very puzzling. "The monk, says Moses, "must die to his neighbor and never judge him at all in any way whatsoever." If our life and our death are with the neighbor, this spells out something of what our "death" wtih the neighbor might mean: it is to renounce the power of judgment over someone else - a task hard enough indeed to merit being described as death. And the basis of this is elaborated in another of the Moses sayings: in reply to a brother who wants to know what it means to "think in your heart that you are a sinner," which is defined as another of the essentials of the monastic life, Moses says, "If you are occupied with your own faults, you have no time to see those of your neighbor."

....

Everything begins with this vision and hope: to put the neighbor in touch with God in Christ. One this the rest of our Christian life depends, and it entails facing the death of a particular kind of picture of myself.

The philosophy is "summed up in the formula of a great monastic reformer of the nineteenth century, R. M. Benson, who believed he should have 'a heart of stone towards myself, a heart of flesh toward others, and a heart of flame toward God.'"

And what is the theological end result? Just this, in a fairly extreme illustrative example:

A brother asked Abba Poemen, "What does it mean to be angry with your brother without a cause? [The reference is obviously to Matt. 5:21ff.] He said, "If your brother hurts you by his arrogance and you are angry with him because of this, that is getting angry without a cause. If he pulls out your right eye and cuts off your right hand and you get angry with him, that is getting angry without a cause. But if he cuts you off from God - then you have every right to be angry with him.

Archbishop Williams talks, too, about our own society, "at once deeply individualist and deeply conformist"; he quotes Henri de Lubac as having observed that "psychology alone is not suited, at least in the most subtle cases, to discern the difference between the authentic and the sham"; he quotes "a saying attributed to Isidore the Priest warning that 'of all evil suggestions, the most terrible is the prompting to follow your own heart.'"

And to me, the most interesting and remarkable statement of all, again from John the Dwarf:

We have put aside the easy burden, which is self-accusation, and weighed ourselves down with the heavy one, self-justification.

All of this is about "transformation": it's about Repentence and Grace. And it's completely about what Archbishop Williams sees (if I'm reading him correctly) as the primary duty of each Christian: to put his neighbor in touch with God, to the best of his ability and power.

It is, of course, ultimately about the Cross. And I think again that religion is the one and the only place where human beings can become acquainted with - and become versed in - the understanding and the practice of these things. Which further really does mean that religion/spirituality is central to our lives, and that Christianity will not die out after all, as some continue to believe. The foolishness of God is wiser than men.

Cántico espiritual

St. John of the Cross. Here, in Spanish.

SONG OF THE SOUL AND THE BRIDEGROOM

I
THE BRIDE

Where have You hidden Yourself,
And abandoned me in my groaning, O my Beloved?
You have fled like the hart,
Having wounded me.
I ran after You, crying; but You were gone.

II

O shepherds, you who go
Through the sheepcots up the hill,
If you shall see Him
Whom I love the most,
Tell Him I languish, suffer, and die.

III

In search of my Love
I will go over mountains and strands;
I will gather no flowers,
I will fear no wild beasts;
And pass by the mighty and the frontiers.

IV

O groves and thickets
Planted by the hand of the Beloved;
O verdant meads
Enameled with flowers,
Tell me, has He passed by you?

V
ANSWER OF THE CREATURES

A thousand graces diffusing
He passed through the groves in haste,
And merely regarding them
As He passed
Clothed them with His beauty.

VI
THE BRIDE

Oh! who can heal me?
Give me at once Yourself,
Send me no more
A messenger
Who cannot tell me what I wish.

VII

All they who serve are telling me
Of Your unnumbered graces;
And all wound me more and more,
And something leaves me dying,
I know not what, of which they are darkly speaking.

VIII

But how you persevere, O life,
Not living where you live;
The arrows bring death
Which you receive
From your conceptions of the Beloved.

IX

Why, after wounding
This heart, have You not healed it?
And why, after stealing it,
Have You thus abandoned it,
And not carried away the stolen prey?

X

Quench my troubles,
For no one else can soothe them;
And let my eyes behold You,
For You are their light,
And I will keep them for You alone.

XI

Reveal Your presence,
And let the vision and Your beauty kill me,
Behold the malady
Of love is incurable
Except in Your presence and before Your face.

XII

O crystal well!
Oh that on Your silvered surface
You would mirror forth at once
Those eyes desired
Which are outlined in my heart!

XIII

Turn them away, O my Beloved!
I am on the wing:

THE BRIDEGROOM

Return, My Dove!
The wounded hart
Looms on the hill
In the air of your flight and is refreshed.

XIV

My Beloved is the mountains,
The solitary wooded valleys,
The strange islands,
The roaring torrents,
The whisper of the amorous gales;

XV

The tranquil night
At the approaches of the dawn,
The silent music,
The murmuring solitude,
The supper which revives, and enkindles love.

XVI

Catch us the foxes,
For our vineyard has flourished;
While of roses
We make a nosegay,
And let no one appear on the hill.

XVII

O killing north wind, cease!
Come, south wind, that awakens love!
Blow through my garden,
And let its odors flow,
And the Beloved shall feed among the flowers.

XVIII

O nymphs of Judea!
While amid the flowers and the rose-trees
The amber sends forth its perfume,
Tarry in the suburbs,
And touch not our thresholds.

XIX

Hide yourself, O my Beloved!
Turn Your face to the mountains,
Do not speak,
But regard the companions
Of her who is traveling amidst strange islands.

XX
THE BRIDEGROOM

Light-winged birds,
Lions, fawns, bounding does,
Mountains, valleys, strands,
Waters, winds, heat,
And the terrors that keep watch by night;

XXI

By the soft lyres
And the siren strains, I adjure you,
Let your fury cease,
And touch not the wall,
That the bride may sleep in greater security.

XXII

The bride has entered
The pleasant and desirable garden,
And there reposes to her heart’s content;
Her neck reclining
On the sweet arms of the Beloved.

XXIII

Beneath the apple-tree
There were you betrothed;
There I gave you My hand,
And you were redeemed
Where your mother was corrupted.

XXIV
THE BRIDE

Our bed is of flowers
By dens of lions encompassed,
Hung with purple,
Made in peace,
And crowned with a thousand shields of gold.

XXV

In Your footsteps
The young ones run Your way;
At the touch of the fire
And by the spiced wine,
The divine balsam flows.

XXVI

In the inner cellar
Of my Beloved have I drunk; and when I went forth
Over all the plain
I knew nothing,
And lost the flock I followed before.

XXVII

There He gave me His breasts,
There He taught me the science full of sweetness.
And there I gave to Him
Myself without reserve;
There I promised to be His bride.

XXVIII

My soul is occupied,
And all my substance in His service;
Now I guard no flock,
Nor have I any other employment:
My sole occupation is love.

XXIX

If, then, on the common land
I am no longer seen or found,
You will say that I am lost;
That, being enamored,
I lost myself; and yet was found.

XXX

Of emeralds, and of flowers
In the early morning gathered,
We will make the garlands,
Flowering in Your love,
And bound together with one hair of my head.

XXXI

By that one hair
You have observed fluttering on my neck,
And on my neck regarded,
You were captivated;
And wounded by one of my eyes.

XXXII

When You regarded me,
Your eyes imprinted in me Your grace:
For this You loved me again,
And thereby my eyes merited
To adore what in You they saw

XXXIII

Despise me not,
For if I was swarthy once
You can regard me now;
Since You have regarded me,
Grace and beauty have You given me.

XXXIV
THE BRIDEGROOM

The little white dove
Has returned to the ark with the bough;
And now the turtle-dove
Its desired mate
On the green banks has found.

XXXV

In solitude she lived,
And in solitude built her nest;
And in solitude, alone
Has the Beloved guided her,
In solitude also wounded with love.

XXXVI
THE BRIDE

Let us rejoice, O my Beloved!
Let us go forth to see ourselves in Your beauty,
To the mountain and the hill,
Where the pure water flows:
Let us enter into the heart of the thicket.

XXXVII

We shall go at once
To the deep caverns of the rock
Which are all secret,
There we shall enter in
And taste of the new wine of the pomegranate.

XXXVIII

There you will show me
That which my soul desired;
And there You will give at once,
O You, my life!
That which You gave me the other day.

XXXIX

The breathing of the air,
The song of the sweet nightingale,
The grove and its beauty
In the serene night,
With the flame that consumes, and gives no pains.

XL

None saw it;
Neither did Aminadab appear
The siege was intermitted,
And the cavalry dismounted
At the sight of the waters.

Tried by fever, taught by cold

From Kathleen Norris' The Cloister Walk:

Are monks wasting their time in seeking to convert themselves, and the world, from evil? Many have said so. For myself, I appreciate their realism about human beings confronted by evil, and the good sense that does not allow them to be easily fooled when evil attempts to disguise itself by adopting innocuous dress. Both the monks of the ancient tradition and contemporary monastics, it seems to me, have a refreshing sense of what really matters in human behavior. They know that the roots of sin are not to be found in the acts of gambling, drinking, dancing, smoking, playing dominos (an activity that got my grandfather Norris fired by a Methodist church in 1919), or even in adultery or fornication. Looking deeper, they recognize, as one monk said to me, a man who’d sown plenty of wild oats before entering a monastery, that “even though I gave up fornicating years ago, pride and anger are still with me.” Pride and anger were recognized by the desert monks as the most dangerous of their bad thoughts, and the most difficult to overcome. Abba Ammonas said, “I have spent fourteen years [in the desert] asking God night and day to grant me the victory over anger.” In the words of Benedicta Ward, “For all sins, there is forgiveness. What really lies outside the ascetic life is despair, the proud attitude which denies the possibility of forgiveness.” All committed life is ascetic, in some sense; the word originally meant an exercise, practice, or training adopted for a certain way of life. Athletes, monks, artists, musicians, married people, and celibates all learn to recognize the practices that will hinder or foster the growth of their commitment.

As for designating despair as an aspect of the sin, or “bad thought,” of pride, I find it enormously helpful. Among other things, it defeats my perfectionism, my tendency to give up when I can’t do things “just right.” But if I accept the burden of my despair, in the monastic sense, then I also receive the tools to defeat it. I have a hope that no modern therapeutic approach can give me. “The desert fathers were convinced that the words of scripture possessed the power to deliver them from evil,” writes Douglas Burton-Christie, another scholar of the early monks. “They believed that the Word of God has the power to effect what it says.” Or, as Amma Syncletica wrote early in the fifth century, in a catalogue of Bible quotations to be used in times of temptation, “Are you being tried by fever? Are you being taught by cold? Indeed, scripture says, ‘We went through fire and water, yet you have brought us forth to a spacious place.’” (Ps. 66:12). She adds, “For he said, ‘The Lord hears me when I call’ (Ps. 4:3). It is with these exercises that we train the soul.”

Prayer

"Lord God, I am nothing, but all of it is yours."

- St. Francis

"It's like being in love"

From Women of God, by Mary Gordon, in the January 2002 Atlantic Monthly:

Since the days when my father and I had told the world at large that I wanted to be a contemplative, I had been intensely curious about the details of the contemplative life. But I had never before spoken to a real contemplative—the point of the life being seclusion from the world. I was avid to know the details of the schedule, at least in part to see whether it conformed to my imaginings of it. Indeed, the sisters' day is structured around times of prayer. They meet six times a day for communal prayer, and have three daily periods of private devotion and meditation.

"You see, we lead an intensive life of prayer, a pure life of faith," Mother Marie told me. "Prayer is really the center of our day; it's what we devote ourselves to. Originally I entered an active community, but then I understood that I wanted a contemplative life. I was drawn to an intense life of prayer."

There seems to be no time in the day that is meaningless—no slack hours, no residue of triviality or folly or plain waste. Of course, it is also possible to say there is no spontaneity and little individual choice. It is a schedule that seems outside history: it is not much different from religious life before Vatican II—and not much different from monastic life in the Middle Ages.

I asked her if it was difficult to pull herself away from her prayer life to do practical tasks. "You see, it's like being in love," she said. "When you're in love, you really don't want to be anywhere except alone with the person you love. If I have to go out to Eighty-sixth Street, to buy a pair of shoes or something, I'm always eager to get back. It's the spiritual atmosphere I love, and so I miss it. Since I'm the superior, I suffer a bit from not having as much solitude as I would like. But part of our vocation is living in community. For example, if during my free time I wanted to take a walk and say my rosary, and one of the sisters said she needed to talk to me, needed my help or my support, I would feel that my first duty was to her. Community life is a great challenge to virtue. I believe it's in community that you grow. In patience, in generosity."

I looked at her face, which had the sweetness, the calm, the quiet assurance, of a woman happily married to her high school sweetheart and still amazed at her own good luck. Her ease of manner made the life she lives seem un-extraordinary; but, of course, it is extraordinary, because it is a hidden life, quite foreign to most modern imaginations. So I asked her what misconceptions about contemplative nuns she would like to clear up. "First," she said, "we're women, we're humans, and we experience everything a woman does, but we experience a very deep call from God—and the call is captivating—to a life of intimate prayer. We're not stoic, we're not afraid of life, we're not afraid of responsibility, we're not cold fish, and we're not afraid of marriage. We're not that different from other women. Being a contemplative doesn't make you less of a human being. Saint Iraneaus says, 'The glory of God is man fully alive.'"

Light and darkness and water

Somewhere on a well-shaft in a monastic cloister I remember the words, O sobria ebrietas, O ebria sobrietas: O sober drunkenness, O drunken sobriety. Even the water and the light and darkness are mystical symbols, and real ones. They are part of one long, inexorable drama. All this seems more marvellous and more strange to us than it would have done in the past, because much of human life was once determined by the rhythms of days and seasons. In the late nineteenth century in certain English villages, people were still summoned to the fields by the church bell, or on estates by a stable bell. In France the angelus punctuates the day. In the Middle Ages words like prime and matins and vespers came to indicate the time of day by reference to the sun, without referring to the precise time of clocks, so that it is sometimes hard to know at what time by our clocks the offices were actually sung.

Both the basic symbolism I have mentioned and the sense of a vast swing of stellar and solar time of which each season's passage and each day's passage were small images, and which was marked by festivals of the year like the small landmarks of every day's liturgy and routine, are much older than Christianity. Virgil is conscious of this sense of nature, of the heavens, the earth, and human nature on the earth. The discovery was not classical, it is rooted in the nature of the year, of animal life, and of agriculture. "Lenten is come with love to town" is the statement of two very ancient aspects of the hungriest season of the year.

Monasteries make the whole of life an extended musical drama. This drama is one in which the monks take part with their entire lives: it is built around their deepest religious mysteries, and it mysteriously releases the soul. Every monastery in the world of whatever religion has its own ritual monotonies, and its own monotonous music, its own ceremonies of light and darkness and water.

- From The Frontiers of Paradise: A Study of Monks and Monasteries, by Peter Levi

Hands

If it happed me to meet any saint coming from heaven, and also a poor priest, I would first go kiss the priest's hands, and would say to the saint: Holy saint, abide a while, for the hands of this priest have handled the son of life, and hath performed a thing above humanity.

- St. Francis of Assisi

The Quarrel

From Rowan Williams' book on the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Where God Happens:

Two hermits lived together for many years without a quarrel. One said to the other, "Let's have a quarrel with each other, as other men do. The other answered, "I don't know how a quarrel happens." The first said, "Look here, I put a brick between us, and I say, 'That's mine.' Then you say, 'No, it's mine.' That is how you begin a quarrel. So they put a brick between them and one of them said, "That's mine." The other said, "No, it's mine." He answered, "Yes, it's yours. Take it away." They were unable to argue with each other.

O All Ye Works of the Lord

From Morning Prayer, Rite I:

Benedicite, omnia opera Domini (Song of the Three Young Men, 35-65)

I Invocation

O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

O ye angels of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

II The Cosmic Order

O ye heavens, bless ye the Lord; *
O ye waters that be above the firmament, bless ye the Lord;

O all ye powers of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

O ye sun and moon, bless ye the Lord; *
O ye stars of heaven, bless ye the Lord;

O ye showers and dew, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

O ye winds of God, bless ye the Lord; *
O ye fire and heat, bless ye the Lord;

O ye winter and summer, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

O ye dews and frosts, bless ye the Lord; *
O ye frost and cold, bless ye the Lord;

O ye ice and snow, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

O ye nights and days, bless ye the Lord; *
O ye light and darkness, bless ye the Lord;

O ye lightnings and clouds, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

III The Earth and its Creatures

O let the earth bless the Lord; *
O ye mountains and hills, bless ye the Lord;

O all ye green things upon the earth, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

O all ye fowls of the air, bless ye the Lord; *
O all ye beasts and cattle, bless ye the Lord;

O ye children of men, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

IV The People of God

O ye people of God, bless ye the Lord; *
O ye priests of the Lord, bless ye the Lord;

O ye servants of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

O ye spirits and souls of the righteous, bless ye the Lord; *
O ye holy and humble men of heart, bless ye the Lord.

Let us bless the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

According to Br. Thomas, an Episcopal friar in Southern California:

This canticle is of particularly splendid history. It is the song said to have been sung by three young men as they were tossed into the burning fiery furnace by king Nebuchadnezzar when they refused to worship an idol. They sang this song in the fire as they were miraculously preserved from its effects, and then released by Nebuchadnezzar, who exclaimed, blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him.

This canticle is found in the bible either as an addition to the book of Daniel, in chapter 3, or as a separate book in the apocrypha. The version here is that used by the episcopal church. This canticle is used on saturday mornings by the episcopal church.

The Beloved

Rumi:

One went to the door of the Beloved and
knocked. A voice asked, 'Who is there?'
He answered, 'It is I.'
The voice said, 'There is no room for Me and Thee.'
The door was shut.
After a year of solitude and deprivation he returned and knocked.
A voice from within asked, 'Who is there?'
The man said, 'It is Thee.'
The door was opened.

Red, and etc.

As the perfect finishing touch of the disguise, the soul puts on the precious red cloak of charity. The third virtue lends elegance to the other two and lifts the soul near to God. The red cloak of charity makes the bride so alluring to her Beloved that she dares to say: “Although I am black, O daughters of Jerusalem, I am beautiful and so the king has loved me and brought me to his chamber.”

The cloak of charity is a mantle of love. It heightens love for the Beloved. It protects and conceals the soul from her third adversary: the animal nature. Where there is true love of God, the urge for self-gratification and the attachment to one’s own things cannot enter. Charity strengthens and revitalizes the other virtues. It renders them more genuine. It graces them with loveliness and deeply pleases God. The Song of Songs calls charity the seat draped in purple on which God rests.

The three-colored virtues prepare the three faculties of mind, memory, and will for union with God. Faith darkens and empties the mind of all natural understanding and so prepares it for union with divine wisdom. Hope pulls the memory away from all creature attachments. St. Paul says that hope is for that which one does not have. And so it withdraws the memory from the ordinary things that can be possessed and focuses it on the glory the soul hopes for. Charity annihilates the appetites of the will, ruining the soul’s taste for anything that is not God. Charity centers the desires on God alone. Charity cultivates the will and merges it with God through love.

The virtues separate the soul from all that is less than God; their purpose is to join her with God. Unless the soul walks sincerely in these three virtues, it is impossible for her to reach perfect union with God through love. It is vital for the soul to wear this disguise if she is to reach her goal, which is sweet and loving union with the Beloved. It was a blessed chance the soul took when she put on this disguise and stayed with it until the end of her journey. That is why she cries out in the next verse, “O exquisite risk!”

Green

Over the white robe of faith, the soul spread a green shawl of hope. Draped in hope, she is liberated from her second adversary: the world. This is the green of living hope in God; it fills her heart with courage. Hope lifts the soul to the sphere of eternal life. In comparison with these divine aspirations, all earthly things seem withered and worthless. The soul cannot take back her worldly wardrobe. She can no longer focus her desire on anything that was, is, or will be in the world. She lives wrapped in hope for nothing less than the infinite. Her heart is so transported that she cannot touch earthly things. She can’t even see them.

St. Paul calls this green disguise the “helmet of salvation.” A helmet protects the whole head. It covers it entirely, except for a visor to peek out of. Hope shrouds the mind’s senses so that they will not become absorbed in worldly things. Shielded by hope, no arrow from the world can wound the soul. Hope opens a visor in the soul through which she can look only toward the divine. David says: “Just as the eyes of the handmaid are fixed on the hands of her mistress, so are our eyes fixed on our God until he has mercy on us who hope in him.”

Wearing the luminous green shawl, gazing perpetually upon God and nothing else, content only with him, the soul brings delight to her Beloved, and he gives her all that she hopes for. Without this green shawl of hope in God alone, the soul might as well not even start out on her journey of love. It is unrelenting hope that moves and overcomes all obstacles.

White

The inner robe of faith is pure white: radiant, blinding to the eye of the discursive mind. It is the foundation of all the other virtues. Clothed in faith, the soul is protected from the Fallen One. Dressed in white, the soul captures the heart of her Beloved and attains union with him. Without faith, says, the Apostle, it is impossible to please God; with faith, he says, it is impossible not to. It is as if God were saying to the soul: If you desire union with me, come clad in faith beneath everything.

The soul was wearing the white robe of faith when she went out into the dark night and traveled the dangerous depths of inner emptiness. There was no comfort for her senses, no light for her intellect. No relief from above: God’s house seemed to be locked and the Master hidden away. No relief from below: her spiritual guides had nothing left to offer. And yet the soul suffered with humility and perseverance. She passed through these troubles without growing discouraged and blaming the Beloved. The Beloved proves his lover’s faith. “Because of the words of your lips, I have kept hard ways,” says David.

The End of the Dark Night

As I'm sure anyone who reads this blog will be gratified to know, I have finished Mirabai Starr's wonderful translation of St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul and will at last move on to something else. I just wanted to post Chapter 21 of the book, which is titled: “An explanation of why the soul says that she is in disguise, and a description of the colors of the disguise the soul wears in the night.” "Disguise" refers to verses in St. John's original poem, "Songs of the Soul."* John analogizes by way of wardrobe - the soul's garments, of three colors, representing three virtues - something I find charming and beautiful. I'll reprint here the whole chapter, separating posts by color, because....well....because it's so Krzysztof Kieslowski:

We disguise ourselves by hiding under a garment that makes us look different from who we really are. We use our disguise to please and charm our Beloved or to elude our enemy and accomplish our mission undetected. We choose the clothing that most clearly reflects our heart’s desire and also most carefully conceals us from discovery by those who would do us harm.

The soul, filled with love of God and longing for his friendship, leaves her house dressed in the vivid hues of her affection. She goes out covered in love and she is safe, invisible to her three adversaries: the world, the animal nature, and the Spirit of Evil. She wears garments of three different colors: white, green, and red, which symbolize the three virtues: faith, hope, and charity.

Don't forget to read these in reverse-blog order!

I have to add that I adore St. John of the Cross. What sweetness, and what lovely gentleness in this man! He wrote the poem first, and added Dark Night of the Soul as an explication; some think the poem far surpasses the explanatory prose, but I love much of what he has to say in the book. When he speaks in the poem of "my house," he is referring to physical human existence, which encompasses all of our sensual and spiritual passions: "The exquisite risk begins once the soul finds all the members of her household asleep. It is God who has put all the passions and appetites - both sensual and spiritual - to bed." Perhaps I would have understood this eventually, but I was glad for lengthy discussions of sleeping household members, the climbing of secret ladders, and the wearing of various colorful robes, shawls, and cloaks. Incarnation, indeed!


* "Secure in the darkness,
I climbed the secret ladder in disguise -
O exquisite risk! -
Concealed by the darkness.
My house, at last, grown still."

"Other kinds of pain the soul suffers in this night."

From John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul (Mirabai Starr's translation), Book 2, "The Night of the Spirit," Chapter 6: "Other kinds of pain the soul suffers in this night":

In dark contemplation, the soul suffers the suspension of all her natural supports and perceptions, which is terribly painful, like hanging in midair unable to breathe. God is purging the soul, devouring all the imperfect habits and inclinations she has contracted throughout her entire life, as fire consumes the tarnish of metal. Besides this natural and spiritual poverty, she is likely to suffer interior torment from the radical undoing of all the remaining imperfections rooted firmly in the substance of the soul. "I shall gather up the bones and light them on fire. The flesh shall be consumed and the whole composition burned, and the bones shall be destroyed," says Ezechiel. "Place it also empty upon the embers that its metals may heat up and melt, its uncleanness taken away from it, its rust consumed."

Purified in this forge like gold in a crucible, as the Wise Man says, the soul feels as if she herself were coming to an end. David calls out to God: "Save me Lord, for the waters have come in even unto my soul. I am trapped in the mire of the deep. I have nowhere to stand. I have come unto the depth of the sea and the tempest has overwhelmed me. I have labored in my cry, my throat has become raw and my eyes have failed while I hope in my God."

God greatly humbles the soul now so that he might greatly exalt her later. And he makes it so that when these feelings are quickened in the soul they are soon stilled; otherwise she would die within a few days. The soul is only aware of their vibrancy at intervals. These souls descend into the underworld alive.

I will say more about this later.

Right now, I have two thoughts. First, that this sort of thing, the reading of Scripture as a description of the mystical journey of the soul as it moves towards (and away from) God - something that John of the Cross does quite often - is the beginning of a new theology. It is a way to make the Bible intelligible in the modern world; a way to connect with people outside the tradition.

This kind of reading diametrically opposes "fundamentalism" - and it is a historical method as well. "Fundamentalism" is essentially, and ironically, a very modern way of looking at the Bible. It is a scientific reading of literature that was often meant to be read and understood in a completely different way. This, I think, is the means to the end we seek: a "new Pentecost," as I read elsewhere (someplace!). A new language for a new era, and a way for the Holy Spirit to reach the modern ear.

Second: Well, maybe I'll wait on that as well; so much to say about it. But here's the topic: what our connections through this medium mean for religion going forward. I get a lot out of talking things over with people online, and together we already make up an informal "community" of sorts - people who identify with, and feel related to, one another in matters of the heart and of the spirit. Some of us are self-described solitaries (in the religious sense, I mean) already, but we have found a way of talking to one another in way in which most of us can't, with people in our actual lives. I find this to be similar to what happens in the monastic communities, actually. I'm very interested in how the phenomenon might play out; I wonder if there will be formal "virtual communities" of this sort in the future, made up of people who have otherwise normal lives but internet-based spiritual lives. Can we pray the Daily Office together, apart? Can we follow one of the various "Rules of Life" this way, or create new ones? Can we work out new theology in these kinds of discussions? (The web is changing the world in every other area of life, through the lightening-fast spread of ideas; why wouldn't this also happen in the spiritual life?)

IOW, can we have ordinary, but religious, lives, together in this way in the modern world?

But this is a big topic, so maybe for later.