A Lenten Journey: The Dark Night

One of the oldest cedar trees on the peninsula blew over this
month in a storm. The remarkable thing is, in a few years,
this thousand year old tree will be fostering new life and
new growth. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy
comes in the morning!

I have been thinking a lot about journey this Lent, meditating on that journey through the wilderness with God that Lent invites us to. Each week, the lectionary invites us into one stage of the journey.

This first stage, represented by the story of Jesus tempted in the wilderness and by the story of our first parents’ fall in the garden, is one of a dark night of the soul.  Most of us have known times of deep loss and soul-searching, times when God seems to abandon us, times when we feel like we are lost in the wilderness, times when we are tempted to be anything less than our true and whole selves.

As I approach ordination, my practice has been to find my own story in this Lenten journey. And I think about how this journey began. Perhaps all journeys begin with restlessness or with pain or grief or loss.

I remember a time in my life where I confronted the dark night of the soul, full on, in all its terror. Precipitated by the loss of all that had seemed certain in my life, I grappled with God. I grappled with my history and, sometimes, the sheer longing for God and for meaning took my breath away.

And this experience ultimately led to this journey toward priesthood.

We think of times like these as times to avoid at all costs. But they are also deeply fertile times in our life, times when God comes to us in ways we could never have imagined.

It is said that the dark night is not only experienced by individuals, but it is experienced collectively as well. I have been deeply formed by witnessing the dark night of so many communities in this country; in Oaxaca as old ways of life are lost, in the U.S. as immigrant communities seek ways to survive, on the streets of our great cities as more and more people find themselves homeless. I have watched my hometown founder and struggle—as the timber industry crashed, as we became one of hundreds, thousands of rural towns forgotten by a world moving on to bigger and better things. I have watched as mills go silent, as tent cities go up, as shops and farms close.

This, the world's pain, has also formed me on this journey—called inexorably to me to seek for hope for my people.

Writing about the dark night of the soul is an odd thing to do on my birthday. But it is one stage on this remarkable journey—not the whole story. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for all I have learned and all I have become as I walk this strange and exhilarating journey.

Entering the wilderness on this journey is a dangerous thing, but it is also a thing of beauty. As I walk the great forests of my home, I hear the hemlock saplings and the new buds on the alder and the sweet, fresh rain whisper of hope and a future.