The "Dark Night"

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Open to Judgement by Rowan Williams

The dark night is God’s attack on religion. If you genuinely desire union with the unspeakable love of God, then you must be prepared to have your ‘religious’ world shattered. If you think devotional practices, theological insights, even charitable actions give you some sort of a purchase on God, you are still playing games. On the other hand, if you can face and accept and even rejoice in the experience of darkness, if you can accept that God is more than an idea which keeps your religion or philosophy or politics tidy – then you may find a way back to religion, philosophy or politics, to an engagement with them that is more creative because you are more aware of the oddity, the uncontrollable quality of the truth at the heart of all things. This is what ‘detachment’ means – not being ‘above the battle’, but being involved in such a way that you can honestly confront whatever comes to you without fear of the unknown; it is a kind of readiness for the unexpected, if that is not too much of a paradox. ... In Gethsemane, Jesus says to his Father, in effect, ‘I accept from your hand whatever happens. Nothing can break our communion, however little I see or feel it. I am ready to give myself to you, whatever the cost.’ ... The light is at the heart of the dark, the dawn breaks when we have entered fully into the night. When we recognise our God in this experience, we can indeed say with the Psalmist, ‘The darkness is no darkness with thee; the night is as clear as the day’ (Psalm 139:12). As for John of the Cross, it is ‘The night that joins the beloved with her loved one, the night transfiguring the beloved in her loved one’s life. (Canciones del alma, 5).

Related:  https://bookslibrarycebu.blogspot.com/2022/07/albacete-from-dark-night-of-wallet-to.html

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