We’ve spent a great deal of our spiritual life denying, bypassing, suppressing the night inside us. Now we need to return to the black hole, the dark heart inside the bright one. Are there not two chambers, one empty, one full? Learn from the moon.
In the bleakest midnight of the soul, as C.S. Lewis found, we can be “surprised by joy.” Suddenly we rediscover the sun in the heart of grief, we relax into grace, the gift of mysterious unbidden happiness. We savor a warmth which is the very nature of our blood, the good smell of fresh baked Bread in the midst of Winter. Be forewarned, when you bypass the darkness, you bypass the light!
Each breath received contains dark energy. Each breath offered contains more starlight than the Milky Way. Why favor one or the other?
Have we vested so much energy in our trauma that it became our identity? Night the new hero, light the new villain. “Holier than thou” replaced with “darker than thou.” “Happier than thou” replaced with “more traumatized than thou." Yet both may be forms of spiritual pride.
The gift of true vulnerability is given in a groundless place beyond light and darkness: the radiance of the void. These stumbling words come from one who has felt thunder bolts of agony, piercing, yet illuminating, the unfathomable bliss of night.
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