The Dark Night of the Soul, Gerald May – As our dark nights deepen, we find ourselves recovering our love of mystery. When we were children, most of us were good friends with mystery. The world was full of it and we loved it. Then we grew older, we slowly accepted the indoctrination that mystery exists only to be solved. For many of us, mystery became an adversary; unknowing became a weakness. The contemplative spiritual life is an ongoing reversal of this adjustment. It is a slow and sometimes painful process of becoming “as little children” again, in which we first make friends with mystery and finally fall in love again with it. And in that love we find an ever increasing freedom to be who we really are in identity that is continually emerging and never defined. We are freed to join the dance of life in fullness without having a clue about what the steps are. (Mystery becomes no longer something to be conquered but rather to be explored.)
My prayer of longing breathed two weeks ago, affirmed in the above reading today.
Now, oh Lord, may my ache for you that is beyond description find its rest within the embrace of your mystery, and may I live into the uniqueness of me within your tapestry of transformative community synergistically influencing this world.
It is sometimes good to see that in the midst of things and feelings and knowings that you cannot find words to explain, you have not gone off the spiritual deep end.
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