{"id":741,"date":"2012-09-24T15:36:05","date_gmt":"2012-09-24T15:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/peculiarpeople\/?p=741"},"modified":"2012-10-01T23:40:03","modified_gmt":"2012-10-01T23:40:03","slug":"mormonisms-dark-night-of-the-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/peculiarpeople\/2012\/09\/mormonisms-dark-night-of-the-soul\/","title":{"rendered":"Mormonism and the “Dark Night of the Soul”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Mormon narrative seems to always start with a young boy who asked God a question one spring morning in 1820. Because of his great faith, God answered. Joseph Smith\u2019s words on returning to his mother\u2014\u201cI know for myself\u2026\u201d and his subsequent lifetime of constant revelations\u2014constitute the take-away of every missionary discussion, family home evening, or sermon: God answers prayers.<\/p>\n

Enter Mother Teresa. According to letters sent to her spiritual directors (intended to be destroyed but nonetheless preserved and published during her posthumous beatification), this legendary saint experienced vivid divine encounters in 1946 and \u201947, and then, for the next five decades\u2014nothing.<\/p>\n

Absolutely, agonizingly, nothing.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI am told God lives in me,\u201d she wrote: \u201cand yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.\u201d And elsewhere, \u201cHeaven from every side is closed.\u201d[1,2]<\/p>\n

Cultural Mormonism<\/a> deals little with such intense, enduring periods of divine silence. In contrast, we occupy ourselves more with the didactic formulas of personal revelation (\u201cAsk and ye shall receive,\u201d or for the more persistent, perhaps, \u201cstudy it out in your mind\u2026and then ask [God]\u201d) and the presumably inspiration-led machinations of the local and institutional Church. \u00a0Then, of course, there is the promise that baptized members will receive the \u201cconstant companionship of the Holy Ghost,\u201d a promise renewed weekly through communion. A Puritan legacy of a robust regimen of ecclesiastical commitments and spiritual labor keep Mormons<\/a> rather busy\u2014and often attuned to externals at the expense, perhaps, of a more reflective or probing internal relationship with God. At the very least, it sometimes presumes a reliably budding, if not already comfortable, faith.\u00a0 On the other hand, divine silence is often treated as a symptom of faithlessness or sin\u2013a diagnosis that would not apply easily to Mother Teresa, I think.<\/p>\n

While cultural Mormonism seems to offer little space or explanation for this divine silence, the more theologically sensitive leaders have acknowledged it\u2013at least, the brief, if disconcerting, episodes. Neal A. Maxwell wrote: \u201cBy developing our individual capacities, wisely exercising our agency, and trusting God\u2014including when we feel forsaken and alone\u2014then we can, said President Young, learn to be \u2018righteous in the dark\u2019\u2026 during the deliberate, divine tutorials which God gives to us\u2014because He loves us. These learning experiences must not be misread as divine indifference. Instead, such tutorials are a part of the divine unfolding.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0[3]\u00a0 Sensitive readings of the Book of Mormon also reveal a subtext of collective and individual remembrance, as exemplified poignantly in 2 Nephi 4, where a grief-stricken and guilt-laden Nephi finds solace and strength in recalling, rather than experiencing, divine succor.<\/p>\n

Mormonism stands much to gain by carving out a greater space to talk about this terrible vulnerability that so many others have experienced. These \u201cdark nights of the soul\u201d (a phrase coined by 16th<\/sup> century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross) have been a defining, if grueling, period for many a Christian and mystic. Thomas \u00e0 Kempis, 15th<\/sup> century author of Imitatio Christi<\/em>, wrote that \u201csuch alteration of grace [from spiritual satiety to spiritual darkness] is no new thing and no strange thing to those who have had experience in the way of God.\u201d Walter Hilton, 15th century English mystic and hermit, admitted, \u201cThe painful consciousness of self, the assaults of sensible love and fear, and my lack of spiritual strength, form as it were a continual cry from my soul to God. And yet He estranges Himself for a time and does not come, however much I cry to Him.\u201d [4] \u00a019th<\/sup> century Carmelite nun St. Therese of Lisieux exclaimed to her sisters during the illness preceding her death: \u201cIf you only knew what darkness I am plunged into\u2026\u201d [5] And even Emily Dickinson wrote (if more sanguinely) of such \u201cevenings of the brain\u201d and the sometimes-painful process of \u201cgrow[ing] accustomed to the Dark.\u201d [6]<\/p>\n

Many have found in this divine silence an educative or sanctifying purpose. Evelyn Underhill wrote that this constant element of the mystic life\u2014the period of \u201cutter blankness and stagnation\u2026impotence\u2026solitude\u201d\u2014serves as a \u201cdark fire of purification.\u201d A necessary part of the spiritual journey between awakening and divine union, the \u201cdark night\u201d entails a \u201cremaking of character, the growth of the \u2018New Man\u2019; his \u2018transmutation in God\u2019\u2026 a Divine Negation which the self must probe, combat, resolve.\u201d [7] James Martin, Jesuit priest and author, believes Mother Teresa initiated a \u201cministry to a doubting modern world\u201d at the same time she decided that \u201cthese painful experiences could help her identify not only with the abandonment that Jesus Christ felt during the crucifixion, but also with the abandonment that the poor faced daily.\u201d [8]\u00a0 And C.S. Lewis\u2019s Wormwood acknowledged that the spiritually mature would understand the \u201cLaw of Undulation,\u201d whereby God allows spiritual peaks to subside into (often extensive) troughs in order for \u201cservants to finally become Sons,\u201d \u201cstand[ing] up on [their] own legs\u2014to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish\u2026 growing into the sort of creature He wants [them] to be.\u201d [9]<\/p>\n

Perhaps the silence is a token of God\u2019s otherness, an element of unknowableness that Mormonism\u2019s audacious collapse of sacred and ontological distance may sometimes overlook.\u00a0 Perhaps it is a divinely appointed space for individuals to manifest their most authentic selves, revealing will, motivations and desires uncompelled by any external force\u2014something even Christ himself seemed to experience on the cross.<\/p>\n

Whatever the reasons, there may come a point for all who experience this divine silence when the decision to release one\u2019s self from the endless spiritual struggle is too welcoming\u2014or logical\u2014to resist. The perceived line between hypocrisy, superficiality, or self-deception, and patience or intuitive persistence, may grow thin. Others, however, may feel that in spite of the painful or bewildering silence, there persists a hunger, a seeking, that affirms, as it did to Augustine, some preexisting relationship that irresistibly beckons reacquaintance. Were we to create more space for a dialogue about these \u201cdark nights of the soul,\u201d perhaps such individuals\u2014Mormon and otherwise\u2014might find one of those choices a little easier.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

[1] Carol Zaleski, \u201cThe Dark Night of Mother Teresa,\u201d First Things<\/em>. May 2003.<\/p>\n

[2] \u201cLetters show struggle typical of saints, mystics, experts say.\u201d Toledo Blade<\/em> October 17, 2003<\/p>\n

[3] Neal A. Maxwell, \u201cBe of Good Cheer,\u201d October 1982 General Conference.<\/p>\n

[4] quoted in the compilation by James Bell, From the Library of C.S. Lewis<\/em>. (Deckle Edge) 2009.<\/p>\n

[5] James Martin, \u201cA Saint\u2019s Dark Night,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, August 29, 2007.<\/p>\n

[6] Emily Dickinson, \u201cWe grow accustomed to the dark,\u201d in Selected Poems<\/em> (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1992) 57. Written in 1935.<\/p>\n

[7] Evelyn Underhill, Part II Chapter 9 \u201c The Dark Night of the Soul\u201d in Mysticism, <\/em>published in 1911.<\/p>\n

[8] Martin<\/p>\n

[9] C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters<\/em>, chapter 8.<\/p>\n

**And thanks to James, for pointing out another very valuable source on this topic that I\u2019m now adding here: \u201cThe Eloi<\/a>,\u201d by George MacDonald.\u00a0 [\u201cSee, then, what lies within our reach every time that we are thus lapt in the folds of night\u2026\u201d]<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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