Dark Night of the Soul--Part 1

The following is the first installment of a two-part entry:

The mysterious "soul" has dominated my spiritual musings over the last several years. I find its slippery nature and ability to elude definition absolutely fascinating. And as I've discussed aspects of the soul with various people, this idea of the "dark night of the soul" seems to pique the most interest. I think that's because the loneliness, pain, and redemption of the dark night resonates with nearly everyone. Most people have been through at least one dark night of the soul, and maybe many. And if you have, then you know the agony, the feelings of solitude and hopelessness that accompany the dark night. But, maybe, hopefully, you can also attest to the growth that comes during the shadow times. In my previous "soul" entries, I kind of skirted around the issue of really defining the soul, but I suggested that the soul happens at the intersection of human and the divine. It's where the most temporal, fragile, non-permanent parts of ourselves meet up with the most divine part of us, which is God. So at this intersection we have our practical self, the part of us that lives each day here; and we've got our divine self, the very breath of God mentioned in Genesis. And we've got our evolving self: that part of us that is becoming whatever it is we choose to be during our time here on this planet.

And just like each day on this planet is marked by both light and darkness; each life on this planet is marked by both comforting times and shadow times. And for better or worse we often learn more about ourselves from the periods of pain. So what exactly is a dark night? Well we're dealing with the soul here so definitions become a bit slippery and don't tend to stay inside the walls we make for them. But essentially, a dark night is a time when we may feel alone and perhaps neglected by God. This can be brought on by any number of circumstances: a failing marriage, illness, children in trouble, work trouble, financial trouble, spiritual seeking that seems to go nowhere, and the list goes on.

There is one distinction I want to make, and it is a subtle one. I'm not necessarily talking about clinical depression here. Depression is a sickness that needs some form of treatment to regulate or hopefully heal. A dark night is often a doorway to a spiritual ordeal. It is a meaningful event. It's not something to be "healed" from as much as it is an opportunity for enrichment. It's a chance to wait on God and see what wisdom and gifts might present themselves. It's a chance to practice patience and maybe live a little smaller than we're used to. Clinical depression may very well be a dark night of the soul; but while waiting on God, some form of treatment should be sought. As with all things "soul," definitions are slippery here and hard and fast rules often only confuse.

Now the darkness I refer to isn't necessarily something sinister. It just means that especially during these times there are things happening to us that aren't readily seen. That the soul is changing in ways that may not come to light for some time. There are some things that can't be learned in the full light of the day. About a year ago I was putting my youngest daughter, Abby, to bed. I turned out the light, went over and sat on her bed, and as I bent down to give her a kiss and tell her how much I loved her something caught my eye. I looked up and noticed a whole row of glow-in-the-dark stickers Abby had put on the wallpaper in her room. So I reached up to peel the first one off, and it started to tear the wall paper. Long story short, a year later the stickers are still there, and that evening I sent Abby into her own dark night of the soul (just kidding!). The point is that just like those glow-in-the-dark stickers there is wisdom and understanding that can only be illuminated under cover of darkness. And while that is true, it's also a lot easier to say than it is to deal with. So what are we to do with these times?

Matthew 26:36-44

Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He said to them, "My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me." And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt." And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour? "Keep watching and praying, that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, "My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Thy will be done." And again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more....

Here we have Jesus, God incarnate, facing his own dark night and one of the lessons he gives us is to accept it. He is terrified nearly to the point of death, and he asks God to take it away, but ultimately he embraces God's will. A more contemporary example is Nelson Mandela, who fought against the apartheid government in South Africa and spent 27 years in prison. Certainly that could be considered a dark night, yet rather than grow bitter he embraced his time and used it to become a courageous and compassionate leader who, upon his release, changed the government of his country and inspired the world. An example that hits closer to home to me is my own father. He died from cancer several years ago. But before he died from cancer, he lived with it for 11 years. Shortly before he died, he told me about the weight of the illness hitting him especially hard one day. He had come home from a business trip in the middle of the afternoon, it was raining outside and he was all alone. He said he laid on the couch and cried, feeling alone, abandoned, sad, and angry. And even while the tears and fears were quite real, he worked hard and eventually found a way to give back: counseling many people who were dealing with their own cancers. He used to say that, "God may not have given me this time with cancer but he sure is helping me use it." He also used to say that although he hadn't been cured of his cancer, he had been healed. He became more compassionate and less dogmatic. His "religiousness" gave way to a beautiful spirituality and he experienced God in many new and different ways. That healing took place by embracing his situation, looking for the blessings and sharing those. And he became a wounded healer himself, helping others along their own path to healing.

Jesus' garden, Mandela's prison cell, and my father's empty living room were all cocoons of sorts. They were the environments in which the soul grows and experiences a new birth.

In the next entry I'll explore some ways to deal with the dark nights

What is the Soul? Part 2

This is the second of a two-part entry.

When my wife and I were going through the process to adopt, we were told the Chinese story of the red thread. Basically it says that we are connected by an invisible red thread to everyone were supposed to come in contact with. Now how a thread can be both invisible and red they didn't explain. But the idea is that the connection between your child and you has always existed, even when you were half-way around the world apart from each other. And in this connection with each other we find another place where the soul reveals itself and blooms; that's at the intersection of you and me. The Apostle Paul tells us we are all part of the same body, the body of Christ. And if we are all part of the same body then surely we are all connected at the soul level. And let's face it, humans are pack animals and we need connection with others. For example, if you eat at a restaurant next to Abby she will undoubtedly end up on your lap or wallowing next to you. The kid has this incredible desire to feel physically connected all the time. Several years ago, Molly was missing an aunt of hers who had died and I told her that if she just thought about her, she could always feel Aunt Marie in her heart. Molly considered that for a moment, saying nothing. Then she looked at me and said, "Daddy I think that's where heaven is, I think it's in our hearts." Boy, the truth of that statement hit me hard. If we're all connected to God at the soul level and we're all connected to each other at the soul level than why wouldn't heaven actually be in the heart of each and every one of us? And sometimes when we embrace that need for connection and don't hold so tightly to our own identity, we can have some incredibly soulful experiences.

I was in grad school during the first Gulf War, and in the tutoring center where I worked there was some tension. Not only did we help the international students with their speaking and writing skills, but we had one international student on staff. His name was Ahmed, he was Muslim, and he was from Sudan in Africa. So the only differences Ahmed had from the rest of us in the tutoring center were his color, culture, race, and religion. Unfortunately he became a target for some of the other staff members fear of all things Muslim. This really bothered me, so I decided to try and befriend him. We talked about why he was in America and what he wanted to accomplish when he went back to Sudan. We talked about the similarities in his beliefs and mine. We talked about our families: mine two hours away by car, and his half-way round the world. And we found out that we weren't that different. The semester came to a close and we said our good-byes and that was that. Except it wasn't. The next day I was walking in a rain storm back to my apartment from campus just getting drenched, and thinking some of those words that Billy Ray Cyrus Jesus used to get mad at me about. As I was walking I heard a horn honking. As I turned to see who it was the window rolled down and Ahmed said "get in, get in." He was headed out of town and to the airport to go back to Sudan. So I got in, and he took me to my driveway. Before I got out, he grabbed my hand, and said, "my friend it is so good see you." And at that point something beautiful happened and our souls made a real connection. We sat there, holding hands, both of us with tears streaming down our faces. And in that moment all labels fell away, American, African, Muslim, Christian, none of it mattered. At that moment our souls sat in a quiet contentment as if we'd known each other for all eternity. And I believe on the soul level we have.

There is a sanskrit word: Namaste, and it means that the divine in me blesses and honors the divine in you. It's typically said as a greeting. That is what happened that day for me and Ahmed. We sat next to each other in his burgundy little Honda experiencing Namaste. There is a beautiful poem that expresses this perfectly. It was written by Rumi, who was a Sufi mystic, and it goes like this:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.
I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.

What is the soul? I don't know how to define it. But I believe the soul happens at the point where human meets divine. I believe it blossoms when the smallest, most vindictive, poutiest part of you is fully embraced, loved, and accepted by the most divine part of you. And I believe it takes flight when you and I acknowledge our connection and accept each other just as we are. Namaste.

What is the Soul?

The following is the first installment of a two-part entry:

If you want the short answer to the question, "what is the soul?" it's this: I don't know. But if you have time, read on and I'll attempt a deeper dive into the question. In his book Consilience, E. O. Wilson noted that sociology has identified belief in a soul as one of the universal human cultural elements. Every culture has some type of belief in the soul, and yet no one has really been able to concretely define it. For some reason the ability of "soul" to stand outside the gates of a strict definition is part of what makes it so appealing to me. Turning to the "wisdom" of childhood I asked my six-year-old, Abby, "what is the soul?" And she said, "oh you mean like after you sell something." No help there (but even though she got the word wrong, I was kind of impressed that she got the tense right). Then I went to ask the eight-year-old and she said, "um, yeah, I think it's like when you . . . actually I have no idea." And she went back to watching tv. So much for the "mouths of babes."

But then I don't know what I expected. Children think in concrete terms, and as I mentioned earlier, the soul is far too fluid to be confined to a concrete definition. When I was a child I had the concrete faith of a child. I knew who God was, I knew who Jesus was. I knew where they lived--up there in heaven somewhere. I knew what they looked like. God looked kind of like a bright white star, and Jesus looked kind of like Billy Ray Cyrus. Only he frowned at me a lot because I'd get mad at people and think bad words in my head. Well as I've grown, I've found it harder and harder to grasp exactly what God is . . . I just can't seem to construct a definition whose walls God is content to stay inside. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, "I can't define pornography but I know it when I see it." Well I feel much the same way about the soul. I can't define it, but I know it when I feel it. So rather than trying to define what the soul is I want to discuss the relationships in which the soul blossoms and reveals itself.

“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”—Genesis 2:7 To me this scripture gives us the first relationship that reveals the soul and that's the relationship of human and divine. Here we have this beautiful explanation of how we are made from the physical stuff of this earth, but that we also have the unseen breath of God in us. It means there is more to us than meets the eye; and boy am I thrilled about that. When I was in college my sister, Jill, had a new friend over to the house who had never met me in person and she saw a picture of Jill and me on the mantel over the fireplace and said, "Oh, is this your brother? I'm so sorry, I didn't know he was mentally challenged." Let me tell you, I for one am glad that there is more to me than meets the eye. Each person is a unique aspect of God. That thought used to be for me, like a millstone around my neck because I could never live up to these expectations I'd made for myself as someone who supposedly had Christ within me. That goes back to Billy Ray Cyrus Jesus I mentioned earlier that scowled at me a lot because I couldn't live up to how I thought he wanted me to be. But the soul is the synthesis of the spiritual and the physical, the perfect and the imperfect, the strong and the weak. It lives at the intersection of the human and divine. This world is full of people who are focused purely on the physical, and that typically leads to hard times. But there are others who try to shun everything in this physical world and deny themselves every physical desire and we can find plenty of examples of that not working out so well, either. Personally, I'm inspired by people who seem able to embrace both aspects of themselves.

If you've read the books or seen "The Lord of the Rings" movies you're familiar with the wizard Gandalf. It's certainly not a stretch to say that his character is a Christ metaphor. The author of "The Lord of the Rings," JRR Tolkien, was a self-professed Christian and great personal friends with Christian author CS Lewis. As the story begins, Gandalf is known as Gandalf the Grey and he's a bit dingy and mysterious and almost scary. In the first third of the trilogy he dies, but later re-emerges in the story. He's back to life and all cleaned up. He's no longer dingy, but now brilliant. And the "new" Gandalf is no longer as mysterious or scary as he is awe-inspiring. Finally, and perhaps not suprisingly his name has changed from Gandalf the Grey to Gandalf the White. And at this point in the story I always get a little sad. I love Gandalf the Grey, but Gandalf the White seems unapproachable to me; somehow not real. In popular culture the word soul tends to be equated with the word "real." Soul music is real music, that touches you at your core. I want my heroes, I want my savior, to be righteous and concerned for others, but I also want them to be comfortable slipping out behind the building to share a dirty joke with the smokers. I want my heroes to be soulful/real, to be a mix of the human and the divine. And to me, it's at this crossroads of the spiritual and temporal that soul really begins to reveal itself.

In the next entry I'll explore another way the soul reveals itself.