Into This Dark Night: Introducing the Night of the Senses

St. John of the Cross identified two major stages in the dark night of the soul:  

• The night of the senses
• The night of the spirit

The night of the senses is the first to occur, and also the most commonly experienced by those on the spiritual journey. 

So let’s begin with a word picture that might help you identify with it.

Do you remember the beginning of your spiritual journey — the time you were first awakened to God?

You were excited, most likely. There was so much to learn and so many new experiences to be had. You were encountering prayer and Scripture and worship and fellowship for the first time. You were swept into a whole new community, learning a whole new language and inhabiting a whole new world. You were seeing reality through freshened eyes. 

Your senses were overwhelmed with all there was to do and see and learn and experience. You were filled with love and enthusiasm for God and the things of God. You felt fully connected and committed to this new life.

How long did this first fervor last for you? A month? Several months? A year? Several years? 

Do you recall when the fervor dried up? 

It might have felt like dryness. You noticed prayer wasn’t quite that interesting anymore. The Scriptures seemed bland to read. You sat through worship and felt nothing. You said the creeds and sang the songs as though by rote. 

Would it be presumptuous for me to guess that you believed something was wrong with you? Would it be a bit forward for me to imagine that you tried everything you could to make those feelings come back — that you tried a bit harder at every possible thing you knew to try in the book? 

Would I be wrong to suggest you were disappointed when trying harder didn’t work? 

And that, perhaps, you blamed yourself? 

It wasn’t your fault. 

It’s not always true what they say: “If you can’t feel God, guess who moved?”

Sometimes nobody moved. You and God are right there, facing each other, like you always were. It’s just that you’ve entered a new leg of the journey into deeper union with God.

It’s called the dark night of the senses. And tomorrow, you’ll learn what that is.

Can you relate to the word picture described above? 

Into This Dark Night: A Musical Companion, Part 2

On Monday we’ll dive into the particulars of the dark night of the soul and start to chew on the meat of this series.

But until then, I want to share one more song for you to carry with you. 

It’s written and sung by a sweet friend of mine (whose mom also happens to be one of my most very dear friends), and when I heard it for the first time yesterday, I couldn’t help but think of you — you who visit this space and may be walking through your own dark night. 

It’s based on the Good Shepherd psalm — such a familiar psalm to most of us, but until yesterday not one I would ever have thought to connect to the dark night of the soul. But through this song, I’m realizing that psalm is a perfect companion for those walking through just such a season.

And here’s why: 

• It speaks of a mindfulness of the Lord’s presence … perhaps the most essential reminder for someone walking through a season when God feels so utterly absent. 
• It speaks of not being in want … something that feels foreign and completely untrue to someone struggling through a dark night and yet worth clinging to as a truth, even in all its utter paradox.
• It speaks of having no fear because God is there … again, such an essential reminder for someone who has a really hard time believing that is true.
• And the final refrain of the song, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all of my days” … it rings over and over like the continuous refrain of someone clutching a most precious truth that feels so far away from being real.

Wanting More .mp3

I hope this song blesses you as much as it blessed me. 

xo,

Christianne 

Into This Dark Night: A Musical Companion

Hello, friends.

Shortly, we will dive into the realities and particulars of the dark night of the soul. We’ll explore the different stages — because there are several — and the reasons they occur. We’ll talk about what it can look like for us to navigate this difficult journey — what’s helpful and what’s not. And we’ll give you a chance to ask questions about it. 

Before we dive into the deeper waters of this subject, I’d like to share with you a musical companion for the journey. 

My friend Lisa introduced me to Steve Bell yesterday — a singer/songwriter who published a collection of songs called Romantics and Mystics, which includes a song called “The Dark Night of the Soul” based on the poem St. John of the Cross wrote to describe the journey.

Maybe as we go along, it can serve as a gentle, welcoming presence.

At least, that’s what it’s already become for me.

If you can’t see the video in your email or RSS feed, click here.

Lyrics:

Into the darkest night

With a heartache kindled into love

I took a chance

When at last I went out unobserved

My house being wrapped in sleep

The hour made secure

And concealed the flight to my beloved

I took a chance

And left familiar treasures well behind

Too far for comforting

I went out by myself

Seen by no one else

A somewhat reckless journey from the start

Pressing through the night

Without light or guide

Save the fire that consumed my heart

I bless the starless night

A night by far more lovely than the dawn

Oh happy chance

To discover in the barren dark

The one I knew so well

And there with my love I rested

Fanned by a cooling wind

Wounded by love’s caresses

Suspending all my senses

Bless this happy night

That unites the lover and the loved

Oh happy chance

To abandon every wretched care

Among the lilies there 

Into This Dark Night: It's Not You

The first thing I want to say about the dark night of the soul is this: It’s not you. 

As mentioned in both posts written in this series so far, our life with God is comprised of our ongoing formation — meaning, we are meant to grow.

Think of it like a baby.

At some point, that little one begins to push herself over from her belly to her back, or from her back to her belly. At some point, those two tiny front teeth begin to push their way through her gums, and then the rest follow. At some point, she starts to take those wobbly first steps. 

It’s awkward. Some of it is painful. But it’s meant to happen. She’s meant to grow.

Or think of it like an adolescent.

Those growing pains in the leg that begin around age 8 and happen again at age 12. Long, lanky legs, growing even longer. Feeling achy, like bones and muscles stretching themselves from the inside — which they are.

It’s painful. It’s awkward. But it’s supposed to happen. Those legs are meant to grow, even though it hurts.

The dark night of the soul is awkward, confusing, painful, lonely.

And yet there can be comfort in knowing this is an intended course of events. We’re growing. It’s happening as it’s meant to happen, at the time it’s meant to happen — just like our physical bodies. 

It’s not you.

If God seems absent or your spiritual life has grown dry and crusty — almost lifeless — that doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong. That doesn’t mean it’s time to self-flagellate or shame yourself into being better or doing more right. 

It’s a time to open yourself to invitation and possibility — the invitation and possibility of what God is doing in you and what God is growing you to be.

Into This Dark Night: It's a Communion of Saints

One of the elements of St. John of the Cross’ story that I find immensely helpful has to do with how he came to write about “the dark night of the soul” in the first place. 

As I mentioned in the introductory post to this new series, St. John of the Cross was a Carmelite friar. In fact, he was hand-picked by St. Teresa of Ávila early in his life as a monk to work with her to reform the Carmelite order. Eventually, they founded a separate order called the Discalced (or “shoeless”) Carmelites. 

Upon the founding of their new order, a great deal of St. John’s work became serving as a confessor and spiritual director to the nuns who lived in St. Teresa’s convent. His writings on the dark night of the soul emerged from having, over time, served as confessor and spiritual director to literally hundreds of people and having seen common themes and turns emerge in the spiritual journey. 

What St. John of the Cross wrote about the dark night of the soul, in other words, came from his authoritative witness of hundreds of souls growing in union with God.

I can just imagine it, can’t you?

St. John in his friar’s cell, visited day after day, night after night, by person after person coming to share their soul’s journey with him. Him, over time, noticing patterns, getting a sense of the lay of the land, if you will, of how the soul journeys toward God. Seeing the dips and rises. Seeing the emergence of greater and greater love. Writing a poem about it, then writing extended commentary.

I find all this immensely encouraging. 

It tells me that when we find ourselves in the midst of a darkened journey with God, we are not alone. We are surrounded by a historical communion of saints who have also experienced it too. 

What’s more, there is purpose here. This is part of what happens in the soul’s journey toward God. This darkened process is meant for our formation.

Through this series, we’ll learn together how and why that is.

Into This Dark Night: A New Series

I remember the day so well. 

It was a spring afternoon in my sophomore year of college. I was sitting in a hardback chair in one of the older auditoriums on campus, attending a lecture for my honors coursework. At the front of the auditorium stood a guest lecturer — an eager professor with a combined background in theology, philosophy, and psychology — who wore glasses, shaggy hair, and a sincere smile.

His lecture was my introduction to St. John of the Cross.

St. John of the Cross was a 16th-century mystic and Carmelite friar best known for his writings on a subject he called “the dark night of the soul.” It was a phrase I’d heard before, in offhand moments, to describe times of particular difficulty or pain in a person’s life. 

I learned that day that it’s something quite different than that. I learned that it’s a real thing.

That day, I learned two ideas that profoundly impacted my understanding of Christian spirituality and the path my own life’s journey took from that point forward:  

1. First, I was given a concrete understanding that the soul forms over time — that it is, in fact, the Spirit’s intention to guide the soul through a process of formation over its lifetime.
2. Second, I learned that this formational process includes seasons of darkness — intentional seasons of darkness — in the soul’s awareness of God.

I was, to put it lightly, intrigued by these two ideas, and I became a bit preoccupied with St. John of the Cross as a result of that lecture.

I made a beeline for the campus library and checked out a translated volume of his Dark Night of the Soul. Then I requested special permission to write my final term paper on the subject, even though St. John of the Cross’ writings were not included in the semester’s required canon of texts. 

And I shared what I’d learned with a close friend — someone who was going through an unusual season in life for which the language and explanation of “the dark night of the soul” seemed to offer some much-needed perspective and hope. 

Are you familiar with the dark night of the soul? Have you experienced one, or do you know someone who has?

Over the next little while, we’re going to explore this developmental theology as St. John of the Cross wrote about it. And it is my hope that this series offers you — as it did my friend and me — a greater degree of understanding and hope, especially if you are traveling through a dark night currently or have in the past but didn’t know what to make of it. 

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned through my study and experience of this subject, it’s that the developmental theology of the dark night of the soul offers just that: a great deal of understanding and hope.