In May 2003, I had an experience that I can only name as a period of the Dark Night of the Senses in the language of John of the Cross. I would not like to claim I am anywhere near the Dark Night of the Soul which is the last transition in spiritual maturity rather an earlier step. Unfortunately much is written that confuses depression and dark night - one is normatively emotional/psychological and pathological. The other is spiritual/faith and a given IF the faith journey is pursued. I claim no great things rather - the wretchedness of all stripped away and only God is left.
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Dark Night - adllto
'When the music fades, all is stripped away' Matt Redman
I have been to the edge of the precipice
And gazed in the abyss of darkness
I have staggered, lurched, and lingered there
Peering ready to fling myself into
The embrace of nothingness
To escape the tangible grasp of no-where, no-thing, no-one
Which is loneliness.
I say 'Yay' to solitude - But this clinging no-ness!
Temptation summons a madness -
tainting sorrow: The Cloud of Unknowing's blindness
Yet freedom and escape would be too easy,
And grotes-que.
Cheap abandon: the devil's own madness.
After forsakeness -
'Not my will but Thine'
A vision, a story, a lightness
Israel, the god-wrestler, limping home
In the brightness of the new dawn
Not by wrestling but by hanging on, is bless.
