Impasse and Opportunity
There is not only the so-called dark night of the soul but [also] the dark night of the world. What if, by chance, our time in evolution is a dark-night time—a time of crisis and transition that must be understood if it is to be part of learning a new vision and harmony for the human species and the planet?
—Constance FitzGerald, “Impasse and Dark Night”
Catholic theologian and Carmelite Sister Constance FitzGerald uses “impasse” to describe facing an extended experience of crisis:
By impasse, I mean that there is no way out of, no way around, no rational escape from, what imprisons one, no possibilities in the situation. In a true impasse, every normal manner of acting is brought to a standstill…. The whole life situation suffers a depletion, has the word limits written upon it. Dorothée Soelle describes it as “unavoidable suffering”…. [1] Any movement out, any next step, is canceled, and the most dangerous temptation is to give up, to quit, to surrender to cynicism and despair, in the face of the disappointment, disenchantment, hopelessness, and loss of meaning that encompass one.
Despite the potential for despair, FitzGerald finds the possibility of hope and transformation amid both personal and societal impasse:
Paradoxically, a situation of no potential is loaded with potential…. While nothing seems to be moving forward, one is, in fact, on a homeward exile—ifone can yield in the right way, responding with full consciousness of one’s suffering in the impasse yet daring to believe that new possibilities, beyond immediate vision, can be given….
The psychologists and the theologians, the poets and the mystics, assure us that impasse can be the condition for creative growth and transformation … ifthe ego does not demand understanding in the name of control and predictability….
Our experience of God and our spirituality must emerge from our concrete historical situation and because our time and place in history bring us face to face with profound societal impasse. Here God makes demands for conversion, healing, justice, love, compassion, solidarity, and communion. Here the face of God appears, a God who dies in human beings and rises in human freedom and dignity.
We close off the breaking in of God into our lives if we cannot admit into consciousness the situations of profound impasse we face personally and societally…. The “no way out” trials of our personal lives are but a part of the far more frightening situations of national and international impasse that have been formed by the social, economic, and political forces in our time….
It is only in the process of bringing the impasse to prayer, to the perspective of the God who loves us, that our society will be freed, healed, changed, brought to paradoxical new visions, and freed for nonviolent, selfless, liberating action, freed, therefore, for community on this planet earth. Death is involved here, a dying in order to see how to be and to act on behalf of God in the world.
[48] My Neighbor
A man must not choose his neighbor: he must take the neighbor that God sends him…. The neighbor is just the man who is next to you at the moment, the man with whom any business has brought you into contact.
Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (p. 26). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (p. 26). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
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