The Gift of Darkness
Father Richard Rohr reflects on spiritual transformation and the metaphor of moving from darkness to light:
Spiritual transformation is often thought of as movement from darkness to light. In one sense that’s true, while in another sense, it’s totally false. We forget that darkness is always present alongside the light. We know the light most fully in contrast with its opposite—the dark. Pure light blinds; shadows are required for our seeing. There is something that can only be known by going through “the night sea journey” into the belly of the whale, from which we are spit up on an utterly new shore. Western civilization as a whole has failed to learn how to honor the wisdom of darkness. Rather than teaching a path of descent, Western Christianity preached a system of winners and losers, a “prosperity gospel.” Few Christians have been taught to hold the paschal mystery of both death and resurrection.
In many ways, the struggle with darkness has been the church’s constant dilemma. It wants to exist in perfect light, where God alone lives (see James 1:17). It does not like the shadowland of our human reality. It seems that all of us are trying to find ways to avoid the mystery of human life—that we are all a mixture of darkness and light—instead of learning how to carry it patiently through to resurrection, as Jesus did.
There are no perfect structures and no perfect people. There is only the struggle to be whole. It is Christ’s passion (patior, the “suffering of reality”) that will save the world. Jesus says, “Your patient endurance will win you your lives” (Luke 21:19). He shows us the way of redemptive suffering instead of redemptive violence. Patience comes from our attempts to hold together an always-mixed reality. Perfectionism only makes us resentful and judgmental. Grateful people emerge in a world rightly defined, where even darkness is no surprise but an opportunity.
Poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer explores the dance between darkness and light in her poem Before Winter Solstice, I Remember:
This, too, is what we are born for,
this waking in darkness, unable
to see, but still able to hear the shush
of wind in bare branches, able to feel
the charge of our heartbeat, the swell
of our belly as it fills with borrowed air.
I have spent my life learning to love
these shapeless hours before the light
finds us, these shadowsome nights when
my whole being seems to stretch beyond
the bed, beyond the room, beyond the home,
beyond the valley, beyond even the globe,
as if I rhyme with the dark all around us,
the dark that holds us, the dark that surrounds
this whole swirling spiral of galaxy.
Sometimes, I feel how that infinite darkness
calls to the darkness inside me as if to say,
remember, remember where you come from,
remember what you are. And the darkness
inside me sings back. [2]
Two Sides of Darkness
It is very important, friends, not to think of the soul as dark. We are conditioned to perceive only external light. We forget that there is such a thing as inner light, illuminating our soul.
—Teresa of Ávila, The Interior Castle
Richard Rohr describes periods of darkness, confusion, and struggle as necessary for our transformation and growth:
Experiences of darkness are good and necessary teachers. They are not to be avoided, denied, run from, or explained away. Even if we don’t experience clinical or diagnosed depression, most of us will go through at least one period of darkness, doubt, and malaise in our lives. I hope during these times we can reach out to someone—a therapist, spiritual director, friend—to support us. And when we feel strong, may we be the shoulder someone else can lean on.
There’s a darkness where we are led by our own stupidity, our own sin (the illusion of separation), our own selfishness, by living out of the false or separate self. We have to work our way back out of this kind of darkness with brutal honesty, confession, surrender, forgiveness, apology, and restitution. It may feel simultaneously like dying and being liberated.
But there’s another darkness that we’re led into by God, grace, and the nature of life itself. In many ways, the loss of meaning here is even greater, and sometimes the loss of motivation, purpose, and direction might be even greater too. It really feels like the total absence of light, and thus the saints and mystics called it “the dark night.” Yet even while we may feel alone and abandoned by God, we can also sense that we have been led here intentionally. We know we’re in liminal space, betwixt and between, on the threshold—and we have to stay here until we have learned something essential. It is still no fun—filled with doubt and “demons” of every sort—but it is the darkness of being held closely by God without our awareness. This is where transformation happens.
Of course, the dark night we get ourselves into by our own “sinful” choices can also become the darkness of God. Regardless of the cause, the dark night is an opportunity to look for and find God—in new forms and ways. Neither God nor goodness exist only in the light but permeate all places, seen and unseen. It seems we have to “unknow” a bit every time we want to know in a new way. It’s like putting your car in reverse in the mud and snow so that you can gain a new track and better traction.
Periods of seemingly fruitless darkness may in fact highlight all the ways we rob ourselves of wisdom by clinging to the light. Who grows by only looking on the bright side of things? It is only when we lose our certainties that will we be able to deconstruct our false images of God to discover the Absolute Reality beneath all our egoic fantasies and fears.
God’s Etch-a-Sketch
A prison sermon on the healing of Simon’s mother in law
| NADIA BOLZ-WEBERJUL 13 |
As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed by demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons, and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. – Mark 1
Years ago there was an episode of The Simpsons where Homer tries to say something theological, and I’ve always loved it. They are standing around looking at a huge church when he says, Well, I may not know much about God, but I have to say we built a pretty nice cage for Him.
Anyhow, our reading for today starts exactly 26 verses into the book of Mark.
Here’s a little re-cap to catch you up to speed on what’s happened in the previous 25 verses of this Gospel.
It starts with the words, The Beginning of the Good news of Jesus Christ.
Then John the Baptist appears in the wilderness with his questionable wardrobe and dietary choices and baptizes Jesus. Then the heavens torn open and God says This is my beloved. For which Jesus is rewarded with 40 days in the wilderness with the wild beasts and angels.
Repent and believe the good news of the kingdom.
On his way to Capernum he picks up some smelly fishermen.
Then on the Sabbath he’s teaching in the synagogue – and everyone’s like “wow. That Jesus isn’t totally full of it like the other guys”
Finally he casts out an unclean spirit after commanding it to shut the hell up.
And that’s pretty much where we pick up the story today.
As soon as they leave the Synagogue they entered Simon’s house and Simon’s mother in law was sick in bed with a fever. Jesus came and took her by the hand, lifted her up. Then the fever left her and she began to serve them.
For the record: My first reaction to a bunch of young men showing up at the house of one of their mamas who, by the way, is sick, then healing her so that she gets up and “serves them”, was like isn’t that typical – rather than scrounging around for themselves they heal the Woman Of The House so she can make them a snack.
So don’t feel bad if that’s how you heard this story too.
But I started to see the healing of Simon’s mother in law story differently after sitting with it awhile.
It’s true that Mark doesn’t tell us her name so let’s just agree to make one up for her so she has an identity other than mother in law. We’re going to call her Betty.
See, I don’t actually think Jesus healed Betty so she could make them lunch. Because the thing is, for a male Jew in 1st century, it was considered taboo to even touch an unrelated woman. And it was considered ritually unclean to touch someone who was sick. And it was considered a religious violation to do any kind of work on the Sabbath.
So I can’t imagine that Jesus would defile himself on so many levels just so he wouldn’t have to make his own sandwich.
I think this scene with Betty is a demonstration of what Jesus was talking about 11 verses earlier. See, just 11 verses earlier is the point in when Jesus speaks for the very first time in the Gospel of Mark – and his first words were the kingdom of God has come near – repent and believe the good news.
Listen up, friends. “The kingdom of God has come near – repent and believe the good news” is like Jesus is saying “No more cages for God and while I’m at it, no more cages for you either”
Remember what a Etch-a-Sketch is? Now it seems like a Caveman’s iPad, but as kids it was cool. You know, that toy with a screen that you can draw on by turning two knobs—one moves the line up and down, the other side to side. To erase the drawing, you just shake it.
Well, in Mark’s Gospel it’s like Jesus starts his ministry by trying to shake our religious etch a sketch . All those lines we draw between us and God, all those lines that we draw between us and other people and between others and God….all the cages we construct through religion well…Jesus shows up and shakes everything up so that those lines disappear.
Of course I have my hands on the knobs ready to keep drawing more lines so you know…that keeps Jesus pretty busy.
The point is that Jesus starts his ministry by saying forget what you thought you knew because God is near in a whole new way – and then he goes on what is like the weirdest recruiting trip ever.
It kinda looked like this: Jesus starts by gathering up some rank fishermen and then he enters the synagogue with them where his next recruit is a demoniac – a dude with a demon. After which he makes sure he gets a sick old lady on board. Yeah, that’s Jesus dream team.
With most of the characters in scripture who only show up for a verse or two we never find out what really happens after they encounter Jesus, But that’s the cool thing about Betty, see…when Jesus reaches down and touches someone his culture had deemed unclean – when his hand touches a sick old lady – more than just a fever leaves her. The cages of culture and religion fall away and the world according to God bursts through. And the thing I love about Betty is that Betty knew exactly you do with hands which have received the healing touch of God….Betty used those very same hands to serve. She immediately became an agent of what she had just received.
You may have heard the saying that hurt people hurt people. But what is also true is that healed people heal people. Not as an act of obligation, or law or social expectation but as an act of freedom. Which means the boundaries that Jesus transgresses allows the most unlikely and broken people to give what they have received. We see again and again Jesus literally touching the untouchable and giving them a whole new identity. It’s like he was deputizing them. Because Jesus was about more than just healing certain sick people…the gospel tell us that Jesus greatest desire was to restore all that has been broken. So every person who Jesus healed was conscripted into the Kingdom of God so that they may go and do likewise.
This is why the next part of the text is so great. It says that evening they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons and then the next verse literally says this: the whole city was gathered around the door. THE WHOLE CITY.
Which means that there is no separate category of people called the sick and possessed. Jesus knew this. Some people just hide their sickness more than others and as human beings we prefer to have certain people be the identified problems so that we can look healthy or sane or good. But Jesus shook that etch a sketch.
When Betty sees a whole city’s worth of sick and demon possessed outside her door, I like to imagine her pushing up her sleeves and touching and healing and loving and speaking truth to all of them. She transmits what was given to her. She gets up and serves. She’s been deputized.
That’s the thing with the kingdom of God, there is no personal treasure to be had…there are only gifts to be shared. God’s desire for the healing of all creation was inaugurated in a world changing way in the life of Jesus and it continues through you. I’ve seen it in this place. I’ve seen healing happen through your hands on which still rest the waters of your baptism and the hands which, extend here at the Lord’s table, to receive Christ’s own body and blood. Your hands are what God has to work with here. Hands that, no matter what your story is, have as much to receive as they have to give. Just by merit of being here, you’ve been recruited into this beautiful, redemptive story of God’s love for all of humanity along with smelly fishermen, demoniacs and sick old ladies. We, every single one of us here today, we are part of Jesus’ Dream Team.
Because no matter what society says or the church says or prison culture says, there is no ranking system in God’s kingdom –no category of inmate worse than another, no gender or sexual identity worse than another. When here at new Beginnings we say all are welcome, that is what we mean. And just so you know, it is not as a result of our niceness, or our inclusive beliefs. It is a result of Jesus Christ. Everyone without exception is welcome here because Christ has a made it so.
In other words, the kingdom of God has indeed come near. So rethink all the cages and believe the good news. Amen.
