Thomas Moore on Dark Nights of the Soul

I have just finished reading this most beautiful book by Thomas Moore, former monk and now a career psychotherapist in private practice, and am still digesting its deep and human wisdom. He writes lucidly and profundly about how to find meaning from within the challenges that life presents to us. But while my soul's gastric juices are doing their hidden cud-chewing work, I wanted to share some lines from his final chapter. Here goes:

"I realize that I am far out of step with the times in recommending numinosity rather than health as a goal. Ours is still a therapeutic society that values the removal of symptoms over the soul's sparkle and shine. But just as the unicorn's horn was valued for its inspiring beauty and yet guaranteed health and beauty, so letting your spark light up a dark and dangerous world is a way of healing both you and your world.

"Nothing could be more precious, then, than a dark night of the soul, the very darkness of which allows your lunar light to shine. It may be painful, discouraging, and challenging, but it is nevertheless an important revelation of what your life is about. In that darkness you see things you couldn't see in the daylight. Skills and powers of soul emerge from your frustration and ignorance. The seeds of spiritual faith, perhaps your only recourse but certainly a valuable power, are found in your darkness. The other half of who you are comes into view, and through the dark night you are completed.

"You become the wounded healer, someone who has made the descent and knows the territory. You take on a depth of color and range of feeling. Your intelligence is now more deeply rooted and not dependent only on facts and reason. Your darkness has given you character and color and capacity. You are now free to make a real contribution. It is a gift of your dark night of the soul!"

There is much blessing in these words for me, and in the rest of this life-affirming book from a lifelong student of the human soul. We cannot avoid suffering but we can try to transform it into something healing and humane.

You can find the book here.

God comes in the wrong disguise

There's a story about a high-ranking barrister in the UK, who was unavoidably delayed on his way to court one morning, and arrived in the courtroom in plain business attire, having had no time to robe up. The elderly and rather pompous judge scanned him over the rims of his glasses, squinted, then frowned and declared, "Mr Johnson-Smith, I'm afraid I can't see you!"

There is a great parallel in the way we recognise the God of our own religion, and certainly the same amount of pomposity and disapproval. In the old film, The Invisible Man, and in the more recent remakes, you cannot pyhsically see the character unless he is wearing clothes. Occasionally you see a hat floating around, or a vase or book apparently making its own way across a library, but you don't see the hand that moves them unless the superhero chooses to wear a glove at that moment.

And in the narrow tracks of much of our religious thinking, the only costume that the invisible God can possibly wear is the one that we recognise.  So if God chooses to turn up dressed as an Imam, we in the West don't recognise him (or her). In fact, we can be extremely narrow in our interpretations of what is a valid costume for God to recognise, or wear. Take a look at the fabulously elaborate requirement for priestly garments described in Exodus in the Old Testament. Each element had a special meaning, as part of the priest's and the people's devotional lives, and to enter the temple incorrectly clad might mean not only that God couldn't "see" you, but he might be angry enough to punish you.

So a certain type of fundamentalist takes this primitive view of God's anger at breaches of protocol, and imagines he or she is doing his will when they reflect that attitude to others who have dressed from the wrong wardrobe. And the beautiful priestly cosume, a creative expression of a soul's and a people's longing for and devotion to God, turns in an instant into the wronging of all others; left and right; sheep and goats; saved and damned. 

What disguise must God turn up in for you to recognise him, or her?  The general view of God in the Old Testament, at least, is that he has no form, no physical shape. So we're more likely to recognise him if he wears what we're expecting. But he may, of course, choose to look like a pope or a woman or an enemy or a down-and-out to reveal himself to individuals.  So we probably all need to get out a little more, and start to take some pleasure in spotting more of his multiplicity of disguises, one of which is as a baby at Christmas.