Meeting God in the dark night of the soul

Here's the sermon I shared this evening at St Catherine's Wickford:

The book of Job is the record of one man’s dark night of the soul. In the story Job loses everything that gave his life meaning. His family are wiped out, his home, money and possessions are lost, he experiences severe and painful illnesses and is left alone, except for three friends who are more hindrance than help as they offer only platitudes that essentially pin the blame for his condition on Job himself.

Job knows that the diagnosis offered by his friends is wrong. He knows there is nothing he has done to deserve his suffering. He knows that it is not punishment for something he has done and this gives us one of the reasons why this is such a significant book to find within the pages of the scriptures. The book of Job tells us that much suffering in this world is undeserved. There are times in life when we do reap what we sow and bear the consequences of our choices, as Job’s friends assume must be the case for him. But this is not one of those times and the story is told, in part, to warn us against making the assumptions made by Job’s friends. Not all suffering is brought on by our actions, sometimes life simply deals us a bum hand - and that’s the way it is!

Job is understandably angry about this situation. In the section of the poem we heard read today (Job 19:1-27), he says that he has been broken down on every side and that he has been pursued by both his friends and by God. God accepts Job’s arguing with him and affirms him in so doing. In the final chapter of the book, God says that he is angry with Job’s friends because they did not speak the truth about him, the way his servant Job did. So, the friends who said “it’s all your fault and God is right to punish you” were condemned and Job, who argued his case with God is affirmed.

The book of Job is important, therefore, because it tells us that it is ok to argue with God and to complain to him when life seems unfair. That is important because it is not how we have been brought up to think about relationship with God. Most of us instinctively think that submission to the will of God rather than arguing the toss with God is what makes for a good Christian. Job tells us that that is not so. And, in fact, if we read scripture carefully, we will finish that stories are told of all the heroes of the faith - from Abraham through Moses, Jeremiah and Habbakuk to Jesus and Paul - arguing with God. Why? Because it means we are in real relationship with God. Our virtuous mask comes off and we say what we really mean. We are honest with God in a way that we cannot be when we are trying to be righteous. That is real relationship and that is what God wants more than anything.

This is something which has been acknowledged and understood throughout Church history. The phrase which I used of Job at the beginning of this sermon - the dark night of the soul - was coined by St John of the Cross while imprisoned in a tiny prison cell for his attempts to reform the Church. He was a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic who wrote many of his poems on a scroll smuggled to him by one of his guards. After escaping his captors, he wrote the Dark Night of the Soul, a poem about the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God.

Similarly, the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of “That night, that year / Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.”

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

At the end of the Book of Job, Job says, “I talked about things I did not understand, about marvels too great for me to know.” Through his dark night of the soul, he comes to understand that God is not who or what he had thought him to be. God is more than he had imagined or conceived. Human beings can know God but cannot know God fully because is always more than we can imagine or conceive. Every image or idea we have of God is inadequate because God is always more than any human definition. We can say, for example, that God is Father but to say that cannot fully define God as God can also be understood as Mother and as child and as Spirit (without gender). All these different things are true of God at one and the same time. So, God is both known to us and yet unknowable. In the dark night of the soul, all that we had thought we knew of God is taken away from us and we experience something of the mystery of God.

Summing all this up, what can we say? We need to be careful about the advice we offer to those who are suffering. In particular, not to assume that they have in some way brought their suffering on themselves. God said to Job’s friends, “you did not speak the truth about me, the way my servant Job did.” Then, to understand that we do not have to suffer in silence. To argue or complain to God actually brings us into a deeper relationship with him and is a valid part of prayer. Job says, “I still rebel and complain against God; I cannot keep from groaning.” Finally, we need to be prepared to have our understandings of God brought into question as he challenges us to engage with the mystery of who he is, the One who is always more than we can ever conceive or image. And so, like Job, we say “I talked about things I did not understand, about marvels too great for me to know.” May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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William Cowper - God Moves In A Mysterious Way.

Seen and Unseen: Paradise cottage: Milton reimagin’d

My latest article for Seen & Unseen is entitled 'Paradise cottage: Milton reimagin’d' and reviews the ways in which artist Richard Kenton Webb is conversing with the blind poet in his former home (Milton's Cottage, Chalfont St Giles):

'In Webb’s view, “Paradise Regain’d is about overcoming impossible situations” while, in Samson Agonistes, Milton’s Redeemer shows “Samson, the blind and foolish man”, “that we can always find hope in our living God even when society does not”. These poems moved Webb out of despair to discover hope because he knew they were heading towards redemption. As a result, he sees Milton as “a great English poet who gives hope, which in itself is a creative act for these difficult times”.'

For more on Webb's work, see my Church Times review of his 2023 exhibition at Benjamin Rhodes Arts by clicking here.

My first article for Seen and Unseen was 'Life is more important than art' which reviews the themes of recent art exhibitions that tackle life’s big questions and the roles creators take.

My second article 'Corinne Bailey Rae’s energised and anguished creative journey' explores inspirations in Detroit, Leeds and Ethiopia for Corinne Bailey Rae’s latest album, Black Rainbows, which is an atlas of capacious faith.

My third article was an interview with musician and priest Rev Simpkins in which we discussed how music is an expression of humanity and his faith.

My fourth article was a guide to the Christmas season’s art, past and present. Traditionally at this time of year “great art comes tumbling through your letterbox” so, in this article, I explore the historic and contemporary art of Christmas.

My fifth article was 'Finding the human amid the wreckage of migration'. In this article I interviewed Shezad Dawood about his multimedia Leviathan exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral where personal objects recovered from ocean depths tell a story of modern and ancient migrations.

My sixth article was 'The visionary artists finding heaven down here' in which I explored a tradition of visionary artists whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds.

My seventh article was 'How the incomer’s eye sees identity' in which I explain how curating an exhibition for Ben Uri Online gave me the chance to highlight synergies between ancient texts and current issues.

My eighth article was 'Infernal rebellion and the questions it asks' in which I interview the author Nicholas Papadopulos about his book The Infernal Word: Notes from a Rebel Angel.

My ninth article was 'A day, night and dawn with Nick Cave’s lyrics' in which I review Adam Steiner’s Darker With The Dawn — Nick Cave’s Songs Of Love And Death and explore whether Steiner's rappel into Cave’s art helps us understand its purpose.

My 10th article was 'Theresa Lola's poetical hope' about the death-haunted yet lyrical, joyful and moving poet for a new generation.

My 11th article was 'How to look at our world: Aaron Rosen interview', exploring themes from Rosen's book 'What Would Jesus See: Ways of Looking at a Disorienting World'.

My 12th article was 'Blake, imagination and the insight of God', exploring a new exhibition - 'William Blake's Universe at the Fitzwilliam Museum - which focuses on seekers of spiritual regeneration and national revival.

My 13th article 'Matthew Krishanu: painting childhood' was an interview with Matthew Krishanu on his exhibition 'The Bough Breaks' at Camden Art Centre.

My 14th article was entitled 'Art makes life worth living' and explored why society, and churches, need the Arts.

My 15th article was entitled 'The collective effervescence of sport's congregation' and explored some of the ways in which sport and religion have been intimately entwined throughout history

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John Milton - Paradise Lost.

Elizabeth Jennings & David Gascoyne: Mystical Experience and the Making of Poems

Elizabeth Jennings was a poet 'with an acute ability to combine concrete detail with abstract thought.'

'She was a bold and genuine versifier who conveyed both a sense of the hidden, and the fact that it was powerfully alive within her. For many years her favourite of her own poems was Fountain, from A Sense of the World (1958), which ends, It is how we must have felt / Once at the edge of some perpetual stream, / Fearful of touching, bringing no thirst at all, / Panicked by no perception of ourselves / But drawing the water down to the deepest wonder.

She later explained: "Art, for me, is that strength, that summoning fountain".'

Peter Levi stated that ‘[Jennings] may be the last poet of what used to be called ‘the soul’. 'One strand of her writing vitalizes English mystical verse in which she was steeped.' She wrote that 'a writer should neither preach nor conceal their creed.' 'For her, it was about taking a Christian lens to all subjects, following on from Chaucer, Milton, Dryden, Patmore, Hopkins and T.S. Eliot.'

Her faith contributed to some significant prose works. 'Every Changing Shape (1961) was a highly regarded exploration of the relationship between poetry and mysticism, while Christianity and Poetry (1965) considers the influence of religion on literature':

'Poets and mystics who have experienced some close, personal but supra-rational awareness of God have always carried away from such moments of illumination an increased subtlety, a profoundly original understanding of human experience and of the apparent contradictions even in the physical universe.’ … ‘Poetry is not rationalization but revelation and what is healing in it, both for the poet and his readers, is the ability to depict conflict at its most vulnerable point; with Hopkins, this point is the wrestling of man with God, - but also the surrender of man to God.' ’While frequently making parallels between poetry and religion, Jennings teases out the differences between the mystic and the poet: the poet wants to communicate ordinary experience while the mystic moves away from it.

In Every Changing Shape she gives a reading of Miserere by David Gascoyne: 'the only living English poet, apart from Eliot, in the true mystical tradition. If not directly influenced by it, his work undoubtedly leads back to the visionary poetry of Vaughan, Herbert and Traherne.'

She writes, 'in the magnificent sequence of poems called Miserere the poet, in lines of extreme lucidity, examines the depths of man’s guilt and the terror of life without God. The traditional “dark night of the soul” is transferred to Christ himself—Christ who is both the victim and the conquerer:

God's wounds are numbered.
All is now withdrawn: void yawns
The rock-hewn tomb. There is no more
Regeneration in the stricken sun....

This may it be: and worse.
And may we know Thy perfect darkness.

And may we into Hell descend with Thee.'

'Kyrie explores “the black catastrophe that can lay waste our world” and pleads:

Grant us extraordinary grace.'

'... it is the poet’s vision itself which sanctifies and radiates. The vision is the end and not the means and once it has been achieved, however fleetingly, it illuminates all things outside it while itself remaining locked in its own lyrical form and music.. This is the hard-won triumph of all great visionary poetry.'

Gascoyne said that 'The poet's job is to go on holding on to something like faith, through the darkness of total lack of faith...the eclipse of God.'

Niall McDevitt argues that the purpose served by Christian poetry, 'certainly at Gascoyne’s level, is not to proselytise or even to pray, but to wrestle with Christendom.' 'None of us can deny that we are surrounded by Christian architecture, iconography, educational and charitable institutions, tourist rubble etc. Our ancestry is Christian, our guilt is Christian and the wars we watch on television being fought in our name are Christian also. Even our nihilism is Christian. True Christian poetry is a critique of Christendom, which is, after all, the superstructure of capitalism. As poetry cleanses the language, it cleanses the superstructure':

'Involved in their own sophistry
The black priest and the upright man
Faced by subversive truth shall be struck dumb,
Christ of Revolution and of Poetry,
While the rejected and condemned become
Agents of the divine.' (Ecce Homo)

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David Gascoyne - The Return of the Reforgotten.

Job and the Dark Night of the Soul

The book of Job is the record of one man’s dark night of the soul. In the story Job loses everything that gave his life meaning. His family are wiped out, his home, money and possessions are lost, he experiences severe and painful illnesses and is left alone, except for three friends who are more hindrance than help as they offer only platitudes that essentially pin the blame for his condition on Job himself.

Job knows that the diagnosis offered by his friends is wrong. He knows there is nothing he has done to deserve his suffering. He knows that it is not punishment for something he has done and this gives us one of the reasons why this is such a significant book to find within the pages of the scriptures. The book of Job tells us that much suffering in this world is undeserved. There are times in life when we do reap what we sow and bear the consequences of our choices, as Job’s friends assume must be the case for him. But this is not one of those times and the story is told, in part, to warn us against making the assumptions made by Job’s friends. Not all suffering is brought on by our actions, sometimes life simply deals us a bum hand - and that’s the way it is!

Job is understandably angry about this situation. In the section of the poem we heard read today (Job 23. 1-9, 16-end), he is so angry that he argues the toss with God, saying "I still rebel and complain against God; I cannot keep from groaning." God accepts Job’s arguing with him and affirms him in so doing. In the final chapter of the book, God says that he is angry with Job’s friends because they did not speak the truth about him, the way his servant Job did. So, the friends who said "it’s all your fault and God is right to punish you" were condemned and Job, who argued his case with God is affirmed.

The book of Job is important, therefore, because it tells us that it is ok to argue with God and to complain to him when life seems unfair. That is important because it is not how we have been brought up to think about relationship with God. Most of us instinctively think that submission to the will of God rather than arguing the toss with God is what makes for a good Christian. Job tells us that that is not so. And, in fact, if we read scripture carefully we will finish that stories are told of all the heroes of the faith - from Abraham through Moses, Jeremiah and Habbakuk to Jesus and Paul - arguing with God. Why? Because it means we are in real relationship with God. Our virtuous mask comes off and we say what we really mean. We are honest with God in a way that we cannot be when we are trying to be righteous. That is real relationship and that is what God wants more than anything.

This is something which has been acknowledged and understood throughout Church history. The phrase which I used of Job at the beginning of this sermon - the dark night of the soul - was coined by St John of the Cross while imprisoned in a tiny prison cell for his attempts to reform the Church. He was a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic who wrote many of his poems on a scroll smuggled to him by one of his guards. After escaping his captors, he wrote the Dark Night of the Soul, a poem about the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God.

Similarly, the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of "That night, that year / Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God."

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

At the end of the Book of Job, Job says, "I talked about things I did not understand, about marvels too great for me to know." Through his dark night of the soul, he comes to understand that God is not who or what he had thought him to be. God is more than he had imagined or conceived. Human beings can know God but cannot know God fully because is always more than we can imagine or conceive. Every image or idea we have of God is inadequate because God is always more than any human definition. We can say, for example, that God is Father but to say that cannot fully define God as God can also be understood as Mother and as child and as Spirit (without gender). All these different things are true of God at one and the same time. So God is both known to us and yet unknowable. In the dark night of the soul, all that we had thought we knew of God is taken away from us and we experience something of the mystery of God.

Summing all this up, what can we say? We need to be careful about the advice we offer to those who are suffering. In particular, not to assume that they have in some way brought their suffering on themselves. God said to Job’s friends, "you did not speak the truth about me, the way my servant Job did." Then, to understand that we do not have to suffer in silence. To argue or complain to God actually brings us into a deeper relationship with him and is a valid part of prayer. Job says, "I still rebel and complain against God; I cannot keep from groaning." Finally, we need to be prepared to have our understandings of God brought into question as he challenges us to engage with the mystery of who he is, the One who is always more than we can ever conceive or image. And so, like Job, we say "I talked about things I did not understand, about marvels too great for me to know."

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Julie Miller - By Way Of Sorrow.