Darkness and light

"Exploration into God is exploration into darkness, into the heart of darkness.  Yes, to be sure, God is light.  He is the light by which all light is light.  In the words of the Psalm, 'In your light we see light.' Yet great mystics of the Christian tradition speak of the darkness in which the light is known, a darkness inextricably linked to the cross.  At the heart of darkness the hope of the world is dying on a cross, and the longest stride of soul is to see in this a strange glory." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

A week for opposites in my post titles, I guess.

The phrases "exploration into God" and "longest stride of the soul" are actually from a quote by Christopher Fry's A Sleep of Prisoners, to which Fr. Neuhaus refers.

John Michael Talbot wrote a beautiful song based on San Juan de la Cruz' Dark Night of the Soul, perhaps the best known Christian writing on this theme.  Dylan Thomas took it on, too, only apparently never found a lasting answer.  We've learned that Mother Teresa experienced a prolonged darkness in which she went decades without a sense of God's presence in her life.  

The darkness in my life has been very black indeed.  Almost fatally so, at times.  And yet the Light has shone in my darkness, and my darkness has not overcome it.  In my blackest hours, I've always had someone in my life who bore the light of God's love into my life.  As I reflected in my last post, sometimes the darkness of our lives can serve the purposes of the Light.

I learned today that a coworker is in jail.  I don't know if the allegations against him are true, but they are serious.  Guilty or not, he's likely to have a very dark road ahead of him.  I don't know him well, nor know whether I'll have opportunity to bear light to him.

But I certainly don't know how anyone gets through such darkness without the light of Christ.  Maybe Christianity is a crutch for the weak, but I have learned just how weak I am.  It is only when I have joined my darkness to the cross that I have ever experienced the light of resurrection.