by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

Out of the winter day,

Come into this place of warmth and community;

You who come with a burden of sorrow,

You are welcome;

You who come with hope in your heart,

You are welcome;

You who come, seeking a new faith,

You are welcome;

Come, now, let us worship together!

I think it would be safe to say that I am a reflective personality—I lean to the dark side.  Perhaps it’s a biological predilection or a trait of temperament, but I’ve always preferred night to day, sunset to sunrise, autumn to spring.  In fact, I have a cartoon that has been affixed to my refrigerator since last spring.  It’s entitled “Spring Guilt,” and it pictures a rather morose woman at her breakfast table, listening to her radio, which is blaring the news “It’s 68 degrees outside, and PERFECT!” and she is thinking, “I should be outside, frolicking and gamboling . . . yet I don’t like to frolic or gambol . . . .” 

This sermon is the first of two, exploring these dark times of the soul—the second will be on February 6, and it will be entitled “The Healing Power of Melancholy.”  I don’t think of darkness as negative, necessarily—but rich.  Night brings quiet, candles, wine, mystery, passion, possibility, stars, rest, dreams.  The future is dark, and it is the darkness of the future that keeps life constantly interesting, full of surprises—this is the place where hope rests, where imagination grows.

First of all I would like to distinguish among various kinds of conditions which might be mistaken for “dark nights of the soul.”  A dark night of the soul is not just “a bad day”—we all experience these days of depression from time to time, sometimes we know the reason, sometimes not, but then the mood lifts.  The dark night of the soul is not depression, either, though the one can mimic the other.  A situational depression is one in which a person has a loss of some kind and goes through a period of grieving, or is in a situation which is chronically unhappy for him.  When the situation is resolved, the depression lifts.  On the other hand, a biological depression—though it may be triggered by a loss—is a change in the bio-chemistry of the brain which requires treatment by a physician.

This is a kind of darkness that I have dealt with off and on all of my adult life, though as I age, depression seems to have less and less sway over me.  For my money, biological depression is the worst kind of affliction, and I can understand why depressed people are so at risk for suicide.  I myself have never seriously considered killing myself, but just a year and a half ago, I lost a friend to suicide.  Depression is so intolerable because of the isolation.  You feel numb, set apart, absolutely cut off, as if you’re behind some invisible glass, and there’s nothing to be done, no act of will, no cheering up, no friends’ warm offers of help—nothing.  Fortunately, almost all depression can be treated successfully with drugs, and often additionally with psychotherapy, and I would encourage anyone who experiences serious depression to seek medical help.

What, then, is this “dark night of the soul”?  The phrase comes from St. John of the Cross, the Spanish mystic and poet.  John was a member of the Carmelite order, where he tried to introduce reforms.  For his efforts, he was imprisoned for eight months, during which he wrote a series of poems, one of them with that title.  He embraced the night, and the darkness of his prison cell, using it as a symbol, a retreat for his union with God, his Beloved.

A dark night of the soul is an extended period that many of us—including literally all of the saints—fall into where we feel that there is no place out, where despair is our constant companion, where the grounding that gave our life meaning gives way, and we find ourselves bereft .  As F. Scott Fitzgerald described it, “In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.”  Like depression, this state may also be triggered by job loss, betrayal, serious illness, or the death of a loved one, for example.  But the dark night of the soul is a spiritual condition and is not an illness to be “cured”—it has to be moved through, blindly and courageously, until at last this place of confusion and meaninglessness eventually propels us into a new vision of who we are and what we can do.  Poet Theodore Roethke writes: “In a dark time, the eye begins to see . . . .” 

This is a period of transformation in which we are pushed deeper, spiritually, sometimes whether or not we want to be.  It is in this dark place that St. John believes we are most likely to find union with the Divine.  Let me be clear: the dark night of the soul does not necessarily lead to happiness and security, or health and a new and better job, or the relationship which is right for us.  It may, or it may not.  It leads rather to a transformation of the soul.  Sometimes the resulting giftedness is more for others than for ourselves.

One of our congregants has given me permission to tell of a time when she went through a dark night of the soul.  Her son, age 27, was killed in a cycling accident.  In her own words, this is how she experienced her terrible loss:  “He’s gone.  Dead.  The one you loved is no longer here.  I put my hands over my ears when the chaplain told me my son had died.  ‘I can’t hear it!’ I said.  I was angry with the chaplain.  I lay on the ground in my garden and cried.  For many days there were no feelings but fear, fear that I would be drawn into a deep void from which I could never escape.”  She could have echoed the words of Job:

The life in me trickles away,

Days of grief have gripped me.

At night-time, sickness saps my bones,

I am gnawed by wounds that never sleep.

It has thrown me into the mud

Where I am no better than dust and ashes.

I cry to you, and you give me no answer;

I stand before you, but you take no notice.  (Job 30:16-17,19)

“Days passed, weeks turned into months.  I knew I had to feel my feelings, and I did.  I knew I was beginning to heal when I began to notice once again—to hear the birds singing, to see the colors of the flowers and the green of the trees.  I remembered Hildegard of Bingen and her greening visions of God—veriditas.  Yes, God is present here.

“The church of my childhood had too many should’s, and so I left—I had to learn to trust myself—to come to my own truth, and to have the space to honor that process.  However, I knew that God did not leave me—and I didn’t give up on God.  A favorite Benedictine nun reminded me: ‘<Our God> is not a wimpy God.’

“I knew from the beginning I was not alone.  An old man had said to me, ‘I don’t know your pain, but I know pain.’  I was connected, and I knew it.  My pain, my loss was the universal loss.  This loss deepened my compassion for others.  I felt my mission would be to help others know they are not alone.  They are not crazy when the darkness takes over.  There is a tiny light burning. 

“I remember a February, almost three years after <my son’s>death.  I was sitting on the couch in the very early morning, journal in my lap, candle lit.  It was clear to me that I had changed.  My inner vision of my sorrow had been of a river rushing through me—taking all my strength to keep it in its banks.  It was powerful and its surges could drown me.  That morning I noticed that the river had become many streams.  The water was there, the grief would not go away, the river would never dry up.  But it would continue in life-giving streams.  It is here with me now.  I have discovered that I have strength and patience and perseverance and courage. The streams are watering my soul.”

In the dark nights of the soul, those who have faith often lose that faith.  Where is God?  Is there a God?  If so, what is the nature of God?  These are the kinds of questions that come to the surface. 

The hard thing that must be done is to let night be night, let grief be grief—to feel it deeply, though it hurts intensely.  Anger may come first—that would be understandable—but often anger is the cover for what is deeper: sadness and grief.  Remember the words of David Whyte that Tom read earlier:  “Those who will not slip beneath/ The still surface on the well of grief/ Turning downward through its black water/ To the place we cannot breathe/ Will never know the source from which we drink . . . .” 

We find that when we arrive at this deep place, we are somehow comforted in being with the authenticity of our pain.  Grief is not self-pity—it is not “Why did this happen to me?”  Rather, it is acceptance.  It is, “Yes, this did happen to me.  And it hurts like hell.”  And then staying with the hurt.  In this place of grieving, we move to new understandings, for our old assumptions about how life works just don’t hold any more.  This stretching of the spirit, this opening of the heart, doesn’t come without pain and discomfort, for we’re making room within for a larger presence of the Sacred.  We’re changing, and change always comes with a price.

One way to bear the suffering which comes during these dark nights of the soul is to offer it up—to offer it as a kind of spiritual gift to all who suffer, for our own suffering is a reflection of all the suffering that all of humanity must bear, and that no one escapes.  This moves us to a place of compassion and lovingkindness. 

To be in this hard place creatively requires trust—trust that this experience, though we cannot see it or feel it or anticipate it, is a time of birthing, of transformation.  Through swimming blindly to the Source, we are becoming what is ours to become.  In order to rest in this kind of faith, we have to let go of control.  Now I’m going to use some words that are difficult for Unitarian Universalists to hear—because we are so smart, so capable, so logical, so educated, so in charge.  We have to—here’s the first word—surrender.  We must—and here’s the second—relinquish.  What do you mean, Marilyn, to relinquish?  I mean to give up, to abandon, your plans, your policies, your sense of the order of the universe and your place in it.  All that, falls into chaos and must be reordered.

D.H. Lawrence asks,

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased,

Cancelled,

Made nothing?

Are you willing to be made nothing?

Dipped into oblivion?

If not, you will never really change.

We, poor animal creatures, want so desperately to be in control.  But circumstances tell us that we are not, can never be, that control is an illusion.  We move to a place where we know nothing, and yet we give ourselves wholly to that which we do not know.  A place where “the mystery becomes the certainty.”  The essence of spirituality is to be given over.  We ask only the question, “What does my angel want of me?” because at last it is the only question that makes any sense.

I had a bit of a scare last Thursday.  I was flying back home on the last leg of my journey from a lengthy trip, looking forward to getting back to my house, unpacking, and getting reacquainted with my good cat Molly, when all of a sudden about 30 minutes outside of Portland, we ran into some turbulence.  I had been in worse storms, but apparently the pilot was worried, because he told the flight attendants to immediately gather all the plastic cups, and told us to all put our seats in an upright position, lock our tray tables in place, and be sure our seat belts were securely fastened.  So the flight attendants raced up and down the aisles collecting cups, and then came the announcement from the cockpit: “If we are forced to do a water landing, don’t forget to leave your carry-ons behind.”  WHAT?  A WATER LANDING?  My palms started getting a bit sweaty, but the plane seemed to be all right, so I immediately put on my administrator hat:  “Why in God’s name would the pilot make an announcement like that, and scare everybody?  He should say nothing unless we were about ready to make a water landing, and then give us the details of how to do it.  When we get on the ground—IF we do—I’m going to report this guy!”  I was really irritated.  Then my next thought was, “Gee, I guess if we make a water landing, looks like Tom will have to preach on Sunday.”  Next I thought about death, and I thought that it would be too bad to not write those books I want to write.  Experiences like this tend to focus the mind.  Sort of a mini dark night of the soul.

At this moment I asked myself if I had any regrets about how I was spending my days—not really.  I then wondered if I should write any good-bye notes to anyone.  Not really—I mean, my kids know I love them, and you guys have over 270 sermons—that should do it.  As the song goes, “If you don’t know me by now . . . .”  Finally, I asked myself, “Am I ‘finished’?  Completely fulfilled?”  Well, no.  And I realized once again that life was really not about solving all my problems and being happy.  Not that I would mind solving all my problems and being happy—but life is about being fully engaged.  It’s about living intensely and trying to live up to values you believe in and failing to be your best self and trying again.  It’s about giving in to your weaknesses and forgiving yourself and forgiving others their weaknesses and learning and deepening.  It’s about being able to cry one minute and laugh the next.  It’s knowing that the path of sorrow, which we all must tread, can lead to more and more loving, if we will but allow it.  May it be so, for all of us.  Amen.

PRAYER

Giver of Life, help us to know how precious life is.  Help us to live in thankfulness—for those we love, for the beauty of this earth, for good work to do.  When we go through those dark times, and we cannot feel your presence, hold us close, though we cannot feel the holding, until such time as we can laugh and love and live once again.  So be it.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

Go now, out into these dark and wintry days, go out wrapped in the warmth of faith, and know that in the time of darkness, the eye begins to see.  Go in love, and go in peace.  Amen.