It's In The Room

"This fire is God, and his furnace is in Jerusalem; and Christ enkindles it in the heat of his burning passion, which only he truly perceives who says: My soul chooses hanging and my bones death. Whoever loves death can see God because it is true beyond doubt that man will not see him and live. Let us, then, die and enter into this darkness; let us impose silence upon our cares, and our desires and our imaginings." -St. Bonaventure

There is a darkness of which poets dream and mystics write. A conundrum in its own right, hard to be known. For not all darkness is without light or more appropriately spoken opposite of light. We know that "men loved darkness rather than light, for their deeds were evil." But not all darkness is of evil's delight. Perhaps the mystics were drawn to the darkness seen in Exodus 20? "Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was." For them was this the place of unknowing? A place where God could be fully known (within human comprehension) and yet remain unseen, for no man can see God and live. Yet the darkness is dangerous of which Jeremiah writes. He laments over God's darkness falling over Jerusalem, wrapped in anger and rage. It became a wound that would not heal........ There is a darkness in which there is no delight.

It's in the room.
It's so cold, I can feel some kind of cool wind blow,
When my eyes are closed I can feel some kind of eerie cold.
Late at night I looked twice, thought I saw someone staring over my shoulder.
It's in the room, I can feel it in the room,
Something dead and gone but still somehow it's hanging on.

In all of my desert wanderings I have yet to encounter the thick darkness where God is. Perhaps in the distance I have percieved it once or twice. Or was it simply a rare seasonal storm cloud that appears before the rain? No, the darkness primarily encountered on these desert paths is that which men begin to love and in the end hate for its haunting. There is a cruelness to it that does not let go. For it has no consience and delights in consuming wayward souls. If you listen you can hear them screaming into the night having become prisoners of their own device.

Is that at least in part why some sought this "place of unknowing?" It had to be something more than one's personal well-being that was in mind. This darkness that one might enter is not a means of escape but rather certitude. It is a place of strength and being. It does not promise clarity but it assures one of peace. The longer one scours these paths the more we realize clarity is a facade. For we are here and here is the only place we can be. But he is before and after; ever-present, ever-past, ever-future. There is no place or time where he is not. This is clarity. A clarity of which we will never know, not even in the resurrection. For even in the resurrection we will only and always be there (wherever there is). The desert wanderer settles for peace. Though he must not pursue peace or it will elude him. Pursue the Prince of Peace and if you permit him he will become your peace. For the world is full of many darkness's. For men loved darkness rather than light. And at times you will find that it is the darkness of cruel delight that rests upon your own shoulder. In this desert we wander but we must not become wayward. We may have to live with darkness but we do not have to live in it. It may be in the room but it is not Lord of the house.

Whoever turns his face fully to the Mercy Seat
and with faith, hope and love,
devotion, admiration, exultation,
appreciation, praise and joy
beholds him hanging upon the cross,
such a one makes the Pasch, that is, the Passover,
with Christ.
By the staff of the cross
he passes over the Red Sea,
going from Egypt into the desert,
where he will taste the hidden manna;
and with Christ
he rests in the tomb,
as if dead to the outer world,
but experiencing,
as far as is possible in this wayfarer's state,
what was said on the cross
to the thief who adhered to Chrst;
Today you shall be with me in Paradise -St. Bonaventure

Sola Gracia, WHB