my dark night of the soul

the dark night of the soul:
"a lengthy and profound absence of light and hope"
"a spiritual crisis in a journey towards union with God"

It began while I was still in Tucson, working at Iskashitaa as a missionary of the United Methodist Church. Worship services started feeling empty to me. I spent my days alongside refugees, consistently aware of the many hardships people faced, but when I went to church, I did not feel any connection to the life I was living. I went to services searching for a recognition of the reality around me, but all I could find were hollow words. I needed something real, and I could not seem to find it.

I stopped going.

I felt my faith changing in other ways, evolving into something I didn't recognize. I pulled back. It scared me. Instead of pressing into the doubts, exploring the new branches in the tree of my faith, I pulled away. I pretended those branches didn't exist. But when I looked to my other branches, the familiar ones, the safe ones, I knew that these were done growing. I had nowhere else to go. 

My solution to this problem was to do nothing.

I didn't go to church. I didn't read my Bible. I prayed only if someone sent me a prayer request. I feared it was the end of my faith journey, but on a deeper level I felt it was something different, something more significant. I felt it when I read blog posts by Rachel Held Evans or when I met with Emily for coffee or when I saw my missionary friends' social justice posts. My faith was evolving, but I didn't want to deal with it.
I was angry, and I probably still am, and I feel that most when I read posts meant to be inspirational. "Everything happens for a reason." "God will never give you something you can't handle."

Every time I read words like this, I felt myself roll my eyes and fill with frustration. (Helpful ways to address that, I know.) 

Because I wanted, I needed, someone to recognize that life is hard, and this world is a mess. That things happen to people that should never happen to anyone, but that God does not want bad things to happen. That war and murder and torture and abuse exist and they are not tools that God uses for some unknown purpose but rather consequences of free will and the existence of evil, and that God mourns these things with us and expects us to be agents of change in an unjust world. 

But I did not have that recognition at my fingertips, and I was too weary to go looking. It was easier to be aloof or to be angry, whichever I felt inclined toward on whichever day. It was easier to slip away, little by little.

I found myself in the dark night of the soul. I imagine it, sometimes, as an invitation to step literally into the dark night. Instead of accepting the invitation, and pushing forward, I panicked. I started to turn on artificial lights for myself. Distractions to make me feel safe in the dark. Work was a convenient distraction since it took up most of my time. It gave me a tangible reason for why I wasn't going to church anymore. Then I didn't have to talk about my doubts, my changing faith, my anger, or my fear.

Yet in the midst of my distractions, I have been yearning for the stars. Wondering, if I stepped out into the darkness, would I find those stars?  But I've been too afraid to turn off my artificial lights. What if I turned them off and the stars weren't there after all? What if I take away all my distractions and God isn't really there? Then what?

In the aftermath of Trump's election, my uncertainty is greater than ever. I fear that the dark night is about to get far darker. But I also know that I cannot let the fear stop me from putting my whole heart and my whole self into the pursuit of justice. If ever there was a time to step forward, it is now.

I saw this quote on a friend's facebook and it resonated with me: 

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.  

Do justly, now.

Love mercy, now.

Walk humbly, now.  

You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.  

I am clinging to these wise words, to the example of the many prophets and activists I am honored to know, and to the sliver of God I can still feel despite this seemingly all-encompassing darkness.