The Dark Night of the Soul

 By Toby Johnson 

The dark night of the soul refers to a kind of affective state, also called aridity, that is said to precede direct mystical experience. It refers to the notion that you have to go through a certain amount of suffering before you can realize joy and pleasure.  

The dark night is characterized by dissatisfaction, and boredom with the way “normal” people live their “normal” lives. Underlying this dissatisfaction is a “spiritual hunger” for something more than the world offers. This is interpreted as the experience of union with God. While this image applies to all people, it has particularly appropriate application to the experience of gay men, especially spiritually conscious gay men. 

There is a certain knowingness that goes with being gay, a sense of understanding a hidden dimension of reality that most people don’t seem to realize is there. We learn this early in life. At first, it’s just in reference to self. That is, we sense, often inchoately, that there’s something about ourselves we have to keep secret, something only we (and God) can know. We may develop a magical or religious vision of the world out of this sense of secretness or sacredness.

As gay men grow older we may come to understand that what we had understood to be the “secret dimension” was, in fact, the homosexual dimension, and that there have been others before us who’ve lived lives in secrecy and “darkness” as fellow homosexuals. We become fascinated with the homosexual slant which we—and our fellows—can see throughout history and culture. We want to know who was gay in the past, which movies stars, which politicians and celebrities, which spiritual teachers, shared our secret (often in their own “darkness”).

The people gay men—perhaps too cavalierly—call straight, the “normal” people, may not perceive this hidden dimension at all. There is, after all, no reason for them to mistrust what they’re taught by their parents, teachers, priests, etcetera, what some may call: “the authorities”—at least, no reason felt in their flesh. Of course, as they develop and deepen their own psychological and spiritual lives, they are liable to realize there is a secret dimension. That is, after all, the discovery of all those called “mystics.” An important part of the gay contribution may be precisely the revelation of the hidden dimension to life.

The dark night is a common step in coming out as gay. That is, gay men often experience confusion, depression, and loss of social identity as they realize their homosexual orientation.

First, perhaps, we sense that something is missing in heterosexuality; we long for something more. Then when we realize what it is we long for, we may feel humiliated or betrayed or at least may feel this is something we must keep secret.

Later, often through a life-changing moment of emotional intensity, we come to understand what homosexuality really is. Then the guilt and misconceptions are transformed, and we experience relief and joy. We have gone through the dark night, through the way of purgation, and discovered a whole new world and new self-concept.

The dark night is an image from a poem by St. John of the Cross, a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic. To one who sees the gay slant, this poem is an account of an anonymous sexual encounter that results in a mystical experience.

It tells how John sneaks out late at night in disguise and goes to a deserted spot outside the city walls and there meets a man, makes love with him, then realizes that this is Christ making love to him and he goes into a swoon. He wakes to find himself and his Beloved lying in a field of lilies, an allusion to one of the loveliest of Jesus’ sayings: Consider the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin, yet even King Solomon in all his glory was not adorned as one of them.

Gay men go through that darkness as a necessary part of being who we are. And thus we potentially see the mystical message behind religion. We potentially discover what St. John of the Cross was talking about: in every man we meet, especially those we have sex with or fall in love with, we can see Christ. Indeed, this is what “Christ” means: the real divinity of human incarnate life, here and now. As Jesus said, “What you do to the least of my brothers, that you do to Me.” And also: “The Kingdom of God is spread across the face of the Earth, and men do not see it.” The trick is to open our eyes.

This is not the wisdom of family values which is understandably concerned with maintaining the status quo, holding on to certainty, protecting the nest for the sake of the children. But precisely because, as gay, we don’t fit into the status quo, we don’t experience certainty and righteousness, we potentially have available to us the mystical vision of the dark night.  We can open our eyes and see in the darkness.

The Dark Night*

By St. John of the Cross

One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
- ah, the sheer grace! -
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.

In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
- ah, the sheer grace! -
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.

On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.

This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
- him I knew so well -
there in a place where no one appeared.

O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.

Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.

I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.

*From The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD, rev. ed., Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991.

+Toby Johnson, PhD, gay spiritual writer, novelist, former editor of White Crane Journal, freelance editor/publisher was a student and personal friend of the renowned comparative religions scholar Joseph Campbell.

Lesson from Tucson: It needs to be easier to get help

By Elizabeth Magill

The violence in Tucson has generated much discussion about the church’s responsibility to discuss political civility, gun laws, personal versus group responsibility, the death penalty and more. I am in favor of discussing all of those things, plus working to change secular support systems for people living with mental illness.

It needs to be easier to get help, we need more research and better medications, and it needs to be easier to require someone to get help.

But more than that, I am asking if the church can create connections to those who are on the outermost fringes of society?

Imagine a church that looks for, and reaches out to people missed by social services; people who fall through our safety net, people crying out for hope?

The church’s redemptive response to individualism should be to make connections to those who are lonely, and isolated, those who are lost. Some of those isolated are living with mental illness. It is easy, and acceptable, to disconnect from people who don't fit society's norms.

When Jared Loughner couldn't meet the social boundaries of his school he was kicked out; he was cut off from community, this happened again when he couldn't meet the requirements of volunteering. Both organizations were right to enforce behavioral guidelines; the school was right to offer counseling as a prerequisite for continued enrollment.

But we have not asked about what happens to those individuals who are cut-off from one organization, and another, and another.

We are unrealistic to hope that all people will simply decide to start following rules if pushed away often enough.

People living with mental illness will not get better from being disconnected or sent away. Mental health does not improve when we are isolated or lonely. Connections pull people back into community; connections eventually move people to get help; connections provide hope for the future.

Schools must focus on education, and volunteer organizations on their mission. A church can decide to focus on people who are lost, lonely, alone; people who society is pushing to the sidelines.

We can invite the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) to train us to support people living with mental illness. We can reach out to those who have been asked to leave one program or another and invite them in.

We can preach God’s love, and work to stay connected even when the individuals try to break away.

A church’s behavioral guidelines can require you to leave today when you are violent or out of control, and then invite, and welcome, you back again.

And then call to ask what happened if you stop showing up.

A church can be a place that encourages getting professional help and love you even if you don’t. A church can be a place where the isolated are accepted and loved, a place where connections are made and supported.

Almost everyone living with mental illness is not anti-social, not anti-community, not anti-rules, and certainly not violent. But I am explicitly suggesting that churches hang on to those people who seem beyond the pale, beyond our tolerance, beyond redemption.

I am suggesting that church is the place for redemption of those who are violent, who don't listen to reason, who don't respect others, who cannot adapt to social norms, and will not get help. I don’t believe that reaching out will make people suddenly peaceful and miraculously healed. Mental illness is a serious condition that is sometimes accompanied by drug use, alcohol abuse, anger, loss of social connections, and violence.

Churches reaching out to people with mental illness will not prevent all violence. It may even be that violence would occur more frequently in churches and less frequently at political rallies, or schools.

But fear of violence is not the deciding factor in creating a missional church. Churches are called to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, reaching out to the fringes of society, confronting those who are isolated in the way that Jesus connected with the Gerasene demoniac, and the woman with the hemorrhages, the prostitutes and tax collectors.

We are called to make real contact with those most in need, to make real connections, and preach God’s unfailing love. Imagine how society could be changed by a church, by many churches, doing that?

*  The Reverend Elizabeth M Magill works for EDSConnect, Resources for Theology and Practice