Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross 

Sixteenth century Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross, writes that “[i]f you purify your soul of attachment to and desire for things, you will understand them spiritually. If you deny your appetite for them, you will enjoy their truth, understanding what is certain in them.” To the material world, St. John of the Cross attributes spiritual qualities that only an intentional wandering through the desert can reveal. We must embrace what he calls an aridity or dryness of existence: detachment from what is seen and a clinging to what is not. Only then can we discern the hold much of the visible has on us and, from there, work to sever those holds and more fully step into the Divine. St. John of the Cross cautions his readers by reminding them that impatience toward this end is not, in fact, a sign of humility, but, in recognizing human frailty and concupiscence – that wheedling itch to fall away from what is good and true, which is to say, sin – he seems to suggest that the tortoise’s way, not the hare’s, is really best. 

It takes a lifetime. The dark night is persistent. 

Later, he recognizes that God seems to purge those with greater strength to suffer more intensely while he purges “gently and with slight temptation” those with weaker spiritual constitutions. Lightweights in the faith are treated with kid gloves while the formidable experience bouts of immense struggle. To both, the moon does not dazzle. To each according to their ability. Small proclivities for one. Grand impulses for the other. 

And here we all sit. If we are honest, that is – not prone to self-diagnose with the latest and trendiest labels. 

Over a century ago, it was called spiritual malaise. It emerged like an unsightly creature from the morass that became the Industrial Revolution. Many of the avante garde had shown God the door and wondered through their art why they were so sad. Others tried to drown the darkness with booze and sex while still others retreated to movements – social, political, and otherwise. We see it in their poetry, their prose, the songs they sang, the paint they manipulated and, eventually, we saw it in the wars fought over ideologies, perpetrated by demagogues. 

We all know the names. We recite them like some twisted catechism in our secondary schools and universities. 

We are, strangely, attached to our history to the extent that we are blinded by it. The “things” of our collective past hold sway over us. They are integral to our narratives, basic units of our reality. Powerful. 

But healthy? Good for us? 

What would St. John of the Cross say? 

Perhaps that they have a spiritual dimension – something we must know, grapple with. And why? The Divine, of course. To step better into it. To release ourselves of crippling attachments. 

Years ago, I swore off social media. I am no spiritual powerhouse, but I still knew enough to see that the mindless, ugly banter that is the lifeblood of social media was doing me no good. In a small way, then, I stepped into an arid place. I turned off the noise. I stopped believing it was essential. 

Is this what we need right now? Do the powers that be fear a massive walkout? 

The night does not have to be scary, but it does require a modicum of bravery to step into. There is truth to be found and, from it, peace. The world, at present, is very loud. But love whispers. It is not forced. The machinations of humankind have no jurisdiction. 

Park’s memoir about her escape from North Korea exposes a plethora of evil that is difficult to fathom. Only a couple of weeks past her thirteenth birthday, she was almost raped by a Chinese broker moments after Park and her mother crossed the Yalu River, fleeing the Hermit Kingdom. Had it not been for her mother insisting that the broker take her instead, an unspeakable horror would have taken place. Even so, the pair could not avoid being trafficked. They were sold repeatedly and, by Park’s own admission, had to do whatever they could to survive. The circumstances were dire for them and so many other North Korean defectors. All they wanted was freedom, yet they had to contend with a slew of nefarious individuals ready to exploit poor, starving, and terrified women and girls for profit. One detail she included continues to torment me. Men in a poor village pulled together their funds in order to buy a girl. They all had sex with her until she died, and then the villagers did it again. Another girl. Another heinous death. 

Park eventually made it out of China and to freedom, but I will withhold the details here. The account is riveting, and I encourage all of my listeners to pick up a copy. I do, however, want to share a few thoughts about the human capacity for authoritarianism – a capacity that oftentimes sneaks up on us unawares. 

Authoritarianism is something nobody would agree to at first, yet societies throughout the ages have succumbed to it. But how? How could anybody relinquish their God-given ability to think for themselves and defer to the state? Why would anybody willingly allow themselves to be bullied into submission? 

It begins with rhetoric. It starts with a story. Get as many individuals as you can to buy into a certain narrative, and they will be puddy in your hands. 

The dictators of North Korea told a story about themselves, fellow Koreans, and the rest of the world, and people bought it. The bastard Americans were the enemy. The Kims were the saviors. Once the die was cast, they didn’t need to tell the story anymore because the people did it for them. 

And this is how ruthlessness begins. Nobody mattered but the Supreme Leader, which means that anybody could do anything to anybody else without remorse. There is only one lead character. Everyone else is expendable. 

This, folks, is Communism. This is what Park fled from. But we have to wonder what kind of society she fled to. 

A story is also being told in the West, and the militants and their dogmas are already falling in line like the good soldiers they are. They may not be the armed guards patrolling the border between North Korea and China, but they are those who would cancel a person for saying the wrong thing. They might not be traffickers, but they are champions of content that demeans women and girls. They may not be sending detractors to reeducation camps, but they are doing their very best to reeducate by frenetically changing the definitions of words, challenging all that is true, and shaming anybody who refuses to cease and desist when it comes to critical thinking. 

In North Korea, there is only one answer to any question, and that would be what the state says it is. Are we in the West slipping toward that very same situation when a Supreme Court nominee can’t answer a simple question about what it means to be woman and university administrators can’t answer a simple question about genocide?  

Read Park’s book. For what it tells us about North Korea now. For what it might tell us about ourselves in the near future. 

https://www.amazon.com/Order-Live-Korean-Journey-Freedom/dp/014310974X

For me, it has always been a head-scratcher when I hear some folks claim to be spiritual but not believers in God – to claim the existence of ghosts but not their Creator – to appoint godparents for their children but have no idea what godparents are truly for.  They are behind the existence of all things supernatural, yet they struggle with having any relationship with God whatsoever.  They decorate for Halloween but don’t go to church.  They watch the latest Conjuring movie but silently disparage Christian believers for clinging to their Bibles.  They believe the devil exists but not the One who defeated death on the cross. 

What can we make of this curious social phenomenon? 

Lilydale, New York is a community of spiritualists not far from where I grew up in Pennsylvania.  Many folks flock to this village every year to get their palms read or participate in seances.  I have been there.  I did not willingly partake in the aforementioned activities, choosing instead to stand aloof and observe, but even then, a spiritualist called me out by saying that my grampa, many years deceased, spoke to her, saying that the decision I was wrestling with had an answer.  No.  Do not do it. 

She was right.  The call was good. 

I think about that event sometimes when I consider the rampant demonic activity in our world today.  To those who have eyes to see, it is ubiquitous – everywhere.  Senseless conflicts continue to rage.  Injustices are committed daily.  The basic tenets of our human design are incessantly being twisted.  What is good is now bad, and what is bad is now good.  And everybody, it seems, is just going along with it. 

To call this endless distortion and mockery of God’s blueprint for humanity what it really is would invite certain derision.  Father Vincent Lampert, however, is not so timid about naming the truth. 

His book, Exorcism: The Battle Against Satan and his Demons, gives readers clear insight into what exorcism is and what it is not.  It removes Hollywood from the mix and explains an ancient Catholic rite firmly rooted in Church tradition and scripture.  Beyond this, however, the book makes the simple claim that demons exist and that they must be dealt with.  We have all heard the saying that the devil’s greatest trick is convincing the world that he does not exist.  It is clear that this is the case today.  The Western world, at least, is having internal conversations about sex trafficking, the definition and fluidity of gender, the increasing suicide rates of our young, the very meaning of the word truth, violence and substance abuse, the breakdown of the nuclear family and the fatalism that is wracking millions.  And on and on and on. 

Some insist that these are practical problems with practical solutions, but I beg to differ, and Lampert may feel the same.  We have had the debates and the discussions, and they have proven to be fruitless.  Perhaps we need to take a different approach by recognizing that the evil spirits mentioned in Saint Michael’s prayer are, indeed, doing their very best to seek the ruin of souls.  The West, one might argue, is experiencing what Lampert calls a demonic infestation that can only be addressed on a spiritual level – a massive exorcism, a cleansing of the temple. 

Do we have the wherewithal?  Can we muster the will?  Or will we binge-watch another show, playing the violin while Rome burns to the ground and the demonic hordes shriek with laughter? 

https://www.amazon.com/Exorcism-Battle-Against-Satan-Demons/dp/1645850617

It was not Chekhov’s critique of Tsarist Russia that captured my attention.  As the working-class sledge driver Iona transports cruel and dismissive patrons around the frozen streets of 1886 St. Petersburg, Russia, I was struck by the sense that there was much more happening – that the actions and dialogue were all very surface level – that Chekhov was telling a story within a story.  Yes, the bourgeoisie who shout orders and abuses at the poor protagonist are framed in a critical light.  Chekhov offers stern commentary on a Russia where the very destitute and the very well-off co-exist uneasily thanks to a clearly unfair social and economic system.  The country is on the verge of revolution, and this short story is one of many heralds.  However, what eventually gripped me was the sorrow that was in due course revealed and how the sledge driver deals with it. 

We discover that he had just lost a son.  The death was untimely.  The weight of the new reality is unbearable.  Despite being in the company of his fellow Russians all day long, he chooses instead to spill out his grieving heart to his horse, the only one willing to listen. 

Thus ends a five-page story.  In under a thousand words, Chekhov delivers a message that resonates with me all these many years later. 

It is true that man can be callous and uncaring.  Perhaps this was how Chekhov was able to set up the quiet climax of the story.  The reader is not surprised by how Iona is treated.  We see this all too often.  What is not so obvious is that his need to open up would eventually be directed towards a co-laborer – another of creation – a creature that has been partnered with humankind for millennia.  We should not be so dismissive, then, of what I will call the heart value of the rest of creation.  To be sentient is to suffer, and on this basis, Chekhov seems to suggest, there can be found true empathy.  The sledge driver suffers.  The horse suffers.  In each other, in ways difficult to describe, there is small comfort. 

All at once, therefore, “Misery” is not just a critique of some system but of a condition: one that it would be vain of humankind to say it experiences alone.  As Saint Paul tells us, all of creation groans for this condition to cease.  Chekhov holds this up to be true.  The sin that negatively affects ourselves is the same sin that negatively affects the rest of creation.  Sin and the death it brings is universal, which means that the hope Christians have is the hope everybody, every creature, everything has even if they cannot or will not articulate it to be so.  Misery, thus, is a reminder of our common plight and a hint at the common remedy.  Even if the ears are not human, creation listens and the Creator through it.  All we have to do is speak, and our heart will be known. 

I belted out the song like any other grunge wannabe in the early 1900s, but I had no idea what I was saying.  Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain likely did not know what he was saying either.  Content wasn’t the point.  Explosive expression was. 

The Nevermind album both shook the music world and shaped the culture for years to come.  Grunge gave way to nouveau punk, and that genre, as all genres do, eventually became so mainstream that suburban girls from well-to-do families began to dye their hair and resist the Man, whoever that was, they could not be sure. 

As I listen to music with my daughters in my truck – going here, going there – always a rush, I am struck by one particular song by Billie Eilish entitled “Why Am I Here?”  It is one of many current songs that, in sundry ways, attempt to probe the deeper questions of life, but I mention it here because its title is so on the head of what ails so many younger people.  What is that, exactly? 

We might begin with the Modernists who over a century ago decried all things traditional, ushering protocol, morality, form, and all things institutional to the curb.  It was all so inhibiting – so smothering.  What is more, it is what birthed the first world war and all of the inexplicable carnage it produced.  Out with the old, they cried.  In with the modern, the new, the fresh, the original. 

Only that did not seem to work out either.  World War Two came along, and the carnage was even more terrible, the destruction even more horrific.  A genocide.  Atomic bombs.  Millions of lost lives 

Everything that led to that must go as well.  These were the Postmodernists.  Not one tradition was too suspect.  Not one bit of morality was too dangerous.  There needed to be a massive overhaul.  Morality would be rebuilt from the ground up. 

This was in the late 1940s – a project of the Baby Boomers. 

But how did it all unfold? 

The sexual revolution of the sixties.  The drug experimentation of the 70s.  The materialism of the 80s. Abortion.  HIV.  The breakdown of the nuclear family.  And then came the school shootings.  Despair.  Hopelessness.  Anxiety.  Mostly among our youth.  And then a song begging the question, Why Am I Here? 

These are my students.  The ones who rarely read.  The ones who, thanks to AI, rarely write. 

Over a century ago, leading artists and intellectuals threw everything out, determined to start anew.  But what has become of us as a result? 

I actually got a chance to meet Jacques Derrida at a conference at Penn State.  For those of you who do not know, Derrida was a leading figure in the postmodern movement.  He wrote essays that argued for the necessary deconstruction of everything that could be deconstructed.  To him, it was about unveiling systems of power, and his way of thinking even targeted the definition and use of words.  Have you ever wondered why there is so much confusion today about the words we use?  Man?  Woman?  And all the rest? 

When asked what he thought about the movement he spurred, Derrida offered a whimsical answer: Do not take me so seriously, he said. 

If only we had listened. 

A few years back, I was on a spiritual retreat at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia where I experienced an epiphany about my place in this world.  God, I realized, does not need me.  The sun will rise and fall without me.  The tides will ebb and flow without me.  The flowers will bloom.  The rivers will flow.  My presence in creation is not needed for creation to do its thing.  I am, however, very much wanted.  Just as everybody listening to my voice right now is wanted, so, too, am I.  And that makes all of the difference, for it is proof positive that I and you are loved.  To simply exist is to be loved, in other words.  Our presence, mine and yours, was intended by God.  We have a purpose, a job, a mission, and to discover it early is a great gift. 

Hwang’s protagonist, Sprout, in The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly always yearned to be a mother, but the story begins when the farmer attempts to cull her from the flock.  Sprout is an old and under-performing hen.  The eggs she produces are weak, and the farmer wants to save money on feed, so he makes the decision to send her to the pit of death.  There, in that place of hopelessness and death, she hears for the first time a voice – Straggler the duck – calling out to her to never give up.  All is not lost.  She just needs to take one step.  And then another.  And again another.  Until she is out of the pit and ready to live again despite being hunted by the ever-hungry weasel. 

What appears to be an ending is really the beginning.  She finds an egg.  There is a death and then a birth.  Sprout’s dream of motherhood is realized, and readers bear witness through Hwang’s well-crafted prose the range of feelings that only a parent can experience.  At the end of the day, Sprout mattered.  Her existence mattered.  She was loved so that she could give love in return.  And the end result was flight so far above any pit or murderous hunter. 

Hwang’s story is more than a story about persistence.  It is a story about the power of parental love – how it is, ultimately, self-sacrificial. 

I do not know Hwang’s religious affiliation.  It may not even matter.  Truth is truth even if is espoused by those who do not claim Christ as Lord and Savior.  The Catholic Church recognizes this to be the case.  While the Church Christ founded contains the whole truth, it does not deny that other faith traditions contain some.  All of this notwithstanding, Hwang’s message hits home in a very real way.  Sometimes, many times, when we think we are out of the game, we are not.  Our dreams, though, must be pinned to love.  The road is rarely easy.  But the gains are always good.  Sprout, a scraggly, unwanted chicken knows what it means to be a mother...to someone who was not needed but very much wanted.  All the difference, indeed. 

https://www.amazon.com/Hen-Who-Dreamed-She-Could/dp/0143123203

American individualism was simply the result of people trying to hold on.  Far from their normal resources, early pioneers who wanted lives free from entrenched social and political hierarchies – lives where they could be whatever they wanted to be, live however they wanted to live – also had to learn skills well outside their wheelhouse.  Tailors became loggers.  Lawyers became furniture builders.  Housewives became nurses.  All by necessity.  All in order to survive.  What once was called the New Eden – that rediscovered paradise before the fall of man – quickly turned into a land of savagery and hardscrabble living that called for a new breed of man to step up and power through. 

This was America in its infancy.  This was the America of Benjamin Franklin. 

In a pamphlet meant for those living abroad with thoughts of coming to America, this Founding Father expressed the need for those who have “a useful art.”  It is fine to be learned, it is acceptable to be well-read, but in addition to all of that, a newcomer to this country better know how to be handy.  A person should expect to get their hands dirty.  This was the way forward for the fledgling Republic.  The American spirit built on can-do and grit. 

Sadly, this does not seem to be the case these days.  At least among many. 

As a boy, I watched my stepfather, uncles, and grampa build things, get dirty, eye a problem shrewdly then get to work.  Power tools.  Chalk lines.  Swinging hammers.  They framed out rooms.  Built sheds.  Split wood.  Installed windows.  Changed the oil in their vehicles.  Lived as Franklin had long ago imagined.  Useful.  American. 

But where is this spirit today?  I ask my cellphone-addicted students if they have a useful art, and they give me blank stares.  Jiffy Lube changes the oil, and why would anybody want to split wood?  Just turn up the thermometer.  Simple.  Easy.  There is no wilderness to tame. 

What plagues my students, however, is anxiety … poor mental health … despair.  Am I a fool to see a correlation? 

John Steinbeck once wrote that there is a line of old men standing on the edge of the Pacific, angry at the ocean because it stopped them.  There was nothing else to conquer, no more opportunities to be heroic or, at least, realize that they can do more than what they think they can do. 

This is what is conspicuously lacking in our society today.  Our young men especially crave to be tested, but in the absence of such challenges that build character and integrity, we are left with a deferential and rudderless generation who would be unrecognizable to the men and women of Franklin’s day.  They would not be welcome.  They would have no seat at the table, having nothing useful to offer. 

I pray for a reverse in this trend.  For the sake of our country, we all should. 

Most folks have at least heard of Dante’s fictional descent into the bowels of hell.  Accompanied by ancient Roman poet, Virgil, the fourteenth century Italian poet travels circle by concentric circle toward Satan himself, witnessing along the way a vast host of punishments meted out, in many cases, to the political and social elites of Dante’s time.  It is a colorful and harrowing allegory that continues to entertain and edify scores of readers.  When I taught this years ago, it occurred to me and my students that Satan could have very well been with Dante from the beginning – that it was an impure curiosity that prompted Dante to begin the descent at all.  How did we reach this conclusion?  We found the climax of the story to be, well, anticlimactic.  Satan, a large, imposing, and frosty figure gnaws on history’s most infamous traitors, Judas Iscariot among them.  Naturally, the scene is rife with symbolic meaning, but this is not what captured our collective attention.  We were intrigued by the possibility that Satan had made an early appearance, prompting Dante to look at the increasingly violent torments of the damned just as he was trying to look away.  He was giving in to his desire to gaze upon such creative and eternal torture.  He was revealing something about himself, something about human nature.  We all want to see; even when we know it is not good for us, our eyes linger a bit too long. 

It is a sobering revelation.  But it is one that must be grappled with if we are to truly understand our proclivities so that we can master them. 

I do not mean to be unrealistic.  We are all fallen and are prone to listen to voices that are not God’s.  However, in understanding this facet of who we are, we stand to gain an edge, through the Holy Spirit, over that which wants to destroy us.  To be sure, The Inferno, which is one part of a three-part collection called The Divine Comedy, seems to attract the most attention, which, I think, speaks volumes about the readers.  Why are folks most interested in this particular segment?  Indeed, why are we attracted now to content we know is not good for us?  I could provide a list of examples, but I would wager that this is unnecessary.  You already know.  It is a chore for you to unfix your gaze just as it was a chore for Dante to do the same. 

What is the lesson then?  In Dante, we see ourselves, a sinner in need of salvation, a transgressor in need of hope. 

It is there.  It can be found.  Even as we stumble along on our own journeys, probing in the dark, lingering a little too long, just as in The Divine Comedy, purgatory follows and paradise after that. 

Of late, I have been reflecting on death – the inevitability of my own and that of so many loved ones throughout my life.  It is heavy – indeed, antithetical to how we understand ourselves and others, especially those we hold most dear.  How can such a fate befall this person or that?  They were so full of life … so unique … so precious … beloved. 

My aunt, for example, just passed.  She was only 69, but she had been in a dark place for quite some time.  She suffered from dementia and hardly recognized anybody anymore save for her husband of over fifty years.  I sent a condolence card to my uncle, describing how, years ago, I was walking up the sidewalk and observed him, my aunt, and their toddler granddaughter playing in the leaves.  She was gazing up at them in joyous awe, and the two new grandparents were dancing around, sprinkling autumn leaves over her.  They all stood in a golden light.  The sight was beautiful to behold.  And passing.  Transitory. 

Love and time. 

It was a tension I carried with me to Simpsonwood Park with my dog, Arrow. 

The love I have for my children.  My own death. My heart hurt for so many. 

As it happened, I thought then of the Hail Mary and wondered why it ended with the word “death.” 

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. 

And then I thought about another word in the prayer: “womb.” 

Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. 

Was a revelation coming?  Perhaps so. 

When each of my daughters was still in the womb, I delighted over them but not as much as I do now.  They were still developing.  It was still dark. 

Just like our world is now.  But physically.  So what do we make of our current circumstances?  Are we in a spiritual womb?  Are our souls being developed? 

Consider this: In my mother’s womb, I was who I was; however, in the world, I am more than my utero beginning.  In heaven will I be even more than I am now?  At present, we are all in stage 2 of a 3-stage process.  We go from womb to womb – physical to spiritual – an upward trajectory if we call on the right name. 

Perhaps, then, this is why we ask Mary to pray for us.  She is our spiritual mother, after all, so if we are truly through Him and with Him and in Him, then we will be birthed through Mary’s womb.  Our “death,” therefore, is not what we think it is.  My aunt is even more who she is right now.  More than she ever was.  And the same goes for all of those who have gone before us.  Maybe it is only in heaven where God fully delights in His children.  He pokes the belly now.  Anticipates the true birth.  Waits patiently.  Knows that both births are scary and messy but also knows that both involve emerging out of some darkness and into the light. 

First the sun.  S-U-N.  Then the Son.  S-O-N. 

I am puzzled by the crisis of manhood we are currently experiencing in the United States – the same nation that forged alphas out of the wilderness, spearheaded efforts to defeat the Nazis, stepped up to the communists, and held out its muscular arms to welcome all of those seeking safety and shelter.  Once upon a time, teenage boys vied over who would get to sit shotgun, were quick to the contest, and determined in the race.  Now, they barely want to get their driver’s licenses, choosing, instead, to let their mothers cart them around while they sit in the back seats, fused to their phones.  I am, of course, not the only one to make this sad observation.  Jason M. Craig’s book Leaving Boyhood Behind is a thoughtful meditation on the state of men and boys in our current culture from the standpoint of the Catholic faith.  A convert himself, Craig laments the fact that so many boys cling to their immaturity, having no rite of passage to make that crucial separation – number one – but number two, having no brotherhood of men to welcome them in.  Both men and boys are left to bob around on the vast sea of our society with nothing to hold on to, nothing to define them, nothing to grow them into persons they were created to become. 

Or, at least, that is the assumption.  Craig points to a solution that has always been present, though swept under the rug by the forces of secularism. 

Everybody needs meaning and purpose.  Remove either and despair and angst will always be the result.  When I came of age in the early 1990s, grunge bands like Nirvana were all the rage.  Looking back, I can only conclude that the angst they were all projecting was a sign of the times.  Their lyrics only made sense insofar as they didn’t.  They were lost.  Future suicides, many of them.  Drug addicted.  Checked out. 

Now, the drugs have only become more potent.  The reality in which we live more twisted.  Where are the men?  Where have they gone? 

Pornography.  Video games.  Away from the universities and into the gun shops. 

Why are there so many shootings?  Voiced angst has become physically manifested.  What once threatened the soul now threatens our schools and churches – nearly everywhere people congregate. 

What, then, is the remedy?  Craig has an answer.  True masculinity can be recovered by a return to the rites and traditions that made this country strong to begin with.  Not toxic.  Not stereotypical.  But real.  Authentic in Christ.  Authentic as Christ.  Self-sacrificial and unapologetic.  Boys and men must rediscover themselves in God’s design, for not to do so would be to relinquish a very noble responsibility.  We cannot afford to sidestep this any longer.  It is really as simple as that.