Contemplative Seeing

We are in a time period of short days becoming shorter, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. Our weather is colder, our nights longer. It is nature providing us with proof of the usefulness of darkness and dormancy, and its power to prepare life even while all seems asleep.


To learn the truth of St. Teresa words: One knows God in oneself, and knows oneself in God often requires us to journey through darkness, a darkness that ultimately reveals. Perhaps we need darkness in our spiritual lives because we cannot bear the whole truth about ourselves in full light.  Perhaps in darkness we learn to look with different eyes, one that looks in rather than out. Perhaps darkness makes us stop to think, instead of rushing headlong into life.

Whatever the reason, we know that darkness is part and parcel of a spiritual life. We know that learning in darkness often illuminates our own sense of ourselves, so that we realize that helplessness, imperfection and our true unflattering selves are not a hindrance to loving God; only their denial is. And in that truth, we find we can leave the world of appearance and walk in the corridor of the inner sanctum. And there, darkness will be greater than light; we will accept our naked self; and powerlessness will not frighten us because we will know God, and in his Light we will see Light itself.