‘Dark night’ can serve holy purposes

Last Saturday, our daylong spiritual direction class at Gonzaga University focused on the Christian spiritual tradition usually called “the dark night of the soul.”

On Sunday, as I was thinking about Martin Luther King Jr., I began to wonder if he had written anything about his own dark nights of the soul.

He must have had such times. From the time he said yes to leading the Montgomery bus boycott to the day his life was cut short by an assassin’s bullet, he must have known deeply dark times.

He must have had times when his very soul cried out in despair. He must have had times when he frantically searched for an overwhelming reason to continue leading the fight for civil rights and human dignity.

There are many people in our region who are far more intimately acquainted with King’s writings and speeches than I am. They may know of times when he committed his despairs, frustrations, angers and fears to paper.

But I have some clues.

In his extraordinary “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King wrote that he was “gravely disappointed with the white moderates.” He saw them crave order instead of justice, negative peace (absence of tension) rather than positive peace (presence of justice).

He was disappointed with many people and institutions. But he continued to offer the respect due them as children of God.

Earlier this week, I was privileged to experience an excellent, new 40-minute video produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center, “Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks.”

It centers on Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. One evening during the boycott, the home where King and his family were living was bombed.

The documentary footage showed a mass of people gathered in front of that home. Many were ready to find and do great harm to the bombers.

But King passionately implored the people to rise above their desire for revenge, to treat the bombers far better than he had been treated.

Where in the world did he find the inner strength to say what he did and get the crowd to calm down and heed his plea?

Where did his inner power and wisdom come from to do all that he did in the cause of freedom and justice?

I suspect his strength came from the many dark-night spiritual wrestling matches he already had experienced before the bus boycott began. That spiritual wrestling continued for the rest of his life.

The burning conviction within him for justice would have flamed out without multiple dark nights of the soul.

King’s burdens were so much greater than anything we would expect to carry. Were his dark nights darker than ours? Maybe not.

I believe we all share a common fear about the times when our spirits are dried out or filled with doubt, frustration, anger or despair.

The fear is this: If I go through such a time, there is something very wrong with my faith, and God will abandon me.

But dark nights of the soul need not be feared so. They may well signal God’s presence in our life in ways we’ve never before imagined possible.

As dark as these metaphorical nights might be for us, God hasn’t abandoned us.

We may not see the God we’re used to seeing or knowing in those times. But these moments prepare us to experience a God who is deeper and greater than we’ve ever known.

God-of-the-dark-night strips us of our illusions. Consider this: To be “disillusioned” about God, faith, a person, the church, or whatever, means we first had illusions about God or someone/something else. Disillusionment can bring new vision and hope during a dark-night time.

In the darkness of our souls, it is entirely possible God will appear to us in images that push us to discard older, more restricting images of God that have limited our experience of God. Yet we’re reluctant to release them in fear we might not have anything left.

Time and again, though, we are reminded God will not abandon us.

There is so much more to the spiritual struggles we call “dark nights.” For now, simply remember that when you slip into times of significant doubt about your faith, be gentler with yourself.

God invites you into that place. There, your spirit can be reshaped and prepared for the next times of enlightened, loving service in your life.

Dark nights provide both endings and beginnings. Martin Luther King Jr. could not have done what he did for the cause of justice and peace without embracing the dark nights of his spirit struggles.

Neither can we do what God calls us to be and do as God’s children without entering a dark night of some kind. It prepares us for a time when the joy and brilliance of God’s love will shine through us more than ever before.