If you missed last year’s scriptures for Epiphany, you should take the time to read them. I read them about a week before Epiphany last year, and about ten days before a visit from Mirabai Starr, the newest translator of St. John of the Cross’, Dark Night of the Soul. Starr was to facilitate a Lenten retreat hosted by my church. I read her translation in preparation for her arrival.
What happened between the readings for Epiphany and my reading of Dark Night was one of those spiritual “you are here’s” where, suddenly every path on your spiritual map leads to one point and that point is inescapable.
For me, they made sense of my own spiritual life and of each other. The readings for Epiphany are about mountains and spiritual dramatics, The Dark Night about deserts and spiritual deprivations. Why put them together? Firstly: “I didn’t; God did”; I didn’t choose those readings for Epiphany nor was I responsible for Mirabai’s visit. Secondly: maybe they go together in the same paradoxical, beautiful way that a small, traditionally African-American church in Florida fits with an ethnically Jewish, Buddhist/Christian mystic from the red New Mexican desert. It’s just proof that God’s map is so much bigger than our petty boundaries and that the spirit travels over innumerable, unexpected terrains.
Epiphany highlights the mountainous: Moses on Mt. Sinai, forty days and forty nights, having received the ten commandments; Paul "pressing on toward the prize of the upward call of God"; Jesus with Peter, John and James on a "mountain apart" transfigured, his identity as the Christ revealed; all "mountaintop" experiences, sometimes literal, always spiritual, the highest of spiritual highs. Biblical references to mountains don't stop there: elsewhere they serve as Jesus' refuge in prayer, pulpit in the beatitudes, altar in Abraham's offering of Isaac, and God’s gift to his people: Mt. Horeb. Throughout the Bible, mountains are recognized as holy places, spiritual places, places of Epiphany.
If you’ve ever lived near mountains, you understand the fuss. I lived in Denver for 5 years. Denver is nice enough, but really just a city. It’s spread out, lots of cookie-cutter houses. It’s the mountains that make it special. They sit on the horizon, hovering over that city like kings and queens with snowdrifts for crowns. Countless mornings, annoyed with the cold, questioning why I was there, I turned westward and “AHHHHHH,” the answer. Thank you God for those mountains.” I didn’t even believe in God then, but every time I saw those mountains, I thanked Him for their presence. I thought of them like Shug thinks about the color purple in the book of the same title: God gets angry when we walk by the color purple and don’t notice it. Mountains, like purple flowers, should not be overlooked.
I don’t think they are, either. When it comes to the dramatic and the profound, human beings seem to get it. Most of us are spiritually “here”, because, if only for a moment, we have been on that mountain with God, been transformed, seen Christ revealed, heard God’s voice speaking to us loudly and clearly. We’ve not all been “successful”. Spiritual highs aren’t about success. Sometimes, the most powerful ones come packaged as Earthly struggle. An elder woman at church talks to me about being poor as a child and living in the country, isolated. “But, you know, we didn’t know it”, she says. “We had everything we needed. My parents taught us that God was with us and that’s what we knew, what we counted on.” Another parishioner gives testimony of losing her house earlier in life and struggling for financial security, “but the Lord brought that house back to me,” she says, “and it was better than it was before.”
My best friend, who lost her sister years ago, claims her daughter sees her and gives reports on her wellness as God’s comfort, consolation. Another woman talks about God calling her to her prayer room, early in the morning, with the anticipation of feeling His presence. We all have them, those mountaintops. In those moments, we are like Peter and John and James, feeling like it’s our secret whispered into our ears, because we are special and appointed and loved. Maybe we live in our churches like I lived in Denver, mostly bored or annoyed, but we stay and we continue because of that experience on the mountain, the visions, the impossibly coincidental coincidence, the delivery from suffering; in short, the answered prayers. Thank you God for those mountains.
I guess that’s why they finally got the best of me. I had to be up there. Despite a very real fear of heights, I decided to try rock climbing. It was the will thing. If you are scared of something, you just will yourself unscared of it. If you want to feel God, you just arrange it. I climbed a mountain. I climbed many mountains. I had the shoes, the clothes, and the friend with the gear. Oh, I was secure; I had a metal clamp connected to my harness and a metal hook connected to a metal bolt drilled deep into the rock. But, boy was it a high. When I discovered that I could overcome my fear, drift in the sky, feel the rock under my hands…again, it was “Thank you, God. This is so beautiful.”
Pretty soon I wanted to return to that experience again and again. I felt like Peter wanting to build a house up there with Jesus, all bathed in white, transfigured, perfectly revealed as God. When we’ve felt God’s arms around us, just once, we all want to return there. We know how good it feels. And, after just once, we’re certain we know the way; we have the map. Even if the terrain gets rocky, we have the strength and the courage and the vision. We have the faith. Until we don’t. Until, like me on the rock, we try to get back there one day. I’ve heard everyone say it.
“I just want to get back to that feeling, to the visions God gave me, to the clarity.” We do everything the same. We hook our feet just right, catch our finger holds, use our legs for strength, survey the rock for opportunities. But, there is that bump this time. We’ve never seen it before. Oh, we’ve been over a thousand bumps: financial hardship, racism, divorce, loss of children. We are not faint of heart. Some have had to scratch and claw up that mountain. We don’t mind straining to go over those bumps. We don’t even mind getting scraped on the way over. But this time, this bump, this obstacle is different. It’s not the kind of obstacle upon which God’s grace is delivered. It’s an obstacle faith can’t see around.
I knew there was a finger hold on the other side, but I couldn’t see it. Everything was the same. I was on that rock, totally safe, totally special, totally loved. Nothing had changed. Except, this time, I couldn’t feel it. I panicked. “Please,” I begged my partner, “tighten the rope.” He cinched it. “Are you okay?” “I’m going to fall,” I yelled down. “No you’re not,” he yelled back up. “The rope is tight. You are secure. Just reach over and grab the hold. You’ll scoot right up.” “No!” I yelled. I can’t. I can’t do that. I am going to fall.” I started to scream. My voice echoed all through the canyon. That day on the rock, unlike dozens of days exactly like it, I could not see the hold I needed. That day on the rock, panic set in. I would like to say that, despite my fear, I wanted to continue, that that blind spot didn’t get the best of me, but I would be lying. There were no heroics. I became hysterical because I lost all trust that I would be okay. I lost the will to continue up the rock; I lost the vision, the feeling of the peak. I couldn’t even remember why I wanted to be up there. I wasn’t even sure where the peak was anymore. Maybe it wasn’t there at all.
This is the thing about mountaintop experiences whether of the rock or the spiritual variety. We all know about the glory, the successful struggle, the “we shall overcome”. We’ve tasted the victory on top of the peak. We have all felt, if only for one glorious moment, loved and special and appointed. We have all walked around, at one moment or another, with God’s commandments stuck like keys in our pocket, assured of our place in the world, amid struggle or success. Some of us have been to that peak again and again and again. But, what happens when we can no longer see around the corner of our faith? What happens when we are getting no instructions from God, when we are adrift with indecision, when we are sitting in the pews on Sunday morning wondering why God left us behind, why we can’t feel Him anymore? What happens when the Eucharist has become mundane, and the hymns difficult, and the prayers contrived? What happens when, intellectually we know that life is a gift, and yet it feels like burden, or worse, just boring and drab and flat, flat like flatland, like a desert, without water and without life? Where do we go from that place? How do we find God in the flat places of our journey, after we’ve come down from that peak? Why didn’t Peter build his house up there on top with Jesus that day?
This is the question that St. John of the Cross attempted to answer hundreds of years ago. This is the answer that Mirabai Starr brings back to us with the gift of her translation. Dark Night of the Soul, is a rapturous description of the soul’s journey to communion with God, a map of the journey, if you like. But, be prepared. This map is different. The goal is different. This map will not just lead you to that peak. It is not a map leading you back to some wondrous experience that you long to “achieve” again. This map takes you to the heart of stillness and silence, to the heart of the mundane in your everyday life. It tells you what happens when you are committed to prayer, when the ordinariness of your life becomes a prayer, when you let your own thoughts pass, day after day, and listen to the silence of the Spirit. This map is the real McCoy—heading straight ahead, into the mountains, into the swamps, into the rainforests, and yes, into the flattest, the driest, the most arid of deserts, places where God seems absent. Wherever God asks his loveliest to go, that’s where this Starr/Cross’d map will lead.
I continued on that rock that day, to beg for help, to cling there, exhausted, unable to move in any direction, unable to even desire to move, wanting just to be off the rock. But, where was I to go? If I had not been afraid to even go down, I would have hopped off and never returned. I would have been resigned to never see another peak again; I would have accepted that it wasn’t for me. Unfortunately, getting down seemed as unbearable as going up. I was stuck, just stuck and afraid. After about 10 long minutes of paralysis, feet sliding, arms exhausted, I heard a voice from about 15 feet above. It was the voice of another climber, further along the route. “Get off the rock,” he said. His voice was calm, quiet, reserved. He did not engage in my panic, nor did he condescend. He was matter-of-fact. “You are clinging to the rock. It’s physics,” he called out. “When you cling to the rock, your feet slide and your muscles get weary. Back up, push away with your arms and your feet will stick.”
I was not calm in return. I vehemently refused until I realized there was no other choice. I was either going to let go or I was going to fall. Either way, I was not in charge and I was not going to like it. I did it anyway. What do you know? When I pushed my body away from the rock and stopped clinging and grasping and clutching—when I stopped trying so hard to see around that corner, to “accomplish” God, to “get back” to that experience, my entire posture was shifted. My feet moved from toes parallel, struggling to find a hold, to arches perpendicular and secure. The rest of the climb unfolded with ease and I repelled back down to our starting point.
I must confess that I didn’t climb much after that and I don’t think the cause was fear. I just didn’t need to do it anymore. Maybe the peak wasn’t where I thought it was. Maybe the peak repelled back down with me. Maybe I stopped telling God who to be and what to feel like, stopped creating Him through peak experiences and allowed Him to create me. Mirabai Starr explains it better than me. She can tell you because she has charted the course herself and come face to face with that blindness, that desert, that place without water, without life, that place we think without God. In the introduction to her translation of Dark Night, she describes her own “expeditions” through a variety of spiritual disciplines. After all her doing, her charting, after all the searching for holds, she heard the voice of a fellow climber above her, further along the route, a voice beckoning her forward on her spiritual journey, a voice beckoned by still yet another.
“Nobody saw me; I did not see a thing.
No other light, no other guide
Than the one burning in my heart.
This light led the way
More clearly than the risen sun
To where he was waiting for me”.
(Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross).
For Mirabai Starr, for St. John of the Cross, the dark, the blind, the dry, and the flatlands of the spiritual journey become like secret passageways to communion with God. They are the places we should set up camp in stillness, in silence, in surrender; the places we should decide to build booths. Through them we finally lose ourselves (“undetected I slipped away”), stop trying so hard (“my house at last grown still”), stop clinging to that rock (“secure in the darkness”); trust the ropes (“I climbed the secret ladder in disguise”); and let God lead us (“O exquisite risk!”) to the peak of that mountain (“Concealed by the darkness”) in whatever landscape he chooses. This time, we build our booth for Jesus in our hearts, transfigured and white and glowing. (“My house, at last, grown still,”) and we are transfigured too.
Deborah Turman Bonnlander is a part-time teacher of Christian Education at the Episcopal Day School in Pensacola, Fl. She is otherwise a full-time student of life, guided by her spiritual gurus: Winona, Clara, and Juliette Bonnlander. This essay was written for the parishioners of St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church and for Mirabai Starr in gratitude for their inspiration.
