ANGST...AH, CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION

The Dark Night of the Soul, as John conceived it, is actually an inner state that may or may not have anything to do with external circumstances. It is an experience of being stripped of all the spiritual feelings and concepts with which we are accustomed to propping up our inner lives. It is a plunge into the abyss of radical unknowingness. This spiritual crisis, John assures us, is a cause for celebration....  Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," September 8, 2017

This Dark Night of the Soul description reminds me of my long-ago God in a Box experience. I felt exactly as the Dark Night sounds...stripped of all my spiritual feelings and concepts, plunged into the abyss of radical unknowingness. I do not recall how long this period lasted, but in my memory it seems forever.

It did not break until finally my hurt forced me to return to a once-favorite meeting whose purpose was the study of God and other spiritual matters.Sometime before, when I first attended this meeting, I knew all there was to know about God, I preached the Word because I knew, and I knew I knew. Now, here's me returning...a beaten-down woman...and forced by my real agony to confess that I did not know if there is a God but there for sure was none in my life now.

That did not immediately turn me around but it wasn't too long later that I had a blinding flash of the obvious. In effect, I  had packed my first realization of God in a box and carried it with me everywhere so that if ever there was a question, doubt or angst, I'd have my boxed God right there to set the situation straight. I had security under my control.

Now, I was faced with questions, doubt and angst in my head, heart and gut, and I was some kind of scared. It took my feeling abandoned by God. and confessing that out loud before friends and strangers...a.k.a., ego-deflation in depth...to break out of my self-security.

There it is in a nutshell...while my God was growing, I was not.

The line, this spiritual crisis...is a cause for celebration, is what I hold to today. For whatever reasons, I've been feeling edgy for awhile...the many losses, the physical adjustments, turning 80 (and that alone will put hair on your chest which surely qualifies as scarifying to a little old grey-haired lady)...all boil down to I know naught of God.

Ah, but God knows the all of me. 

So I pray my thank you, I mentally hug my angst and laugh with my edgy...I hold to my attitude of gratitude...and I know it is well, it is well with my Soul.

Thank you.