If I say, ‘Surely darkness shall hide me, and night shall be my light’ — Darkness is not dark for you, and night shines as the day. Darkness and light are but one.”
– Psalm 139:11,12
This past Thursday morning, after eight months, my journey through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola ended formally with a closing ceremony with my spiritual director. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I began them, not even knowing fully what they were, and now that it’s over I’m still not sure if I know fully what they are, or if I ever will. My journey with St. Ignatius is just beginning, I have a feeling.
During the closing ceremony was a reading of Psalm 139 and a meditation on it. Among the verses, the two above stood out for me, perhaps because just before the ceremony, my spiritual director and I were talking about light and especially dark. It was on them that I meditated, thinking of the words of the hymn “Amazing Grace”: I once was blind/but now I see, and how paradoxically when we think we are seeing, i.e. in the spiritual realm (the direction God wants us to go, for example), we are truly blind, and when we think we are blind (when we don’t know where we are going, for example) with our eyes closed to the world, we are really seeing the path clearly, or maybe at least beginning to see the path where we saw no path.
“For we walk by faith, not by sight,” II Corinthians 5:7 reads. Even though I haven’t learned it yet, I am beginning to learn to do that and see the importance of faith and, as my spiritual director puts it “our utter dependence on God.”
Why I say I am beginning to learn is because too often I don’t see the importance of putting my trust in God’s hands. I try (again, that phrase) to do it on my own. For example, I say that when I get up mornings, I will devote time to God, as I did last weekend, but I don’t do it, perhaps because I’m trying too hard. It’s not that I don’t need to be disciplined, because I do, but it’s that I think I can do it by my own willpower: that’s where the problem arises, or at least one of many problems.
At the end of Psalm 139 are these verses:
Probe me, God know my heart; try me, know my concerns. See if my way is crooked, then lead me in the ancient paths.”
– Psalm 139:23,24
And in the Book of Jeremiah is this verse:
Thus says the Lord, stand beside the earliest roads, ask the pathways of old which is the way to good and walk it, thus you will find rest for your souls.”
– Jeremiah 6:16
In the footnotes of my Bible, it says on that verse: “Earliest roads…pathways of old: history and the lessons to be learned from it.” History, unlike that song by Sting so many years ago, will teach us something. What it is teaching me is to walk by faith and not by sight. Maybe thus I will find rest for my soul, even in the darkness. Maybe darkness and light can be as one for me and also for you.
Addendum: Perhaps not coincidentally, for my “graduation” of the Exercises, my spiritual director gave me a copy of The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, which includes “The Dark Night.” Maybe these are the ancient paths, the pathways of old, the one that saints like St. John of the Cross walked.
