Taking off His Shoes "For, [Moses, after God had "commanded him to stay and put off his shoes") having taken off the shoes of his desires and pleasures, he became very conscious of his wretchedness in the sight of God, as befitted one about to hear the word of God. When so likewise the preparation which God granted to Job in order that he might speak with Him consisted not in those delights and glories which Job himself reports that he was wont to have in his God, but in leaving him naked upon a dung-hill, abandoned and even persecuted by his friends, filled with anguish and bitterness, and the earth covered with worms. And then the Most High God, He that lifts up the poor man from the dung-hill, was pleased to come down and speak with him there face to face, revealing to him the depths and heights of His wisdom, in a way that He had never done in the time of his prosperity."
--St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul
So, this is a very interesting book, and it is not filled with vague mystical symbolism like you might expect from a typical mystic, but rather with a tone of a practical wisdom that you might expect from Aristotle preaching moderation. I dare you to read
Dark Night of the Soul and not recognize yourself clearly and strikingly somewhere in its pages. Trust me, it's humbling. (Seven deadly sins, anyone? That one made me want to crawl under a rock.)
Anyway, I'll make this short, since this break at work is short. I have been concerned for a long season that something is just wrong with me. I don't receive satisfaction and refreshment from spiritual things or beautiful things in general anymore (including producing art). It's not that I don't care about them--I feel great anxiety about this lack of feeling--it's just that I don't have the response that I used to; it doesn't make me feel good. (It doesn't give me any emotional satisfaction to remind myself that I am working for a church, even.) Very sobering. This book speak a LOT to that sort of thing and claims that it is like being weaned from the sweet milk of spiritual infancy so that you can learn to do things for the sake of God and not the way it makes you feel or think about yourself. Let's hope that this season is, in fact, a season of such discipline, so that some good will come out of it. It has been accompanied also by losses, instability, suffering, ill health, and uncertainties. The good that has come to me--and there has been significant good this past year--I most times cannot
feel, but simply acknowledge and appreciate with a sense of detachment.
That is one of the reasons why I have not had much interest in blogging, despite my resolution to do so. (The unwilled detachment has affected recording my own thoughts. In fact, I am craving solitude.)
(The metaphor about Moses taking off his shoes reminds me of the Thomas Aquinas dream that I had awhile back. In that dream, everyone else got their shoes back, but not me. I remember feeling disturbed by this in the dream. Ha.)
Current Mood: tentative