Watching in the dark night for the brightness of dawn

In an article which I recently came across, I found out that Karl Rahner, the noted German theologian, once preached a series of Lenten reflections which gave him the platform to speak about the state of helplessness and loneliness.  He told his audience a couple of surprising, yet insightful things.  One of the things that he said was that we must not be surprised by our feelings of loneliness and those of being shackled in moments of our more poignant lives.

What he meant is that there will, as part of our varied landscapes of our lives will show, be moments, even prolonged moments, when we seem to be somewhat forced into periods of loneliness and some form of constriction.  I have known many couples in marriages where there are great periods of loneliness, even when two people are sharing the same bed.  Physical proximity is sometimes not the antidote to loneliness, as can be attested to by those who are strangers in the bond of marriage.  Certainly, other afflictions can bring about the experience of loneliness and being in some sort of bind or constraint as well.  Illnesses do this to us, and so do experiences of our own human limitations.  When Rahner told his audience that one must not be shocked by these moments, moments of powerlessness and hopelessness, he was saying that it is in confronting these moments that we actually begin to develop our own sensitivity and begin that often painful but necessary process of stretching our hearts that lead to our emotional health.

The one temptation that faces us at these times is to make a beeline for the door, to escape and run away from what we think will make life difficult and challenging.  What Rahner says next is ‘don’t’.  Fight this temptation to flee.  Instead, stay inside of this seeming emptiness and darkness.  There is much to learn from this, counter-intuitive though it may be.

Many of us will turn to our familiar distractions to find some sort of escape from what pains us.  Some will turn to being lost in some sort of busyness, moving from relationship to relationship, turning to drink, endless amusements and worldly distractions.  What these escapes an do is to convince us that there is no God around for us, and that we have to save ourselves. 

Staying inside of the pain and stilling ourselves within this turmoil is a courageous thing to do because it provides our inner selves the opportunity to get to that turning point and to see that God is doing something within this chaos.  I know now that this was the subconscious working within me when I was told by my doctors that I had a rare blood cancer almost two year ago.  I knew that I didn’t want to go into any sort of denial, to escape from this news, or to enter into a ‘pity-mode’.  Instead, embraced it because I knew that I would encounter God within this challenge and the constraints that I was being presented with.   I do, however, hesitate much in using myself as an example, simply because it has the rather distasteful tone of being a literary selfie snapshot.  I do apologise if this is not only inappropriate but perhaps even rather distasteful to my readers.

When we meet these moments of constraint, several things begin to happen, but only if we allow them.  One of these is that our thoughts about God begin to become purified.  We will see that our notions of God are often not those of the real God, but the God of our imaginings.  A lot of us have very narrow notions of God that he must not allow these things to happen in our lives.  But it is in the darkness of our lives that we purify these stilted notions, where we sit and wait patiently for some light to shine in the darkness.  It is only when we are surrounded by a deep night that the light of hope can come. 

The Christmas story that is told in gospels where the infancy narratives of Christ are written about mention shepherds watching in the night.  What were they watching for?  The first thing that comes to mind would be potential marauders and predators that would harm their sheep.  But another thing that any night watchman would wait for is the light.  The light of dawn signals the arrival of safety and the opportunity for rest.  It is in this dark night on the first Christmas night that a light did appear – that of the heavenly messengers in the form of an army of angels. 

It is common knowledge that the deeper and purer the night darkness, the brighter the stars appear.  That is because the skies are not brightened by the city lights that can make the viewing of stars not only challenging but almost impossible.  It’s not that the stars are not there.  Isn’t this the same thing that can be said of God?

When our lives are too filled with anxieties and worries, made worse possibly by the distractions that we choose to deal with them, we surround our lives by much more brightness than we should.  But Rahner’s recommendation makes sense here.  Spiritual sense.  Perhaps we need to have the courage to sit patiently in the darkness that our lives seem to be in, much like those shepherds at Bethlehem, and await there in the deep darkness so that the light of God’s hope can be seen with greater clarity.  Having the stance of the shepherds on that holy night allows us to be ready to receive the message and comforting presence of God.

Nota bene

I will be taking time to be away for about two weeks where I will be incommunicado.  As such, there will be a hiatus of my weekly blog entry till 19 Jan 2015.  With God's grace, I will be sufficiently recharged and energized thereafter to write and reflect with a new freshness.  I wish all my readers a very happy and holy new year, where we welcome all the ways through which God makes inroads into our lives, transforming us to be greater images of him.