Hello Darkness

[“Hello darkness, my old friend / I’ve come to talk with you again . . .” (from “The Sound of Silence” by Paul Simon, 1964).]

[Barbara Dent, My Only Friend Is Darkness: Living the Night of Faith with St. John of the Cross. ICS, 1992.]

O Lover, 

Of late I have been aware of the theme of “darkness” more than usual. The reasons have included the unfolding arc of my own spiritual journey; an ongoing wariness regarding mild depression; the nights following my recent brush with death in a cardiac crisis; and the shaking of the foundations of many of the international, national, religious, and personal structures which in my earlier life were thought to be relatively stable.

The theme of darkness appears repeatedly, mostly negatively, in both biblical testaments: e.g., the primeval formlessness before there was light (Gen 1:2); Jacob’s nights at first Beth-el (28:10-22) and then the Jabbok crossing (32:22-32); the flirtation with despair in Psalm 87/88 which concludes with “My only friend is darkness” (vs 18); the birth night in Bethlehem; the crucible of Gethsemane; the Pauline and Johannine designation for all that opposes You. In the subsequent blossoming of mysticism, particularly its apophatic edge, darkness waxes more multifaceted, paradoxical, and positive: e.g., Pseudo-Dionysius’s“ray of darkness”; darkness as Your “hiddenness” (Meister Eckhart) or “unknowing” (anonymous Cloud); and Juan de la Cruz’s “dark night of the soul.” 

The blossoming arc from univocal image toward the equivocal is already intimated in biblical texts like “Darkness and light are alike to You” (Ps 139:12) or the implicit darkness contrasted with the depiction of You as “dwelling in unapproachable light” (I Tim 6:16). However, it is in the second millennium of Christian mysticism that darkness increasingly becomes an ironic image for You Yourself, O Lover, as in Eckhart’s “darkness of the Godhead,” Juan de la Cruz’s “fire that is dark,” or, more recently, Howard Thurman’s “luminous darkness” and Christian Wiman’s “bright abyss.” In many such sources darkness or its equivalents unfolds as an image for You beyond sense, reason, or name.

So then, how and why does this subject matter to me, a person quite capable of being an enabler of my own crafted darkness? Across the years I have been inexorably drawn beyond the “lights on!” of piety and theology to the “lights off!” of the apophatic edge of my faith tradition. I have increasingly experienced Your darkness as engaging and, yes, oxymoronically luminous. Indeed, I have been awakened to darkness as the new light by which we are blinded! While You cannot be fathomed by my mind, seized by some spiritual methodology, or depicted by either analogue or imagination, the (anti-)image of darkness can be strangely consoling. In fact, I experience elements of relief in being ambushed by You in the darkness of Your naked ineffability rather than utilizing yet another sensory or rational fabrication. Furthermore, I have experienced Your dark nakedness to be an abyss of compassion, relentless tenacity, and indefatigable Love far beyond all telling. And while this journey beyond human constructs is not without its pain, a fact hinted at by the title of John Welch’s Juanian book When Gods Die, that pain is no match for the experience of being astounded into muteness in the face of the darkness which is You.

In short, Simon’s lyrics now mean much more than they first did: “Hello darkness, my old friend / I’ve come to talk with you again . . .”