I came out of the seminary in 1970 thinking that my job was to have an answer for every question. What I've learned is that not-knowing and often not even needing to know is--surprise of surprises--a deeper way of knowing and a deeper falling into compassion. This is surely what the mystics mean by "death" and why they talk of it with so many metaphors. It is the essential transitioning. Maybe that is why Jesus praised faith even more than love; maybe that is why Saint John of the Cross called faith "luminous darkness." Yes, love is the final goal but ever deeper trust inside of darkness is the path for getting there.

My good friend Gerald May shed fresh light on the meaning of John's phrase "the dark night of the soul." He said that God has to work in the soul in secret and in darkness, because if we fully knew what was happening, and what Mystery/transformation/God/grace will eventually ask of us, we would either try to take charge or stop the whole process. No one oversees his or her own demise willingly, even when it is the false self that is dying. God has to undo our illusions secretly, as it were, when we are not watching and not in perfect control, say the mystics. We move forward in ways that we do not even understand and through the quiet workings of time and grace, as "Deep calls unto deep" (Psalm 42:8). In other words, Spirit initiates deep resonance and intimacy with our spirit, as the Endless Divine Yes evokes an ever-deeper yes in us. That is the whole deal!

As James Finley, a core faculty member of CAC's Living School, says, "The mystic is not someone who says, 'Look what I have done!' The mystic is one who says, 'Look what love has done to me. There's nothing left but God's intimate love giving itself to me as me.' That's the blessedness in poverty: when all in us that is not God dissolves, and we finally realize that we are already as beautiful as God is beautiful, because God gave the infinite beauty of God as who we are."