SACREDDarkness

Other Books by Paul Coutinho, SJ

SACREDDarkness

ENCOUNTERING DIVINE LOVE IN LIFE’SDARKEST PLACES

PAUL COUTINHO, SJ

© 2012 Paul Coutinho, SJAll rights reserved.

Art credit: © Ricardo De Mattos/Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Coutinho, Paul.Sacred darkness: encountering divine love in life’s darkest places / Paul Coutinho.

p. cm.ISBN-13: 978-0-8294-3353-1ISBN-10: 0-8294-3353-8

1. Spirituality. 2. Wilderness (Theology) 3. Light--Religious aspects. 4.Light--Religious aspects--Christianity. 5. Light and darkness in the Bible. 6.Spiritual life. 7. Spiritual life--Christianity. I. Title.BL624.C693 2012242--dc23

2011045387

Printed in the United States of America.

12 13 14 15 16 17 Bang 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Dedication

To the Eternal Spirit dwelling at the core of our beingand all those whose wisdom and support I experienced

in the dark recesses of life.

Contents

Part One Universal Darkness 1

1 In the Beginning . . . 3

2 Darkness and the Purer Vision 5

3 Darkness, Word, and 7

4 Darkness as the Source of Life 10

5 Death and Darkness 12

6 The Darkness in Which We Worship the Divine 16

7 God of the Israelites Dwelt in Darkness 20

8 Treasures in Darkness 23

9 Fading to Silence, Becoming Children 28

10 The Sacred Power of Darkness 32

11 Be Still and Know That I Am God 37

12 Stillness and St. Ignatius 43

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Part Two Personal Darkness 49

13 The Powerful Experience of Darkness in the Retreat 51

14 Seeing God Face-to-Face 54

15 Seeing God’s Face Is an Invitation to Die 58

16 Power in Weakness 61

17 The Darkness of Addiction 66

18 Saved by Her Son 69

19 The Power of Forgiveness 72

20 Sparks in the Darkness 76

21 Life in the Darkness of My Religion 81

22 Failure and the True Self 85

23 Healed but Not Cured 92

24 Lost and Found 97

25 Wealth in Poverty 101

26 How to Live, How to Die 104

27 Chaos and Tension toward Integration 107

28 The Transition from Xavier to Ignatius 110

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Part Three Darkness and the Journey of Life 113

29 Reverence: Key to the Treasures of Darkness 115

30 Hero’s Journey and Hindu Stages 120

31 Journey of the Feminine 125

32 The Feminine Face of God 131

33 Mary: God’s Feminine Face in Christianity 138

34 Life’s Deeper Mysteries: A Conversation 143

35 Old Age, Fear, and Love 149

36 Creation and Sin: Two Views Make the Whole 153

37 Being Set Apart 160

38 What the Darkness Brings 164

39 Hating Father and Mother 166

40 Spiritual Repose: Culmination of the SpiritualJourney 169

Contents ix

Part OneUniversal Darkness

Human beings naturally long for light and try to escape thedark. In fact, we tend to equate darkness with evil. Yet thespiritual wise ones among us have always understood thatat the core of our humanness—and in our very divine ori-gins—a fathomless darkness abides and does its necessarywork. In darkness we meet the quiet and holy; in darknesswe encounter God in a way that is unnamed, formless,and beyond ordinary comprehension. At the heart of thehuman experience is beauty that is immense, mysterious,and universal.

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That darkness at theheart of creation hasits counterpart in thedarkness living at thecore of each of us.

In theBeginning . . .

L ife begins in darkness and ends in darkness. In thebeginning, there was only darkness. According to the

Bible and according to science, it is from this darkness,emptiness, and nothingness that all of creation comes intobeing. Darkness is a mystery; it evokes curiosity and fear ofthe unknown, and at the same time it brings us into theembrace of reality. This reality is all around us, pregnantwith the existential truths of life.

As the sacred story states, “Theearth was empty and without formand darkness covered the face of thedeep.” Out of this darkness Godcommanded the revelation of light.This light was not the sun or the

moon but light that came Thislight is an integral and essential part of the darkness. That

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darkness at the heart of creation has its counterpart in thedarkness living at the core of each of us.

In the dark moments and struggles of our lives, weoften realize the beauty and the power that lie deep withinus. This darkness sheds light on our external world andhelps us not only cope with, but also live effectively andmore fully in, the painful situations of our lives. This lightcomes from the darkness at our core. This light—the lightwithin the dark cave of our being—draws us back to thevery source of life. There is comfort, there is peace, andthere is power in the dark cave of our being where God trulydwells.

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2Darkness and thePurer Vision

In darkness we experience pure life. What we see inexternal light is colored by our prejudice or whatever

mental framework we have developed. If we are not careful,we will see life, not as it is, but as are. Reality as we knowit is often shaped by our experiences, our family values, ourreligion, our culture, and many other human factors.

But in darkness we relate to people as persons withoutbeing influenced by their gender, race, culture, or religion.In darkness we experience a connectedness with everyone.We find this to be true, for example, in times of personal,communal, and natural disasters. In times of illness we willaccept blood from people of any race, religion, or culture.We will accept the best doctors and look beyond the colorof their skin, their religion, or their sexual orientation. Afew years ago, the electricity in St. Louis failed for a fewdays. During this time of darkness it was amazing how,

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for the first time, neighbors got acquainted as persons andreached out to others as humans. We now attached namesto people we had known only by the dogs they had walkeddown our street every day. Soon people planned neigh-borhood celebrations. Floods, drought, hurricanes, andtyphoons often have the same effect: they humanize peopleand build a global village.

There is an Indian story about a holy man who satat the entrance of a cave and promised that anyone whoentered the cave would see God face-to-face. Crowds rushedto the cave, only to learn the important condition to thispromise: those who wanted to see God face-to-face had tohave their eyes plucked out before they entered the cave.

In darkness we experience God as God without makingGod in our own image and likeness. In darkness, specificreligions lose their monopoly over God. Dogmatism andinterreligious wars become redundant or irrelevant. Withour many-colored filters removed, the human spiritlaunches on the quest for the one true God. Darknessactually purifies our vision—some of our anthropomorphicimages of God slowly fade away. Then we can begin toexperience God as God.

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3Darkness, Word,and OM

We may discover God as Logos, the Word. One of theHebrew understandings of Logos is energy charged

with power. This energy was in the beginning with God;this energy God (John 1:1). This is the energy thathovered over the primordial darkness and brought forth anew and beautiful creation by pouring the divine essenceinto all of creation. This is the same divine energy that Godbreathes into you and me, making us human, giving usidentity as the divine breath (Genesis 2).

One of the Eastern creation stories is similar to theBible story. “In the beginning was the only Lord of theUniverse, His Word was with Him. This Word was Hissecond. He contemplated. He said, ‘I will deliver this Wordso that she will produce and bring into being all this world’”( , 20.14.2). In the beginning, theworld was a vast dark ocean that washed upon the shores of

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nothingness. From the depths of the dark waters the soundof (pronounced aum) began to find its way through thewaters and filled the emptiness of the world with throbbingenergy. This creative energy, like the Logos, was withoutbeginning or end. was with God and was God.

is the symbol of the Absolute, the omnipotent, theomnipresent, and the source of all existence. is the lifeenergy that runs through our very breath and pervades alllife. It is the one eternal syllable that is more than a word; itis an intonation. It is the basic sound of the world and con-tains all other sounds. When it is intoned, it is like musicthat transcends the barriers of age, race, culture, even spe-cies. If repeated with the correct intonation, it will reso-nate throughout the body so that the sound penetrates tothe person’s core. This simple but profoundly sacred soundgenerates harmony, peace, and bliss. It projects the mindbeyond the mundane world and at the same time makesthe Absolute more tangible and understandable. When wechant we create within ourselves a vibration that isattuned with the cosmic vibration. The momentary silencebetween each chant becomes palpable. The mind movesbetween the reality of sound and silence until the soundfades silence. In this silence there is no thought; it’s a

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The deeper we delveinto the subconsciousand unconscious, thedarker and more reallife gets.

state in which the mind and the intellect are transcended asthe individual self comes together with the infinite self.

Think of the human person asthree levels of being: the conscious,the subconscious, and the core thatis our unconscious. The consciousor the surface level is always in fluxand expends a lot of energy. The

deeper we delve into the subconscious and unconscious, thedarker and more real life gets. At this deepest, darkest levelwe find the stability—and liveliness—of Logos and .That sacred energy of life flows from the darkest depthswithin us to continuously create new life. We can think of itlike this: we breathe in energy from the universe, and itbecomes a life force as it goes through the dark recesseswithin us. When we breathe out, there’s a little death thatcreates space for something new.

Darkness, Word, and 9

4 Darkness as theSource of Life

The beginning stages of life are fragile, and darkness hasthe amazing power to nourish this new life. Human

life begins in the darkness and intimacy of the womb. Inthat sanctuary, new life is nurtured. It grows, and divinebreath takes root in the clay body of the baby (seeGenesis 2). Eventually the baby is strong enough to enterthe light of the outside world—even though, in the end,that body will die and return to the darkness of the earth.

Like humans, all other living things, as well as other ele-ments of creation, are nourished and strengthened in dark-ness until they are ready for the light. In the mystery ofdarkness, divine energy is poured into every creature, andthe whole of creation thus becomes the temple of divinepresence and essence (cf. SpEx 39).

The splendor of the mighty oak develops from a seedplanted in the earth’s darkness. Each flower, regardless of

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size, is able to penetrate through the dark earth and growdelicate and beautiful! The butterfly forms in the darknessof the cocoon until, now a beautiful winged creature, itbreaks into the light. And the most precious elements andminerals are all carefully hidden and protected in the wombof the earth; even the pearl is formed in the darkness of anoyster shell.

Until humans harnessed electricity, we had little controlover the darkness, and we developed reverence for thesacredness of the dark. Darkness conceals everything out-side and draws us within and beyond ourselves. The lifeenergy that is spent in the daylight is rejuvenated in thenight. At the end of the day we pass from the activity intothe darkness of sleep and are revitalized.

The Jewish Sabbath and other feast days begin in theevening as the sun sets. The Hebrews began each new daywith the sunset; thus the day begins with darkness and Jew-ish communal life begins there. The Hebrews seemed tounderstand that darkness is the ground of being. A personwon’t get to the depth of him- or herself until that personis at home in the dark. Dark places are like transit places.If we use transit times properly, we will find new vigor andenergy for the next stage of our journey.

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5 Death and Darkness

In many ways death seems to be the darkest moment ofour lives. We tend to feel quite helpless in the face of

death and dying.William Shakespeare marveled at how humans feared

death, which he believed would come at the appointed timefor each person. Our fear of death will not prevent it fromhappening. Neither will it allow us to live fully. That is whyShakespeare would famously proclaim, “Cowards die manytimes before their deaths; The valiant never taste of deathbut once” ( , Act 2, scene 2).

There is a story of the man who came down with a rareillness. The doctors had given him three years to live. Afterstruggling with this reality and coming to terms with hisimminent death, the man began to live his life as he neverhad before. He first went through all his material belong-ings, taking the time to appreciate the significance of hispossessions and the people connected with each of them.Then, with much gratitude, he gave them away one by one.

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He reflected on his life and forgave himself for all his faultsand failings; he reconciled himself with those who had hurthim or treated him unjustly. He admitted his own guilt butdid not torment himself over his past. He lived his life withmuch patience, understanding, and compassion. Little, ifanything, would upset him now—anger, hurt, jealousy. Helived his life free, full, and happy.

But after a year had gone by, the doctors called himwith much excitement. They called him to their office togive him the good news that a cure had been found for hisotherwise terminal illness. When the man heard this, to theamazement of the doctors, he broke down and cried bitterly,with much sadness and distress. He wondered if he couldcontinue to live this happy and free life—or would he soonrevert to his old ways, now that he was given apparentlyunlimited time?

As Jesuit novices, on the first Sunday of every month,we had the “Preparation for Death” devotion. We imaginedour death: the people around our dead body, the things theywere saying, our funeral with all its details. We dwelt espe-cially on the way people would summarize the meaning andmessage of our lives. By facing the reality of death, we wereinspired to live our lives as fully as we could—and in the

Death and Darkness 13

God whose divinebreath gave us lifewill with that samebreath sustain us aswe live for alleternity.

way we wanted to be remembered. We got into the habit ofthinking that every day could be our last day to live. Whenwe felt this reality in our gut, we cherished every momentof that day and gave it our very best.

In fact, death is the final andmost sure doorway to life. Whensomeone is dying, we help them inthe process by working on the sur-face disturbance and inconsonance.We help them stop fighting deathand continue to journey with life.

We release the grip on those transitory illusions of life:material possessions, work, titles, even the people who havebeen gifts loaned to us on life’s journey. We come to a reali-zation about the essence of life—namely, that God whosedivine breath gave us life will with that same breath sustainus as we live for all eternity.

When we watch a loved one die, perhaps we shedmany tears. But sometimes through those tears we see arainbow we didn’t expect. The treasure at the end of therainbow—the treasure we find in darkness—is the under-standing that death is the end of physical life, but it’s notthe end of relationship.

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There is another story of a baseball fan who was visitedby an angel. The angel shared with him many things aboutGod and life after death. The man listened carefully andthen sheepishly asked the angel if there was baseball inheaven. Heaven would not be complete without baseballfor this enthusiastic sports fan. The angel began to describethe great fields and the exciting baseball games that theyplayed in heaven. And in the same animated tone, the angelannounced to the fan that it was his turn to pitch thenext day.

If it were your turn to pitch tomorrow, would yoube ready?

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6 The Darkness inWhich We Worshipthe Divine

In various sacred writings, God’s dwelling place is oftenreferred to as the holy of holies. This is a most inviolable

and private place, and its atmosphere is quiet and peaceful.This is often darker than the other areasin the worship space. In Judaism, this is the innermostshrine of the tabernacle and the temple.

The or the holy of holies, is typifiedmost effectively in traditional Hindu temples. Most templeswill have a sacred symbol sculpted in black stone at theentrance of the temple to designate the presence of a sacredor divine place. Outside the temple there is often a squarecistern in which devotees who have traveled from farawayplaces can purify their bodies, minds, and hearts beforeentering the temple. This water is always flowing to keep

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it clean and to remind people that if we desire purity, thenwe need to be moving constantly in our spiritual life andour relationship with God. Pilgrims and devotees then enterthe temple barefoot as a symbol that they keep the impuri-ties of the world outside and also as a sign that they emptythemselves and open up to receive the divine presence. Asthey move toward the innermost part of the temple, theypass through candles and incense and the many images ofGod, and the light fades incrementally until they enter the

which is the “Cosmic Womb.” In the dark-ness of this the devotees experience thedeepest intimacy with the Divine. They have the ofGod, which is an experience of seeing God and being seenby God. It’s easy to see the similarities between this Hinduexperience and the Christian Easter, in which divine pres-ence is associated with the dark yet transformative empti-ness of a tomb.

The Muslim mosque, or , is a place for pros-tration or bowing before the Divine. As Muslim devoteesapproach a mosque, they are greeted with minarets anddomes. The call for prayer goes out from the minaret, thehighest point of the mosque. The minaret points skywardand reminds those who enter the mosque to raise their

The Darkness in Which We Worship the Divine 17

hearts and minds to God. There are ablution facilities out-side for the purpose of ritual cleansing. After washing, theworshippers are prepared to allow God to come to them inevery way possible. They enter the prayer hall barefoot andready to bow several times to empty their hearts, minds, andsouls so that God may fill every part of their being.

The bright lights from the outside world fade slowly aspeople move into the prayer hall. The prayer halls are oftenbare so that worshippers’ focus is on God and God alone.For this reason men and women pray separately in themosque. The focus in the prayer hall is the a wallniche that indicates the (direction) that points towardthe sacred , a black cube in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, thatis the central point of Islam. During the , or the holypilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims go around the seventimes. Through the darkness of this black cube, Muslimsexperience both inner cleansing and union with the Divine.The Quran states that when Muslims pray five times a daywherever they are, they turn their faces in the directionof the sacred . This brings about union of heartsamong the believers, and if they truly believe in God and letGod guide them, then all the divine favors will be pouredinto each of them. All Muslims, therefore, face the

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when they pray. This symbolically forms the Muslims into awell-knit community in which everyone is equal in prayer.Muslims also bury their dead with their heads in the direc-tion of the that points to the sacred .

It seems rather paradoxical to think of God’s dwellingplace as total darkness. In sacred texts as well as variousreligious teachings, God is often portrayed as light. Yetthe sacred darkness—of Jewish temple, Christian church,Hindu temple, Buddhist temple, or Muslim mosque—became symbolic of God’s dwelling place.

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7 God of the IsraelitesDwelt in Darkness

There are many references in the Bible that do surpriseus with the reality of divine darkness. We are told that

God comes down during the day as a thick dark cloud andspeaks to Moses in the presence of all the people (Exodus19:16‒19). In the darkness of the thick cloud, the fears andinsecurities of Moses melt away; the worldly voices thatmight draw him or distract him cannot penetrate this cloud.When our lives are shrouded in darkness, like Moses, theonly voice we will hear is the voice of God. The only mes-sage that we will pass on is the one we receive from God.

At other times God soared on the wings of the windand dwelt in a canopy of darkness (2 Samuel 22:10–12;Psalm 18:11). When the wind turns into a canopy of dark-ness, it becomes most powerful. This is an invitation to soaron the wings of the wind and get rid of baggage: our mate-rial clutter together with our psychological and emotional

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The darkness itselfdraws us into apersonal union andintimacy with thedivine presence.

experiences, both positive and negative, and our worldlyand religious doctrines and philosophies. Then we can flyfree and high on the wings of the Spirit and let that Spiritalone be our guiding principle and force. This is how wecan live in that canopy of darkness where God dwells.

Solomon also declared thatGod would dwell in darkness(1 Kings 8:12; 2 Chronicles 6:1). Itis in the darkest situations that wecan more easily experience the wis-dom to discern between the eternal

and the transient aspects of life.God made a covenant with Abraham in the darkness

of the night. God was present to the people as a pillar offire in the midst of the night. In this darkness, God cannotbe identified by any gender, color, or race. In this darknessGod is not somewhere “up there” and far away. The dark-ness itself draws us into a personal union and intimacy withthe divine presence. The pillar of fire burns away all the dif-ferences created by race, gender, or color; the fire destroys allillusions and theologies. We are left with an ineffable expe-rience. We experience that presence most intimately deepwithin our very being.

God of the Israelites Dwelt in Darkness 21

When God made a covenant with the people of Israel,Moses was drawn into the thick darkness where God dwelt(Exodus 20:21). It was in this experience that the peopleof Israel would hear God saying, “I shall be your God andyou shall be my people.” This covenant was the same oneGod had made with Abraham, and it included all the fam-ilies of the earth (Genesis 12:3). It is in the darkness of thisthick cloud that every human person will experience divineintimacy.

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8Treasures inDarkness

Istumbled upon one fascinating passage that speaks ofGod offering treasures of darkness that are stored in

secret places (Isaiah 45:3). These gifts are universal and aregiven freely to anyone who knows how to receive them.God offers the treasures of darkness to a pagan king, Cyrus,to prove the authenticity of the gift and to enable Cyrus toexperience the real divine presence.

When we are in pain, darkness seems to overshadowus. But often life’s darkest moments offer the most preciousgifts. Pain is a reality in everyone’s life. How we handle thispain will either make us or break us.

There is a story of a man who was shipwrecked andfound himself on a lonely island. He built himself a littlehouse on a treetop, where he would be safe from any wildanimals. He kept all his little belongings and the tools of hislivelihood in the safety of his tree house. That place was his

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haven; there he found personal safety and could look outin hope for the ship that would one day rescue him. Hishome became his shrine—it was where he felt the closenessof his God.

But one day he returned to his tree house to find it inflames. All his securities were burnt to ashes. While the mansat brokenhearted and wondered about his life and his rela-tionship with God, he looked across the waters and saw aship on the horizon. Soon a motorboat made its way to theisland. Before he knew it, the man was aboard the ship, onhis way to a new life. When he asked the captain of the shiphow he knew there was someone on the island, the captaintold him that he had simply responded to the fire signal.

This story made me reflect on my life and on life itself.I reflected on the times when God sometimes burns downall our securities so that we can discover divine treasures inthose dark moments. Through those experiences we beginto live life more fully, with greater freedom and deep innerpeace. Most of us have stored away painful experiences,hiding them in places others will never enter. In time we,ourselves, tend to forget these experiences. But they con-tinue to influence the way we live. The buried pain affectsour relationships with people—and in a very real way it

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attracts more negative experiences. We race through lifewith our brakes fully on.

But when someone we love gently and lovingly burnsdown the fortification of those dark vaults and we begin totake a fresh look at the experiences hidden there, we willbegin to find a new way of living. We find not only ourpersonal freedom but also a burst of energy. This personaltransformation sometimes sends us into the world as cata-lysts for change.

I am thinking of the many victims of injustice, thosewho have been physically, mentally, and emotionallyabused. There are the millions who suffer because of unjustsocial and political structures. The human spirit is waitingto be free and burst forth from the rubble of injustice.People are waiting for a prophet, a guru, or a sage to diveinto their darkness and release their power and dignity.

My heart goes out especially to certain women I haveencountered who were sexually abused as children. Becauseof the abuse, unhealthy emotional patterns developed. Outof this pain, some abuse survivors became good at pretend-ing they were fine, even the life of the party. The unhealthycraving for attention and love affected all their relation-ships, especially those with the people most significant to

Treasures in Darkness 25

them: husband, children, family, and friends. These dam-aged patterns of emotion and behavior sometimes attrac-ted more abuse; other times the survivors themselves drewpeople close, only to withdraw later or inflict other pain.Those women who had the courage to recognize the sourceof this pattern were able to free themselves to live a new andthriving life. Not only this, but these very women have alsogone out to share their stories and experiences with youngwomen in colleges and with parents of primary-school chil-dren. The results have been phenomenal. The treasuresthese women found in the darkest recesses of their liveshelped them live in greater fullness and become authenticchampions in freeing other people.

These women never forget the pain of their unjust situ-ation, but now they live the fullness of life in love and com-passion. They respond to the injustices in the world ratherthan react to them. They look for solutions rather thanfocus on who is to blame. They seek reconciliation ratherthan punishment. The experience of these liberated womencan be the experience of anyone who is a victim in any situ-ation. The human spirit is capable of infinite possibilities;the human spirit is capable of possibilities.

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Divine treasures are hidden in the depths of darkness.This darkness might be memory, sickness, old age, orbroken relationships. One of the means to bring out thesehidden treasures is pain. When we are in pain, we often losecontrol of the situation, are thrown into chaos, and gropein the dark to find our foothold. This darkness can eithermake us or break us. We know that pain is a fact of life.We also realize that pain we don’t resist purifies and enlight-ens us, but pain we resist becomes suffering. Suffering andmisery, then, are a choice we make.

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