Today is the summer solstice, and wouldn't you know I'd be thinking about Dark Nights of the Soul? The term comes to me now via my dear Alena Deerwater, and I've just started reading, at her urging, a new book by the same name, by Thomas Moore. Moore in turn reminds his readers that the phrase originated with the sixteenth-century Spanish Catholic mystic, John of the Cross. (Interesting to think of him composing his opus at the same time our kabbalists were deep in meditation across the Mediterranean in Safed) Moore writes about all sorts of people -- from Oscar Wilde to Woody Allen -- who have described their dark passages in lots of different ways.
Some of you have been commenting these past months that you can tell by what I write that I've been in a dark night of something. And it's true, definitely. I've been at times discouraged, at times confused, at times angry. Things have gotten under my skin that in the past wouldn't have bothered me. A lot of the time I haven't known from minute to minute what to do next. Everything has been up for question with me lately. And at times I haven't been too graceful in expressing my confusion and agitation. Sometimes my state of mind seems all my own; at other times it seems like our Jewish community, our country and our world are all feeling pretty much the same.
Moore talks about the watery feeling of the "dark night," the ways in which it can feel like a passage across a big ocean in a small boat, or like floating in the belly of the whale. I have definitely identified with the watery nature of this time, the floating, bobbing aspect of it, the inability to drive forward, or sometimes to even know where forward is located. And more recently I have also been recognizing the "passage" aspect of this season in my life. Perhaps the sea is controlling my direction and not my own hand on the rudder, but I have definitely been moving.
It has actually been quite a wonderful time, even if a vexing one. People have been walking up to me and offering their wisdom, the ways they put the world together and cope with its difficulties. People have been inviting me along on journeys, suggesting books to read, telling me their own stories. I have had really moving, heart-opening, mind-enlarging conversations. Recently I had a powerful series of dreams. Even people who have been unhappy with me of late have spoken of their own feelings and longings in challenging and deepening ways.
Some of the most meaningful times of connection for me have been with people around me saying, "Oh yes! Me too!" I may be bobbing on the ocean in a tiny boat, but there are other vessels out there within my sight. I have felt the companionship of other people -- people I know well and also people who have just stopped me on the street -- who, in the way of waving from the deck, have told me about their own floating season. In fact I have a somewhat enlarged sense now of community. I have long recognized the beautiful web of service and kind deeds that make up a community. But I think I am now more appreciative of the camaraderie of lost folks floating in the same little quadrant of the big ocean, even when we can't do much for each other.
Mostly I recognize that I am changing, growing old(er), growing up. I might wish I didn't have to struggle and thrash around, but I'm always glad (at least in retrospect!) to grow up. There is some kind of shedding going on, some kind of loosening from beliefs and behaviors that have been quite dependable for me in years past. Jung says that we spend our youth building a scaffolding of beliefs and commitments only to feel an almost animal-like drive to break them apart in middle age (and rebuild, hopefully, for the next phases of life.) Moore reminds us that the sun -- the image of vitality and clarity -- spends half its time hidden from view behind the earth and that nighttime -- dark by definition -- is a natural and essential part of life.
So it has been an exquisite pleasure at this season to be reading Ba-midbar -- the book of Numbers (so-called in English translations of the Torah, but so much better-named in Hebrew: the book of "The Wilderness.") This year I have been learning the book anew through the Shabbat morning teachings of our community scholars. Ba-midbar is completely occupied with the travails of the Israelites traversing the Sinai desert. They have been born out of slavery via the passage through the Red Sea and find themselves for the rest of Torah in an often miserably indirect passage to the Promised Land. It's notable that the Torah ends before they cross the Jordan. One might even suspect from this framing that the travel in the wilderness is more essential somehow than the longed-for arrival at the destination.
Alena taught the first portion from Ba-midbar, also called Ba-midbar. She said, "This sacred story we are reading today, given to us by God and our ancestors, is about safeguarding and traveling through the wilderness with the Tabernacle that holds the Torah. What is a Tabernacle? The Tabernacle is our body and the Torah is our soul. The Tabernacle is the earth and the Torah is God's love and light. The Tabernacle is the book of paper and ink and the Torah is the Story. Both contain our teachings from God, our tikkun, our light, our dreams, and the host of beings from the imaginal world.
"This Tabernacle holding the Torah -- and the sacred space where we receive Torah -- is surrounded and protected by the twelve tribes of our ancestors. God and Moses placed them there to help and guide us. The twelve tribes of our ancestors help us with teshuvah. No matter which way we turn, they are there helping us return to the sacred center. They help us and protect us so we can return to Torah, to God, to love and light, to our community and to ourselves…"
Two weeks later we read Sh'lach Lecha, the portion in which ten "spies" or "scouts" are sent to preview the Promised Land. This was the morning after Yael and her class graduated from high school, and Mina brought a teaching from her father, Gabriel Cohen (who would have given the teaching himself but fell ill.) I don't have the text here to quote, but he spoke of the spiritual challenges of graduation, of leaving the safe and the known and journeying out into the wilderness of the next phase of life. Mina herself added a teaching about the difference between "scouting" -- just ascertaining the best route to a destination -- and "spying," trying to see the future before it happens. She talked about the need to go on the journey with trust.
Yesterday Scott picked up this theme, speaking about Korach, the leader of the rebellion against Moses and Aaron. He finished his teaching by challenging us: "I ask you to consider your own faiths today. Your own rebellious spirit that seems so justified and righteous and democratic. It is a sacred treasure in some ways, is it not? A sacred cow? Your own sense of what is fair and right, how could it lead you astray? Korach lets us question that treasure, by recognizing that it comes from the mind, from logic analyzing the situation, and saying thus, “This is wrong.” But perhaps there is a deeper source that we can draw from a faith that can quiet the skeptical mind. A faith that calls out to god with a yearning so deep and soulful, “Here I am, God, I believe in your light and love. I am ready God. I am humble God. I do not need to question. I only need to listen, and your voice will come to me, will avert the severe decree, like Abraham and Isaac. I submit my ego to you, God, because my faith is strong. I believe, God, because I choose to believe. I am Korach, but I can destroy the Korach in me. Through the flame of your purifying light and love I quiet the skeptical voice and bear witness to your power even when it is not so immediately apparent. I choose faith, God, because deep within my core, I know. I bow down before you, God. I am ready to do what you tell me to do."
I remember many years ago my friend Betsy spoke to me about mourning. She said that people tend to think that mourning is all one feeling, all one texture. But in fact it is a rich array of feelings and experiences. Likewise with the Dark Night, the time of wandering, the wilderness time, the ocean time. One might think that it is nothing but misery. But it too is rich with feeling and sensation, with experience and stimulation. Like nighttime, it has its particular beauty.
Just the other day I felt, for the first time this year, the a hint of a breeze of next year's High Holy Days blowing my direction. The summer, practically all light and no night, has the Days as its parting gift. Even now we might feel the tide shifting a bit their direction, pulling us just a bit inward, noticing the landscape in which we find ourselves living, suggesting changes. This is our July and August Megillah, and the next time I write it will be Ellul. My glorious black cat, Blacko, just wandered by, handsome and elusive as ever, reminding me once again just how dazzling darkness can be. Happy (or introspective or whatever comes) summer, my dear community.
© 2004 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Updated 09/09/2004 (rge)