Endarkenment

I was surprised to find Barbara Brown Taylor featured on the cover of Time magazine’s April 28th issue. I mentioned her in an earlier post re her book Leaving Church.

The article points out that we seek enlightenment but shun darkness. Indeed, enlightenment is a goal of many religions. Darkness in the Bible is at times identified with evil, sin, spiritual blindness. Taylor says darkness holds more lessons than light and that contrary to what many of us believe, it is sometimes in the bleakest void that God is nearest. “New life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”

“Turning in to darkness, instead of away from it, is the cure for a lot of what ails me. Because I have a deep need to be in control of things, to know where I am going, to be sure of my destination, to get there efficiently, to have all the provisions I need, to do it all without help—and you can’t do any of that in the dark.”

Some of her thoughts tie in with Belden  Lane’s Ravished by Beauty, his examination of centuries of Reformed theology’s perspective on how nature reflects and communicates to us about God. Some of his observations:

“One experiences God in loss even more powerfully than in attainment.”

“One should never automatically assume adversity to be a sign of God’s punishment. God’s sending of a ‘sea of troubles’ to heighten the longing of the faithful was a mystery that captivated the Puritan mind.”

“A God of wild splendor is found in nature’s dark side as well as its lightness and beauty. Encountering God means facing head-on the unexplainable mysteries of a world filled with pain.”

“Nature serves as a school of affliction as well as a school of desire [to experience the transcendent God]. It disrupts the ego, redirects misplaced longings, and teaches radical trust.”

In darkness we must trust God’s goodness and redemptive powers. Whether our bowls (lives) are filled with darkness, light, natural beauty, or natural disaster, He is in control. He sees what we cannot see in darkness as our begging bowls fill. 

Waiting Time and Beholding

Before I headed to Florida in February, I read Barbara Brown Taylor’s Leaving Church. This is not about leaving the Christian faith as much as leaving her position as ordained clergy in the Episcopal Church. I share with you the quotes I wrote down. I don’t necessarily agree, but I found them fodder for meditating and reflecting.

 

God is found in right relationships, not in right ideas. The parts of the Christian story that had drawn me into the Church were not the believing parts but the beholding parts:

Behold the Lamb of God. Behold I stand at the door and knock.

Christian faith seemed to depend on beholding things that were clearly beyond belief. Mysteries seize the heart, not orthodox doctrine. If it is true that God exceeds all our efforts to contain God, then dumb-foundedness is what all Christians have most in common.

I wanted to recover the kind of faith that has nothing to do with being sure what I believe and everything to do with trusting God to catch me.

 

One of the reasons I like carrying my camera around when I walk thru my neighborhood or explore new areas, is to slow down and behold God’s beauty and wonder in nature.

This quote from Terry Hershey's blog resonates with me:

I think one of the things I love most about photography is that it often elevates the mundane. When you stop a moment, and preserve it forever, and take the care to frame it, light it, and chose one moment over another, you effectively tell the world – or anyone who cares enough to look at your work; Look at this! And if, even in these mundane moments of life, we find something worth looking at, worth showing the world, then we’re effectively saying, Nothing is mundane. David du Chemin.

I can find God in my everyday world if I take the time to look, to behold.

 

Overnight and this morning we have had a dusting of snow, but by Sunday we are forecasted to be in the 60’s. Warm enough to get out and walk.

 

David Gessner in his book Return of the Osprey says: “ March is the waiting time. Everything poised ready to become something else, a world in need of a nudge.”

 

Warmer temperatures might just be that nudge. Spring at last. After this long hard winter, I am ready to get out and do some beholding.