My "Dark Night of the Soul"

Reading Walter Brueggemann’s contrasting of Psalms 73 and 139 in an essay entitled, “The Cunning Little Secret of Certitude,” in his book The Covenanted Self (see a previous  post), I remembered how Psalm 73 saved me from my own “dark night of the soul” that followed the ending of what I thought would be a lifelong relationship within weeks of my mother’s death in 1999.

The psalmist compares our lot with the prosperous who are “sound and sleek…always at ease, they increase their riches.” I wrote about it in The Final Deadline:What Death Has Taught Me about Life (pp 119-121) and I offer excerpts here in the hopes that those who experience their own “dark nights” may find encouragement: 

I felt worse than unloved, I felt unlovable, unattractive, undesirable. Life now seemed like such a challenge that taking things “one day at a time” seemed like too big a chunk. It was “one thing at a time” for me: “Okay, I’ve completed this task. Now I will…” …

Three more friends died of AIDS that year. I worried if I would be able to keep my home or manage the bills that we had paid jointly. I endured a bad working relationship that threatened the greater part of my income. I dated people who turned out to be scary in one way or another. I drank too much. I acted out sexually. My car died on a busy interstate in downtown Atlanta in the middle of the night. Over the course of several months I had three flat tires. My wallet was stolen. The final insult came as I watched helplessly—despite my best efforts—as a fungus killed my lawn!

That year I scrutinized myself, and not just in relation to the death of the relationship. I considered also the death of my relationship with the church, called to ministry yet denied ordination because of my sexual identity. My hopes to reform the church remained, but I came to believe for the first time that it would not happen in my lifetime.

If I had been straight or closeted or already ordained or simply less visible as a spokesperson for our movement, I might have been gainfully employed all these years, increasing my seniority and salary and benefits and retirement with each passing year, plus having ample time and income for study leaves and sabbaticals and vacations.

As it was, I had little to show financially for all the speaking and writing and editing and ministry and unrelated jobs I had cobbled together over the years to survive. I am chagrined to say I began to look with envy at those whose heterosexuality or closet or prior ordination or minimal visibility afforded them more profitable positions and opportunities in church work.  Underemployed men and women find it difficult to hold our heads high in a culture that not only views prosperity as a sign of worth, but advantages it.

Even leaders of my own LGBT community treated me as deficient because I did not have the title “reverend,” even though it was solely because I was out as a gay man. And younger people who were the beneficiaries of my and others’ early activism seemed to have little idea or care for who we were and what we had done.

In a dream I had, a colleague pushed me aside in favor of a new cause célebre, saying “You’re Old Testament!” implying the other was “New Testament.” By my opponents I had been accused of being a “militant,” while a leader in my own movement actually implied I was an “Uncle Tom.”

I had already stopped going to church, but for broader reasons than my denomination’s prejudices. It just wasn’t working for me anymore. The worship experience no longer inspired me. It did not help me think. It did not make me wonder. I found my morning-prayer time much more helpful.

I noticed a gnawing skepticism and cynicism growing within me by the second year after my great losses. My anger and impatience with the church and the government failing to recognize gay rights and marriages filled me with disgust for both. Saccharine-sweet people got on my nerves. I read most of Gore Vidal’s books, reveling in his cynicism about American society and culture, amused by his cutting remarks about “sky-god” religions. I had been quite the optimist all of my life. I was becoming a curmudgeon. The Psalmist captured my experience:

My heart grew embittered,

my affections dried up,

I was stupid and uncomprehending,

a clumsy animal in your presence.

Even so, I stayed in your presence,

you grasped me by the right hand;

you will guide me with advice,

and will draw me in the wake of your glory.

Psalm 73:21-24 (NJB)

“Even so, I stayed in your presence.” In my morning prayer, I discovered something new in one of Jesus’ parables, one that I had read dozens of times over the years and about which I had reservations. Jesus tells the story of a wedding feast to which the invited guests will not come. And I “heard” God saying to me, “Come in to the party.” Let go of your negative feelings, however justified you may feel in having them. “Come in to the party.” And that became my mantra whenever I sensed resentment, envy, bitterness, anger, or withdrawal bubbling up within me.

I remembered also the elder brother whose father begs him to “come in to the party” celebrating his prodigal brother’s return, and of the master who asserts his right to pay his kvetching servants equally though they were hired at different times of the day.

Believe it or not, this simple little phrase did much to get me over myself and into showing the proper reverence for the joy that is life, what the poet William Blake called “organized innocence” that can wonder at the world, play while experiencing suffering and addressing injustice, pray in the midst of distractions and disillusionment, achieve in the face of setbacks and failures, and love while enduring rejection and isolation.

“Come in to the party” is another way of hearing “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” This was and is the gospel Jesus and his followers proclaim in our better moments. “Come in to the party.”

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Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

The Benefit of Doubt

There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

This quote appears on the homepage of my website. It comes toward the end of Tennyson’s elegy, In Memoriam: A. H. H., penned over a 17-year period about his dear friend Arthur Hallam, who died suddenly at age 22. As they had done as part of a group of friends at Cambridge known as “the Apostles,” the poem struggles with faith and doubt.

The love between the men, even though Hallam was engaged to Tennyson’s sister, intrigued me when I read it as a late teen struggling with my own romantic inclinations toward men and for God. I marked these two lines not only with a yellow highlighter, but subsequently underlined them in blue pen, writing “great” in the margin. Closer to the end of the poem’s 131 sections, I highlighted seven stanzas and wrote “My own struggle” in the margin. This poem gave us the famed line, “Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.”

The poem’s prologue, written after the poem’s completion—thus after 17 years of anguished hope and doubt—seems to allude to doubting Thomas in its fourth line, “Believing where we cannot prove.” Though biblical scholarship suggests that the Johannine school, exclusively responsible for casting Thomas as a doubter, did so because of disagreements with the Thomasine school, Thomas could be considered the patron saint of doubters.

In our cynical times, much is made about the need to believe. And cynicism IS problematic when it dismisses all belief out of hand, thus Tennyson’s emphasis on “honest doubt.” But to know honestly what we truly believe, we must be encouraged to acknowledge our doubts. Here are a few doubts that help me:

Doubt yourself. This flies in the face of self-esteem systems that make you the center of the universe in control of your own destiny, but it makes for modesty and humility that behooves a speck on a speck circling a speck in the infinite cosmos.

Doubt religion. This comes more easily to progressive Christians, but I’d say we need also to doubt our own religious pretensions that we’ve got the answers.

Doubt government. This too is easy, as not even democratically-elected governments always behave in a democratic manner, sharing decision-making power. And why, for instance, is one who reveals the mistakes of a corporation called a whistleblower while one who reveals national mistakes called a traitor?

Doubt leaders. Not true leaders, who act altruistically rather than out of self-interest. But discernment of the spirits is key: whose agenda reflects Jesus’ concern for the poor, the oppressed, the outcast, the sick, the homeless, the vulnerable, the imprisoned?

Doubt business. Even business doubts business, because business people know themselves oh too well.

Doubt science. This too almost goes without saying, as the very basis of science requires empirical skepticism, repeatedly testing one’s findings and theories. Yet again “honest doubt” should not include rejecting things out of hand, theories that have already amassed an overwhelming body of evidence, like evolution.

Doubt art and artistic expressions. Beauty, creativity, and innovation can be enlarging or simply the result of market forces, bias, and deficiencies.

Doubt doubt. Just as beliefs need questioning, doubts do too. And some beliefs deserve “the benefit of the doubt”!

Ultimately Tennyson, in his own study of the sciences and his spiritual struggles, confessed faith over doubt as well as doubt over faith in his prologue, written after his 17 years of pondering: 

Our little systems have their day;

They have their day and cease to be;

They are but broken lights of thee,

And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 

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Related posts:

A Theory of Everything

What I Don’t Believe, What I Do Believe

Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite. Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.