H,
The “dark and alone soil of
God” is the very fulcrum of our spiritual growth. Adversity is the catalyst for
our attempt at the sublime and the beautiful depths of grace. Ease is not. There
is something about the human spirit that must be tested by contrary forces to
really shine out. We are not made for inertia. We need to work our bodies to be
fit and also work our minds to be sharp. It follows that our spirits come alive
when we face the contrary, the adversarial, the negative and the nihilistic. We
struggle against the tide because we know on some other level that there has to
be an answer for the absurdity of this present life.
Now, this might seem like a
call to arms for humanist ideals. It is not. The ‘weak’ in this situation do
not merely call out to others to be better so we can all have peace. He or she
also calls out for the inner human, including an internal inventory of one’s
own state, to find something worth building peace around. Poverty and
prosperity cannot answer the real hungers of the human soul. Neither can
anything else but the resolution of our ideas about God. If we are cut off from
source then to feel complete again we need to return to source. I do not think
that anyone not at this stage of blissful exasperation and spiritual
starvation, the great “something really important is missing in my life”, can
ever fully become a Christian. And if you are not fully a Christian then you
are not one at all. It is not a moral turn from being off to being on to the
moral sphere of existence. It is a martial cry for the soul to be well and good
and full in spite of the crippling evidence that there is only darkness ahead.
This murky picture I paint
is also part of the dark soil. To even contemplate God is to be with Him. Christianity
is not just another attempt at religion but the bold declaration that “this is
who God is, this is how He lives and this is what He says”. It is the great
finding of the way after the momentous dark of everyday life.
This realisation may come
after ten days or ten years of contemplation. Both are valid response to a call
from the start of time for us to embrace eternity. No one sees the same thing
in the dark soil, feels the same way, climbs the same height or reaches the
same depth in experience. We all see parts of Him and tell each other. This is
true community and communion.
Yet, it is the same decision
we all make. To look at the source and not at our own excuses for turning away
in search of storied but temporary solutions to the eternal problem of the
human soul.