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KISS OF THE SUN, LOVE DARE, DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL, GERALD MAY, M.D.The Kiss of the Sun
for Pardon
The song of the birds
for Mirth
One is Nearer God's Heart in
a Garden
Than Anywhere Else on Earth
NEVER LEAVE YOUR PARTNER - LOVE DARE
Fire. Grilled no end. Cooling embers giving way to fracture, fear and facing vows shattered in smoke. What a flick! The new normal of Fireproof with Kirk Cameron lifts the bar higher for holy matrimony. Long suffering, for sure. In the crucible of heat in the kitchen of a marriage gone sour. But, with a 40-day recipe, LOVE DARE, morphing mends the minds, bruised hearts, ego's edging God out, to inclusion of NEVER LEAVING YOUR PARTNER AGAIN! See it. You are worth it! You owe it to yourself, to your spouse, to the community of friends, and disciples you love. Go on now - go see it tonight with tissue and a change of life...and matrimony.
The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth, by Gerald G. May, M.D. Harper San Francisco. Pp. 199. $23.95
Reviewed by Reverend Lawrence M. Ventline, D.Min., long-time religion columnist for The Detroit News. A priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit on special assignment, he is
SPIRITUAL SEEKERS AT WORK is what author and physician turned spiritual director makes attainable in The Dark Night of the Soul. A psychiatrist from Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Bethesda, Maryland, May explores in seven chapters the connection between darkness and spiritual growth. One’s darkest moments are presented here as vital to the freedom and joy that result from authentic spiritual growth.
Dr. May shows how the drive for perfection leaves little room for one’s dark side (shadow, to use Jung’s term) as a key ingredient in the spiritual life. A cancer surviovor himself and now a candidate for heart tranplantation, May finds consolation in his own desolation in the thoughts of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila who knew psychology well, and “with amazing accuracy they described psychological phenomena that would later be called defense mechanism, behavioral conditioning, addictive and affective disorders, and psychosis.” May admits, that in his own opinion, “they had clearer insights into the dynamics of consciousness and attention than most modern neuroscientists do.” P. 154
Without a doubt, the thrust of the spirituality and theology of these two mystics knew the quest of spiritual seekers after God and psychology was solely a tool to appreciate and understand the struggle.
Converting trials into graced events, May gleans from the 16th century Spanish mystics into the ‘dark night,’ a legging go of addictive control, powerlessness. And freedom. One’s dark, the author concludes gives way to depth, dimension and fullness in the spiritual life.
From the two mystics’ story, theology, liberation of desire, meditation and contemplation, psychology of the night, current contexts, and coming of the dawn in an awakening to a deepening realization of who one truly is in and with God in the world, the emerging is attuning to love. Spiritual life is about love. Love is born from the experience of dawn, May suggests.
Spiritual guide and Thomas Merton specialist, Joann Loria of Detroit said “this book was the best commentary I have ever read on the Dark Night experience.” I concur. For example, “ for those experiencing depression,” Loria, says, “May carefully takes one through the its path coupling it was a dark night movement.”
May’s comparisons of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross is gripping. Where John is analytical, Teresa is gentle, earthy, even sensuous in her writings. Their spiritual journey together as contemporaries affords the reader the pilgrimage the seeker takes and the unfolding path.
A brief example of quest is in John’s Sprititual Canticle, where the bride (soul) screams to her lover (God): “You fled like a deer after wounding me, and I went out, calling for you, and you were gone.” In their frustration, John calls this episode ‘God’s games,” while Teresa of Avila calls it “war.” It is the “wound of love” for both of them, however. Affirming life as “neither cruel nor antagonistic,” love is about liberating, enlivening, longing, and seeking, they conclude.
May’s own journey of despair and hope has the reader experiencing his own deepening trust in the face of pain and heartaches, while up against the backdrop of mystics pointing a way to depth, to meaning, to original innocence.
The classic movements of purging and unmasking to insights and illumined light that one is loved by God, to Divine Union and recovery of one’s original innocence and unconditional love of God had this reader, at least, monitoring my own moments of consolation and desolation -- the merging of misery and mystery in the dark night of obscurity, the word May uses instead of night. A fresh way of understanding is found here.
The way of transformation from attachment to desiring God alone is healing balm for the thirsty seeker.
May puts one on a do-able path where one “de-taches” from holding on and finally surrendering to nothing, to God.
- Review for Saint Anthony Messenger, by L. Ventline
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