A couple of weeks ago I was sitting at Demontreville Jesuit Retreat House in the middle of a 3-day silent Ignatian retreat. I was the perfect end to a long desert time between me an God. At the end of 2015 I was tired and weary. I had just finished an intense year-long course of study to become a spiritual director that was both wonderful and very exhausting. I found myself withdrawing to process through the things I learned, or at least the things I began to learn and study. Then 2016 arrived and soon it was gone.
Looking back, this season was a time of rest preparing me for my Dark Night of the Soul time beginning in early 2017. The Dark Nigh of the Soul is a poem by St John of the Cross in the late 1500s. the poem is about an experience where the author is drawn to God because of life circumstances. My Dark Night comes as my depression settles in. I know this is not typical but it is in my darkest times that God meets me and together we work on my spiritual transformation. Seemingly as quickly as my depression settled in it lifted and the thought that I was left with as a need to know God deeper, to better understand what it means to give oneself as a living sacrifice to God. It was somewhere in this darkness that I actually signed up for the retreat but thinking back I don’t know when or why I did it.
Fast forward to my Ignatian retreat and there was God, confirming what I had been sensing. Through my time of reading, prayer, meditation, and listening I know that what I am seeking, what I am desiring is an invitation from God to draw close to Him, to abide with Him. The step I am at now is processing the “how” of doing this. Ruth Haley Barton in her book Sacred Rhythms writes that “nothing in our spiritual life originates with us. It all originates with God.” So in a sense it is simply about sitting back and listening to/for God’s invitations. To do this I need to notice where God “interrupts” me each day, noticing the encounters with God and others that will help draw me closer to God. I need to develop my daily rhythm, making sure I set aside time to reflect, listen, and notice.