This article appeared in the May
2000
issue of
GENRE.
The notion of the "dark
night of the
soul" has entered Western culture to refer to a particular kind of
emotive/affective state, also called aridity, that supposedly
precedes direct mystical experience. It refers generally to the
notion that you have to go through a certain amount of suffering
before you can realize joy and pleasure. The dark night is
characterized by dissatisfaction and boredom with the way normal
people live their normal lives. Underlying this dissatisfaction is a
"spiritual hunger" for something more than the world offers. This is
interpreted as the experience of union with God. While this image
applies to all people, it has particularly appropriate application to
the experience of gay men, especially spiritually conscious gay men.
There is a
certain knowingness that goes
with being gay, a sense of understanding a hidden dimension of
reality that most people don't seem to realize is there. We learn
this early in life. At first, it's just in reference to self. That
is, we sense, often inchoately, that there's something about
ourselves we have to keep secret, something only we (and God) can
know. We may develop a magical or religious vision of the world out
of this sense of secretness/sacredness.
As we grow older we likely come to understand that what
we had
understood to be the "secret dimension" was, in fact, the homosexual
dimension, and that there have been others before us who've lived
lives in secrecy and "darkness" as fellow homosexuals. We become
fascinated with the homosexual slant which we--and our fellows--can
see throughout history and culture. We want to know who was gay in
the past, which movies stars, which politicians and celebrities,
shared our secret (often in their own "darkness").
The people we--perhaps too cavalierly--call straight, the
"normal" people, may not perceive this hidden dimension at all. There
is, after all, no reason for them to mistrust what they're taught by
authorities--at least, no reason felt in their flesh. Of course, as
they develop and deepen their own psychological/spiritual lives, they
too are liable to realize there is a secret dimension. That is, after
all, the discovery of all those called "mystics." An important part
of the gay contribution may be precisely the revelation of the hidden
dimension to life.
To the gay man who can see through the secrecy, the
spiritual
classic, The Dark Night of the Soul, is an elaborate ruse to disguise
a homosexual adventure. In its conceit there is wisdom gay men can
appreciate in a way those who don't realize the secret/mystical
dimension simply can't.
The book, written by the 16th-century Spanish Carmelite
mystic
San Juan de la Cruz, is a detailed commentary on a poem called "On a
Dark Night." This poem is included in virtually every anthology of
religious poetry (e.g. Andrew Harvey's The Essential Mystics). The
commentary explains the various images in the poem as allegories for
stages in development of the spiritual life. But if you read the poem
with gay awareness, it is obviously an account of a homosexual
liaison.
St.
John of the Cross spent several years as a prisoner in his monastery.
He was kept locked up because he was so insistent that the Carmelite
friars practice mortification and austerities, that the other friars
had him sent to his cell to keep him quiet. While locked away, he
wrote numerous poems and elaborate commentaries on these poems. Like
the spiritual poetry of the Persian Islamic Sufi mystics a few
centuries before, St. John's poetry is hotly homoerotic.
"On a Dark Night" describes John's romantic fantasy of
running
off into the night to meet a lover. "On a dark secret night, starving
for love and deep in flame," he begins, "...unseen I slipped away."
Wearing a scarf over his face, he fled unseen, climbing down what he
called a secret ladder (perhaps a trellis outside his cell?), guided
only by the fire burning in his breast.
He goes out to a spot outside the fortress walls of the
old
medieval walled city of Toledo, a spot which he describes as "a place
where no one comes." But there waiting for him is his Beloved. John
rhapsodizes: "O night that guided me, O night more lovely than the
dawn, O night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in
the Beloved!" In the darkness then they make love.
Afterwards, the beloved falls asleep with his head on
John's
chest. As the wind blows through the cedars overhead, John caresses
and fondles him and then falls asleep himself, now with his face
lying on his beloved's breast (like his Apostle namesake who lay on
the breast of Jesus at the Last Supper).
When the sun rises John wakes feeling that all his cares
are
gone, and he sees that he and his beloved are lying among a field of
lilies.
The allegorical explanation is that this is about the
stage of
depression and aridity in the religious life, the so-called "dark
night of the soul." The secret ladder is living faith; the disguise,
the three theological virtues, faith, hope and charity. But that is
not what's in the poem! There is nothing about depression or
spiritual suffering, much less the theological virtues. It's about
sexual passion. Perhaps the lover and beloved represent the soul and
Christ, but that is still a homoerotic image.
Perhaps it is all allegory and St. John never left his
cell.
But it really sounds like he was sneaking out and engaging in 16th
Century bush sex, or at least fantasizing it. What was mystical was
that he probably was in such a state of religious intensity (and
neurotic denial) that he truly experienced the men he was meeting out
there in the bushes as palpable manifestations of Christ.
The notion of the "dark night of
the
soul" has entered Western culture to refer to a particular kind of
emotive/affective state, also called aridity, that supposedly
precedes direct mystical experience. It refers generally to the
notion that you have to go through a certain amount of suffering
before you can realize joy and pleasure. The dark night is
characterized by dissatisfaction and boredom with the way normal
people live their normal lives. Underlying this dissatisfaction is a
"spiritual hunger" for something more than the world offers. This is
interpreted as the experience of union with God.
Psychology calls this state depression, though certainly
not
all depression has such spiritual roots or can be solved by mystical
experience. But there is clearly a parallel between the dark night of
the soul and the depression of young adulthood with its angst about
the meaning of life and the passing of childhood fantasy. In
mid-life, this is experienced as the so-called "noonday devil,"
acedia, the apathy and boredom (not clinical depression) that come
from doing the same thing every day and never seeing the world change
because of it. This is what mid-life crises are about.
In the dark night, life seems flat because higher
consciousness
seeks deeper meaning. This is a stage in learning perspective and
getting priorities in order. This is a plunging into the depths in
order to reform one's personality and self-concept.
The dark night is a common step in coming out as gay.
That is,
gay men often experience confusion, depression, and loss of social
identity as they realize their homosexual orientation. First,
perhaps, we sense that something is missing in heterosexuality, we
long for something more. Then when we realize what it is we long for,
we may feel humiliated or betrayed or at least may feel this is
something we must keep secret. Later, often through a life-changing
moment of emotional intensity, we come to understand what homosexuality
really is. Then the guilt and misconceptions are
transformed, and we experience relief and joy. We have gone through
the dark night, through the way of purgation, and discovered a whole
new world and new self-concept.
What St. John of the Cross was describing as a stage of
the
spiritual life--perhaps to keep his fellow monks from realizing he
was tricking with an hallucinated Jesus out at the cruise park--was
not the sadness and unhappiness of depression, but a state of
uncertainty and not-knowing. This is a relatively enlightened stage
of religiousness. And you find it among many of the mystics. They
acknowledge that the spiritual life is not about being right. Rather
it is about being in awe before a greater reality that just doesn't
fit human ideas, because it is so much bigger, more wonderful, and
more immediate.
This embrace of uncertainty is not something you find in
popular religion, however. The televangelists never say God is
unknowable and religious people ought to give up trying to know who's
right and, especially, who's wrong. Just the opposite, they often
maintain they themselves know exactly what is in the mind of God,
that their translation of the Bible is absolutely true and inerrant,
that Church teaching is infallible. No room for uncertainty and
unknowing here. Tragically, little room for spiritual growth and
enlightenment either!
Not surprisingly, gay men have a special access through
the
dark night. We go through that uncertainty as a necessary part of
being who we are. And thus we potentially see the mystical message
behind religion. We potentially discover what John of the Cross was
talking about: in every man we meet, especially those we have sex
with or fall in love with, we can see Christ. Indeed, this is what
"Christ" means: not some Cosmic Pal in the sky who is the founder and
CEO of Christianity, but the real divinity of human incarnate life,
here and now. As Jesus said, "What you do to the least of my
brothers, that you do to Me." And also: "The Kingdom of God is spread
across the face of the Earth, and men do not see it." The trick is to
open our eyes to see.
The New Age singer Loreena McKennitt, who has put St.
John's
poem to music, translates his rhapsodizing this way: "O night that
joined the lover to the beloved one, Transforming each of them into
the other."
That's a very homosexual take on lovemaking. While
heterosexuals do experience love as a reuniting with their "other
half" (following Plato's famous image), they generally don't
experience transforming into one another. Straight men don't long to
experience becoming women during sex; they don't confuse their penis
with their partner's vagina. Gay men do. We can experience a blurring
of identity in sexplay. In the fire of passion, we can sometimes
confuse our own bodies and our beloveds'. We can experience
transforming into one another.
More importantly, we can experience sex and lovemaking as
an
experience of Christ, of God. This is the mystical vision of the dark
night.
Once Juan de la Cruz got out of his cell, by the way, he
was
successful in restructuring the Carmelite Order according to the
"Strict Observance," called "Discalced" (meaning barefoot). He was
associated with the very dominant (and big-boned and butch) female
saint, Theresa of Avila, who got the Carmelite nuns also to discalce
themselves. Especially because of the Bernini sculpture of St.
Theresa being pierced in the heart with a flaming arrow wielded by an
angel, she has become famous for experiencing prayer-induced
orgasm.
Remember John wakes to find
himself and
his Beloved lying in a field of lilies. A beautiful affirmation of
love. Also an allusion to one of the loveliest of Jesus's sayings:
Consider the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin, yet
even King Solomon in all his glory was not adorned as one of them. Do
not be anxious therefore. Do not judge.
This is the message of the spiritual teachings: Live here
and
now. Find the Kingdom of God here and now. See Jesus in everyone you
meet. This is not the wisdom of family values and householding which
is understandably, desperately concerned with maintaining the status
quo, holding on to certainty, protecting the nest for the sake of the
children. But precisely because, as gay, we don't fit into the status
quo, we don't experience certainty and righteousness, we have
available to us the mystical vision of the dark night.
We can open our eyes and see in the darkness.
