Darkness and Disorientation

I've been having trouble sleeping in my smallish town here in Florida. I'm on summer break and I'm so unused to the quiet and the darkness. For the past few years I've been at school in Chicago. This past year I lived down a main road that constantly ushered along blaring-sirened emergency vehicles, city buses that shook my bedroom as they thundered by, and a good deal of cars with obnoxiously loud bass systems. Even with the blinds closed, city lights streamed in through the window so that I could read a book with my lights off at 3 AM.

In Smallish-town, Florida I've been leaving the muted TV on so that I can have a light to fall asleep to again. The darkness has begun to really freak me out. This past winter break, a good friend of mine decided to monopolize on that and pull a prank. I have a bathroom connected to my room. This one particular night I was getting ready for bed: brushing teeth, washing face, the usual. So as not to disturb my other friend who was sleeping in my room, I turned out the bathroom light before opening the door. Going immediately from such light to such darkness, I couldn't see a thing.

My prankster friend was standing in front of me making a horrendous, terrifying face and I didn't see her at all. I took a few steps forward before realizing I needed to turn the light back on. When I did I was in for quite a shock! I'll never live that one down!

Even more recently I had a bizarre experience with darkness. I was staying at a hotel this summer. It was the blackest and darkest I had ever seen a room before. At some point in the night I woke up in a crazy state of disorientation. I had no idea where I was. I delusionally thought that I was at the edge of a cliff that dropped off into spikes (like in the Mario videogames) and that if I moved I would fall off into some abyss. It was the weirdest/creepiest feeling I think I have ever had.

Darkness itself is so strange. It's near, yet far and tangible, yet empty. It settles on you, settles around you. In a dark room, you can hold your hand right in front of your face but the darkness is closer. It envelopes you. Paradoxically, darkness gives the illusion of being endless and far-off. In that hotel room, I would not have been able to guess where the room started or stopped. Shoot, if you asked me I would have fumbled around with my words muttering something about an abyss!

When we are surrounded by darkness, we are blind not only to the good (think: the lack of spikes and abysses), but also to the bad (the spikes and abysses). In my room in FL with all the lights off, I can't find my way to my bed, my haven. On the same token, I would not recognize a dear prank-pulling friend or even a murderer lurking just before me.


In my journey of faith I've experienced similar feelings. It's clear that in places of spiritual darkness it is difficult and sometimes seemingly impossible to see God. But what I realize now is that it also becomes more difficult to see darkness itself. When in a place of darkness we often become blind to the things that are not of God. In the darkness, dark things don't stand out as being particularly dark. Temptation, misery, complacency, and discontent could be right in front of our faces and we could easily walk right into them, especially if we choose to walk by sight rather than by faith. Why is it easier for us to walk by sight when we can't see and easier to walk by faith when we can? If that's the case, I think we are walking by sight in the light and by foolish "trial and error" in the darkness (neither faith nor sight).

This has also reminded me how deceptive the darkness is. Sometimes it feels closer to me than I feel to me. Sometimes it seems less tangible, as if it were a void that has always secretly been there. It can look endless, just as my hotel room did, though in fact the room itself was no different at 3 AM as it would have been at 3 PM. It distorts our vision but doesn't change the physical essence of what's around us, the truth. Praise God that even being in darkness doesn't change the reality or the truth.

What orients us in darkness is faith. This is not to say that faith will always lift the darkness or make it easier for us to see. Usually it means that we become aware of the fact that it's okay that we don't see. Faith is not a tool to make our lives easier. Faith is an often difficult choice in the face of what we do (or do not) see.

God, thank you for teaching us faith. Help us to know what it means to have faith in places of darkness and light. Help us not to see faith as our tool in times of need, but as the very mode we operate in and under through all aspects of our daily lives. Our own sight is short, be it in darkness or in light. Help us to each truly recognize that and the depth of the implications that has for each of us in our lives. Thank you for your patience with us. God, we want to know the depth of our need for total dependency on you. Make that real to us. Amen.