While Reading The Dark Knight of the Soul, by Gerard G. May, M.D. [guest]

“The soul lets go of everything, daughter, so that it may remain more completely in me. The soul itself no longer lives, but I.”

I stilled myself.

There I was.

Staggering. Exhausted. Sweating. Tense. Muscles aching. Barely alive.

I looked in my eyes. I looked at myself. I saw myself. Objectively. Sad. The bricks. So heavy. Cutting. Gouging my skin, blood gushing. Me – oblivious. Moving at a snail’s pace. Determined for some unknown, irrelevant destination.

Then I felt it.

HEAVY despair. Exhaust. Piling the bricks harder and harder on myself. Weight. Wanting to throw them off. Unable to do so. My back. Stuck. Panged.

And my own will. No No Press them harder. I can’t let go. This is how it has to be. Harder. Harder. More weight. I need it.

Why? Why??? I asked myself. But I really didn’t know. I couldn’t let go.

Then I begged Jesus – reason with her, I said about myself. There He was. I wanted to yank the bricks off. Straighten my back. I wanted to jerk my head up and look Him straight in the eye but I couldn’t. He held my hand. I held it close.

It’s a process.

He can’t just free me. I didn’t even want or know how to be free. He bent down mimicking my hunch back position. He looked in my eyes. He was next to me. He saw me. But I couldn’t see him. The exhaustion. The dizziness. The weight. blurred my eyes. I could only see…blur.

I didn’t need to see. Trying to only exhausted me more. Instead He just held my hand. Pulled it close. And walked with me at that snail’s pace to where ever it was that I was so determined to get to. And slowly, slowly as we walked together, I saw His hand. My face saw His face. My back began to straighten like His and the blocks fell from my back as a result of the slow but sure motion.

Soon I was upright like Him. Looking in His eyes. The more I looked at Him, the more the weights dropped to the ground. And there we stood. Perfect embrace. He held me close and cradled my head. Never so precious have I been coddled. Comforting and making whole. In Him I became whole.

He is everything.

When you feel the weight of the world. When you need it. You can’t even part with it. Don’t worry about looking. Just hold that hand. He will get you through.

“Whatever form it takes, the movement of the soul and God is always finding its way toward freedom.”

“Regardless of when and how it happens, the dark night of the soul is the transition from bondage to freedom in prayer and in every other aspect of life.”

“In the liberation of the night, we are freed from having to figure things out, and we find delight in knowing what we do not know.”

--

Steffeny Steiner was born in Hollywood, CA. She is a lover of adventures and enjoys documenting her travels--whether to the grocery store, another country, or inside her own heart. Steffeny also has love for coffee, community, and Africa. She loves to hear people’s stories because they excite, heal, and inspire. In Stef’s opinion, this is what life is about. She’ll be sharing some of her stories as a guest contributor and is pretty stoked to hear from you as well.

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Nostalgia [teddi]

I drove to that same building on a brisk fall evening. The mountains were glorious, standing high and proud against a sun-set sky. Oranges and reds decorated the grounds and underneath my feet were the crunching sounds of weak leaves. The air was clean and it was so quiet you could hear that strange sound that is really no sound at all; the ringing of silence. Every now and then, you could hear the call of geese. They sounded almost desperate, screeching and gasping. I swear, it's the saddest sound in the world.

Staring at that building I felt as Wordsworth must have when he wrote Tintern Abbey. It had been a “long and painful absence.” Yet I returned. I stood there, staring, with my hands in my jacket. A chill came over me as I remembered everything. Every moment of pleasure and sorrow. Every moment of feast and famine. The images were clear and vivid in my head; the feelings strong and rich in my heart. Loss would so easily wish for me to forget yet I couldn't. It was all very real.

When we sat on mexican blankets on the concrete, staring up at the stars. When we smoked cigars out the car window, driving down country roads with the windows down. When we took walks through the woods and shrieked at every mysterious sound. When we sat in summer grass and prayed for hurting friends. When we made a campfire and watched the flames dance as we warmed our feet and hands. When we sat on sanctuary floors with a sense of both reverence and terror. When we were simply together. Before that, before this, before life’s turbulent changing tides.

I hold those times close to me now. They are both my chapped soul and also the only balm that can soothe it. I remember always, I remember all; not because it was perfect, but simply because it was.

It was what it was.

It just was.

It was meaningful. It was worthwhile. It was familiar. It was habitual yet it became more. It became a family. A sense of belonging.

I entertain these thoughts but for a few minutes before I am filled with a strange mixture of bitterness and thankfulness. I walk back to my car and the chill bites my hands. I hear the geese once again, their call breaking the silence of the country. I watch them wander through the grasses, stare at me for but a moment and then take flight. It is time for them to depart. They are heading southward. They are off to find their new home.

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Part III: Prophecy and Infantry [barry]

"Is it true that I have seen all these things? That they are real incidents in my life's history? Did I see those brave and noble countrymen of mine laid low in death and weltering in their blood? Did I see our country laid waste and in ruins? Did I see soldiers marching, the earth trembling and jarring beneath their measured tread? Did I see the ruins of smouldering cities and deserted homes? Did I see my comrades buried and see the violet and wild flowers bloom over their graves? Did I see the flag of my country, that I had followed so long, furled to be no more unfurled forever? Surely they are but the vagaries of mine own imagination. Surely my fancies are running wild tonight.

"But, hush! I now hear the approach of battle. That low, rumbling sound in the west is the roar of cannon in the distance. That rushing sound is the tread of soldiers. That quick, lurid glare is the flash that precedes the cannon's roar. And listen! That loud report that makes the earth tremble and jar and sway, is but the bursting of a shell, as it screams through the dark, tempestuous night. That black, ebon cloud, where the lurid lightning flickers and flares, that is rolling through the heavens, is the smoke of battle . . . Listen! The soldiers are charging now."

- Private Sam Watkins, 1st Tennessee Infantry Regiment

The paperwork has been submitted. The suicidal freefall has concluded. The death has occurred. The discharge has been remitted; the epitaph delivered ("Honorable," it reads). I do not have much to say, for the dead do not speak eloquently.

Fortunately, my Father always does.

"You know you are still a soldier, right?" he inquired (more so exhorted), with these simple words of prophecy presaging a life that lies ahead – not unlike those simple words of prophecy that previously portended the death that just occurred.

Because the words have been spoken (and I know that this is how my Father creates), I know that this process of life after death has already begun. Indeed, even in those previous words of death, my Father began this course of new life. So it seems that perhaps this death was not really death at all; however, I am too new to have comprehension.

Like a cognitive infant, I am able to perceive and evaluate the world and experiences around me, but wholly incapable of fully understanding or adequately communicating what is being felt.

Like the dry remains of Ezekiel's Army – those nameless, desiccated soldiers – I am simply waiting for my Father's words to permeate my bones and bring me back to life.

I will miss the grip of a rifle, the heat and weight of body armor, the pungent fumes of tank exhaust and cordite, and the adrenaline and sweat that gives it all a unique and precious aroma. I will miss the respect of professional leaders, the esteem of my countrymen, and the love that I cannot help but feel for my soldiers who looked to me for leadership and answers and action. I will miss the feel of the uniform, the way those fabrics magically improve posture and increase height, and the knowledge of every step and every action that led to the vibrant, clashing colors and gleaming shine of ornaments on my chest. I will miss the comfortable jargon, the unfettered but absolutely pure complaining of the grunts and pogues, and the only brotherhood to which I have ever belonged. I will miss free airline baggage service, retail discounts, and not having to ever show my driver's license because I have a better form of identification. My life will be nothing like it was, and I will dearly mourn it. Indeed, I already profoundly miss these things. I already mourn.

But life has been spoken, and life awaits. I will dwell on this death, but only to proclaim that it is gain; that the abundance of what waits for me as a soldier in my Father's army will far surpass these vagaries of mine own imagination.

But, hush! I now hear the approach of battle. Listen! I hear the voice of my Father. The muscles and sinews are reforming on my bones. I am still a soldier, and I trust that when the time comes, my hands will remember what it means to grip a weapon and my feet will recall how to be steady in the battle. I cannot wait for that time, but I have no idea what that fight will look like. I must now be an infant and once again receive life and health and training from my Father, the King of Battle. That is, after all, what it means to be in the infantry.

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Your Heart Is a Midden [joshua]

Pace around the field
Waist to waist in silence
Watch the storm black the sky

You've razed the harbor
Of pretense from my breast
You're no mystery to me now

Run - your soul crushed callous
The wounds you don't nurse
I leave my flowers funeral haze
And put my hope in the earth

Turn my head away
The screen oh father
There's nothing to say
Why drink it any further
Years of empty promise
To the children it can't ignore

THIS KIND OF LIFE IS SO DESIGNED
TO BURY THE HEART THAT MOVES
A SORT OF GRACE THAT YOU DESPISE
AND HAVE LEARNED TO LOSE
OUT FROM UNDER YOUR SHAME
NO, YOU SERVE IT

I see you jet away again
Another lost chance to wave
The heart is a midden
I see you jet away again
Let me see you jet away again

Capture all the markers
From all the graveyard stops
The trespasses of a life gone by
Hitchhiked on feelings, pictures

You love the politics of preservation
Save the landfill you say
Your heart is a midden

I see you jet away again
I see you stoop to kiss her
I see you jet away again
Your heart is a midden

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Standing in the Delta [nean]

What God has joined
in Her infinite wisdom
of the who and the what
we all need

Let no man think
he's smart enough
or arrogant enough
or capable enough
to try to pull apart.

As the drops of east
dilute with west
two rivers truly are one

As one body is made
of thousands of parts
this river is filled from streams.

Where this water joins
to become part of the whole
and flows to fill that which was
it becomes one with all
that have flowed here before
keeping some of what
others have lost

And here we will fail
if we try to remove it

For good or bad~
polluted or not~
this stream is now part
of our river

And all little streams
moving off on their own
become tributaries of that which was

For these new streams we've made
are nothing like the old ~
forever changed
into something new

They can never be
anything less
than the sum of it's parts
taking pieces of me
leaving pieces of you
to forever be drowned
in this place where we've joined

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