advent apertures 2018 day 10: within

Oh what is the barrier that stands out against this happiness, and what are the wolfish words upon our lips that deny it, the words that are not our words?  What is the dog within us that howls against it, the dog that tears and howls, that is no creature of ours, than lies within, kennelled and howling, that is an alien animal, an enemy?  It is the desire to tear out this animal, to have our heart free of him, to have our heart for ourselves and for the innocent happiness, that makes us cry out against life, and cry for death.  For this animal is kennelled close within, and tearing out this animal we tear out also the life with it.

Stevie Smith, from The Holiday

If I ever have feared the presence, or lack of presence, of the God who is ‘out there’, how much more I fear the depth of whatever is the opposite of God who is ‘in here’.  How I am a beloved child of the Mystery is mystery indeed.  Why God would want to be at home within me is baffling, given the elongated shadows containing my fearful monsters, my many worst selves, that I fight to keep so well hidden from most people.

And on the days I don’t hear the ‘black dog’ howl, I can be swamped by such a sense of lifelessness, such emptiness, where there is no spark of ‘me’, where there is no sense of even the possibility of God. 

And yet this goes to the heart of the Advent promise: the Incarnate God draws near, God is Emmanuel, God with me - no matter what my past, no matter what my future.

Not the profound dark

night of the soul

and not the austere desert

to scorch the heart at noon,

grip the mind

in teeth of ice at evening

but gray,

a place

without clear outlines,

the air

heavy and thick

the soft ground clogging

my feet if I walk,

sucking them downwards

if I stand.

Have you been here?

Is it

a part of human-ness

to enter

no man’s land?

I can remember

(is it asking you

that makes me remember?)

even here

the blessèd light that caressed the world

before I stumbled into

this place of mere

non-darkness.

‘Oblique Prayer’

Denise Levertov

blessed caress. iPhone image.