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For as long as I can remember, I have had a hard time sleeping. Tossing and turning, mind racing, in and out of bed, desperately seeking after that elusive nighttime friend called “rest.” In my teens, I knew my difficulty sleeping as “hormones” and “teenage angst.” In my twenties, while at University, it was “the stress of being a student” or having an “irregular schedule.” In my early thirties, I came to understand it as anxiety and depression. I started seeing a counsellor for cognitive behavioural therapy. I learned to see my sleepless nights, helpfully so, as part of what it means to live with mental illness. I began taking prescription medication and still do to this day. 

Now, at the wise old age of thirty-five, I am beginning to explore my trouble sleeping in spiritual terms. I am learning to see it as a “Dark Night of the Soul”, a phrase coined in a poem written by St John of the Cross, a 16th century Spanish monk. The Canadian singer, Loreena McKennitt, has a song based on St John of the Cross’ famous phrase. I’ll play it for us in a moment here. The lyrics go like this:

Upon a darkened night
The flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern light
I fled my house while all in quiet rest
Shrouded by the night
And by the secret stair I quickly fled
The veil concealed my eyes
While all within lay quiet as the dead

Oh, night, thou was my guide
Oh, night, more loving than the rising sun
Oh, night, that joined the lover
To the beloved one
Transforming each of them into the other

Upon that misty night
In secrecy, upon this misty light
Without a guide or light

Then that which burned so deep within my heart
The fire twas led me on
And shone more bright than of the midday sun
To where he waited still
It was a place where no one else could come

Oh, night, thou was my guide
Oh, night, more loving than the rising sun
Oh, night, that joined the lover to the beloved one
Transforming each of them into the other

Within my pounding heart
Which kept itself entirely for him
He fell into his sleep
And beneath the cedars all my love I gave
And all the fortress walls
The wind would brush his hair against his brow
And with its smoothest hand
Caressed my every sense, it would allow

Oh, night, thou was my guide
Oh, night, more loving than the rising sun
Oh, night, that joined the lover to the beloved one
Transforming each of them into the other

I lost myself to him
And laid my face upon my lover's breast
And care and grief grew dim
As in the morning's mist became the light
And there they dimmed amongst the lilies fair
And there they dimmed amongst the lilies fair
And there they dimmed amongst the lilies fair

This is Loreena McKennitt’s, “Dark Night of the Soul.” 

In our gospel reading today, Nicodemus comes to see Jesus at night. I see him wrought with anxiety, heavily laden with depressive thoughts. He comes to Jesus with all of his questions—big and small, existential and everyday, run-of-the-mill. What strikes me about Jesus’ response to Nicodemus is that he answers him with equal obscurity, which is to say, rather than dismiss Nicodemus with cliches or easy answers, he accompanies him in his dark night of the soul.

When Nicodemus asks, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?” Jesus doesn’t answer with a definitive “yes” or “no”, nor does he rebuke him saying, “How could you ask such silly questions?”

Instead, Jesus welcomes Nicodemus’ questions, folding them into his response. Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Like a good mystic, like a good poet, Jesus answers Nicodemus by sending him away not with objective truths but with some imagery to think on: water, Spirit, wind. And, like a good student, like a good teenager or the deep thinkers among us who so often wrestle with big questions, Nicodemus isn’t satisfied with imagery alone. He comes back to Jesus and says, “How can these things be?”

So, Jesus tries a different approach. This time he responds to Nicodemus with a story. He reminds him of the tale of the snake in the wilderness, which Moses lifted up on a stick. Jesus telling Nicodemus to recall this story is the equivalent to Jesus asking us to recall one of our childhood bedtime stories: Robert Munsch’s, I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, or Eric Carle’s, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. 

In an article for Psychiatry and the Dark Night of the Soul, Dr Ronald Pies talks about psycho-spiritual crisis as feeling “generally disoriented and unable to locate meaning, purpose, or sources of . . . fulfilment.” I reckon Jesus responds to Nicodemus with imagery and story as a way of helping Nicodemus locate meaning, purpose, and fulfilment in his dark night of the soul. Jesus’ response is a declaration of hope, rather than a proclamation of certainty. It’s a way of acknowledging the seriousness and validity of Nicodemus’ questions, inviting Nicodemus into a relationship with the God of the universe, the God of the darkness as well as the light, the God of questions, the God of despair as well as peace. 

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

This is Jesus’ hope for Nicodemus as it is even for us. Amen. 

Works referenced:

St John of the Cross, “Dark Night of the Soul”, translated by David Lewis, London: Thomas Baker, 1904, accessed 04 March 2023 online at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/157984/the-dark-night-of-the-soul 

Loreena McKennitt, “Dark Night of the Soul”, from the album The Mask and the Mirror, 1994, accessed online on 04 March 2023 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MclLF473XtA 

Ronald W. Pies, “Psychiatry and the Dark Night of the Soul” in Psychiatric Times accessed online on 04 March 2023 at
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/psychiatry-dark-night-soul