I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the phrases “the dark night of the soul” or “the law of undulation”. If you have, then chances are that you’re a Christian that has experienced a rough time in your life. I only draw that conclusion, however, because it seems that only Christians or those of a spiritual persuasion either create, or go searching for these types of beautiful flowery terms to describe those times in your life that seem to be an unending parade of unfortunate, unfair, very dark and depressing “WTF” circumstances of life that make you cry, wallow or otherwise pity your existence and fill your silent vocabulary with questions of “what did I do to deserve this?” “when will this end?” “when will I be happy again?” and my personal favourite, “SERIOUSLY???!!. . .(insert exasperated sigh here)”.
You know what I mean though, and if you don’t, you unfortunately will at one point or another (start preparing for a long metaphor. . .). Generally speaking, you’re doing your thing, probably with a lot of content satisfaction when something happens. That something that shakes your faith or your personal foundation. You start to cope with it, but just when you’re starting to make sense of it something else comes out of nowhere and blindsides you and you stumble around for a bit. Then maybe someone comes out of the shadows and shoves you to the ground and hey, that kind of makes you mad, so you get up looking for a fight, only to find that you can’t see them anymore, and then someone hits you from behind and you’re back on the ground. You try to get up but they kick you down again, and then again, and then again until you stop trying to get up and just lay quietly hoping that they’ll go away and leave you alone. It gets quiet and you’re pretty sure they’re gone, but maybe they’re just waiting for you to get up again. You’re lucky though, because you’re friends come along and find you pretty quickly. They help you get up and take you home and start to patch you up. They tell you that you’re safe, they call the police for you and say that they’ll catch the bastards that hurt you. But the police call you back to say that they have no leads, that this was probably just a random act of violence and you should go about your life like normal. “Ha ha!” you say with absolutely no humor as you order on-line a security system and four deadbolts to be shipped to you. You spend a long time fine-tuning that security system but never really feel any safer. You open the door only for those friends that were with you that fateful night. Absolutely. no. one. else.
The truth is, I could continue with this metaphor for a few more pages, but I think you know what I mean, and if you don’t know what I mean you probably have a weird mix of intrigue and disinclination happening. Hold on - I believe in using my writing powers for good and not evil, it’s about to get sunnier, just bear with me.
If you do know what I’m talking about, you know that there is no definite amount of time that this “dark night of the soul”, this “WTF?” time of life lasts. For some people it’s a month, maybe a few months, maybe a few years, maybe many years. That’s why it’s so chillingly scary. After all, this could mean that you’ll feel like the bottom of a plumber’s boot for the rest of your life. Luckily for me, I believe in Beatles songs, good luck rabbits (that’s the whole rabbit alive, mind you, not just its dead foot) the Monro-Kellie Doctrine and God’s love. This, in turn leads me to put a lot of stock in “the law of undulation” (no, you will not find this in the Bible, check out “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis). Basically, something is bound to change eventually.
In the last few days I feel like maybe, just maybe I’ve figured something out. You know when you have days where it feels like God is “speaking” to you? Perhaps others would call it those times when you felt in tune with the universe or maybe its what atheists would say is what happens when your sub-conscious meets up with your conscious or what have you. In any case, it’s not quite a revelation but it’s a little bit of peace that comes to your attention and then you start seeing it everywhere. I will continue the second part of this in a few minutes in a second post as I am fairly determined to avoid painfully long single posts.
In the mean time you may want to look up:
“The Dark Night of the Soul”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul
The Law of Undulation”
http://bama.ua.edu/~casey006/216/screwtape.html
The Monro-Kellie Doctrine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracranial_pressure
(Ya, I probably wouldn’t have read it all either if I hadn’t had to. Basically, if pressure is introduced into a fixed amount of space, like the skull, something has got to give.)
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