April 8, 2012

• How Long Was Your Longest Drought?

  

  The Xanga front page “slot machine” as I call it featured a post on Datingish called “How Long Was Your Longest Drought?” in which the post asks readers what is the longest time they have gone without having sex. Rather than enter that contest with a whopping 28 years (and counting!) I thought that, similar to another post a while back which spiritually asked the same question as another front page post, I thought I would ask my readers:

  How long was your longest spiritual drought?

  St. John of the Cross is famous for his experience of “the dark night of the soul,” this notion that a person can feel a profound absence of God in their life. They know He’s there, they know He exists but, try as they might, they cannot find or feel Him. He experienced this while in prison. Mother Theresa, as has been revealed by her published spiritual diaries, had a “dark night of the soul” that lasted pretty much the last forty years of her life.

  Forty.

  Years.

  Basically a spiritual Exodus before she reached the promised land of Heaven. Can you even imagine this? And some Xangans, and this is not to ridicule, lament going a few months without an intimate, sexual encounter with someone. But there is a loneliness one can experience that is even deeper than the cold half of a queen-sized bed, the empty dance card, the dateless Friday night and the aching swell in your heart when you remember the comfort of another person’s arms around your body.

  Imagine what it is like for the soul to feel abandoned or estranged, even for an hour, from the One Who knows it and loves it perfectly, Who fashioned it from nothing out of perfect love? Imagine, or perhaps you’ve known it or are experiencing it right now, having a gaping loneliness in the very pit of your heart that no amount of sex, no drug, no intellectual stimulation, no rationalizing, no computer game, no amount of food, self-injury or self-pleasure, nothing in this world can satisfy? 

  Now that, my beloved friends, is a drought. For those who have experienced a drought in nature, you ever pour water onto the ground? It hardly remains a moment before it is absorbed straight into the ground or falls into the cracks of the dirt; perhaps the ground is so dry, so hard that even a huge amount of water just runs across it like it was pavement. The soul in desolation can be the very same way; even the little graces of every day life, the small joys and consolations, can seem so insignificant that they impact the heart and are soaked in without hardly a notice, or slip into the cracks and are gone, or just run across the surface and flow away as though they were never there at all. Such a soul yearns for a monsoon, a downpour.

  I’ve found that whenever I experience drought in my spiritual life it is because God is not only breaking me of some old way of being–it could be a good thing or a bad thing–but preparing me for a new way of being with Him. For example, my longest drought lasted a year and a half: from mid-college all through novitiate and about half-way through my philosophy years in St. Louis, my relationship with Christ was knight to king, soldier-to-soldier. I served, He commanded. My relationship to God the Father was similar; He was my good master and I was His servant. As my priestly vocation continued to mature I began to learn more about the spiritual fatherhood that is inherent in and so crucial to being a priest. During my second year at SLU I was entrusted with ministering to a group of young women on campus called The Daughters of Isabella and it was there that I began to experience the reality of spiritual fatherhood, and this led to my beginning to pray for the grace of being taught how to be a good father. 

  One fateful evening while praying for this grace and considering the matter I realized that it was by being a good son that a man learns best how to be a father; he learns by receiving his own father’s love and care. When that son comes to have his own children he draws upon the way his own father loved him and tries to show that same love to his own children. This is how, I felt, the Son loves us; He even says, “As the Father loves me, so I also love you” (John 15:9). That is when it struck me that the grace I ought to ask for is not for God to teach me to be a good father but rather how to be a good son, first, to be more like Christ and to let the Father love me as He desires to, to relate to me as Father to son. I was so happy to realize this and I gladly accepted this invitation.

  So began my long drought; you see, all my whole prayer life was built upon those  formal though very intimate, loving and meaningful relationships of servant to master. To relate to Christ as my elder brother who would teach me how to be a good son by His own example? To relate, ever more so, to God as my Father, truly? I had so little idea how any of that worked, but it didn’t matter; my whole prayer life crumbled and left me with very little save for daily Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, Eucharistic Adoration and spiritual conversation with my fellow Jesuits and friends on campus, the Rosary, etc. It wasn’t until an 8-day silent retreat last summer that the downpour finally came, but it was only by the plow of personal events in my family life that broke the hard soil enough for all that rain to soak in. Since that retreat I’ve been out of the drought and things have been much more temperate, thank God.

   

  I share that story not to boast, but as an example of how spiritual drought often works; sometimes, in order to draw us into a deeper relationship with Him, God must withdraw. Or sometimes our suffering in this world wounds us so profoundly that God cannot approach us or touch us as He once did but must do so very slowly, even imperceptibly, over a long period of time. For some others (including many saints) He intentionally hides not to punish us but in the hope that we will chase after Him, to seek Him wherever He might be, teasing us like a playful lover; it all depends on the person and how God loves them and knows their heart. The most important thing to remember that as with any true drought, it always comes to an end. I’ve had shorter droughts, but I always know that they are temporary, that it is God’s doing and not in order to punish me but rather for my benefit and so He can better prove His love for me.

  What can help us during these times of drought? The most helpful tip I would give and the most important bit of “survival” advice would be gratitude. During times of drought our heart can become dry and hard and, as mentioned, all the sweet things in our daily life can seem bland or even invisible. When you are in the spiritual desert take some time to reflect on things from your past life for which you are grateful, recall those graces that you have received from God in prayer, in meditation, in Sacrament, remember moments of joy in your life, of love, of deep and beautiful emotion, whatever you once thanked God for. Collect these things in what I call a “spiritual camel hump” (corny I know but it works!) so that when your journey toward the heart of God encounters a desert you have spiritual reserves to carry you to the next oasis or even to the desert’s end. Gratitude keeps the heart pliable and able to recognize good things even in the midst of desolate circumstances. I cannot stress enough the importance of gratitude and reflecting daily upon those things for which you are grateful; do this and even if your spiritual life is as desolate as the surface of the moon you can still give thanks to God and, though you might not feel His presence, you will be calling to mind times when you know He was there and showing His love.

  The second thing is to persevere in simple things. I mentioned Daily Mass and other traditional devotions. So many people–myself included–run into spiritual drought and panic, running to some kind of super-prayer or huge devotion that will defib back to life the life they enjoyed before with God. This I think just confuses us; if we stick with simple things during times of drought we remain open to what God is leading us to. In desert survival you try to limit your exertion, right? Spiritual drought can be approached similarly. Stick with simple things that comfort you and help you, that nourish you well enough, but above all keep yourself open and thirsty for the water God wants to give you. Mother Theresa prayed the Rosary, read Scripture, attended daily Mass, did Liturgy of the Hours and prayed as she was accustomed to, remaining steadfast and faithful all the way to the end in her prayer. She didn’t try drilling a well, seeding rain clouds or crafting a divining rod; she waited for God to provide the rain she yearned for. Imagine her surprise when the whole Heaven opened up for her! Imagine how open and thirsting her heart was after four decades of thirst and how much of God’s love she was able to drink in after her death! I can’t wait to ask her some day, God-willing.

  Take heart, brothers and sisters, if you find yourself in the desert; there is life even here, and God is yet with you, even if He seems completely absent. Cling gratefully to past blessing and offer thanks for them time and again to remind God that your heart desires Him still and that you have not forgotten Him. Be simple, patient and trust that every drought has its end.

  

  Have you experienced spiritual drought before? For how long? How did you get through it, or, how are you getting through it now? What advice would you give to others who are in the desert?

  • 10:53 pm
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