Super-Bloom
“I call Heaven and Earth to witness against you today: I place before you Life and Death, Blessing and Curse. Choose life so that you and your children will live. And love God, your God, listening obediently to and firmly embracing God. Oh yes, God is life itself.”
Deuteronomy 30:19-20
Dear Friends,
St. John of the Cross was a 16th century Spanish poet whose focus was on the mystics and the soul. He wrote a poem about the dark night (of the soul) where he described the tortured longing he had for God who seemed distant, silent, obscure so much so that he felt his soul depart from itself. He faced a wilderness even within his longing. He experienced dry and weary lack even within the Church and surrounded by the faithful.
There have been times—sometimes more than I’d like to admit—where my hunger and thirst for meaning has been so deep because of the dry and weary landscape of my soul. I’ve found myself needing relief to where I’ll accept other forms of sustenance that brings temporary comfort in the wilderness—extra glass of wine, binging Netflix, the whole pint of Ben and Jerry’s. Even in the midst of a nurturing and growing relationship with Christ, there have been times when I am dry and weary and wonder where God is.
For some, the dark night of the soul has become the dark year.
We all know about bulbs and seeds needing to be buried, dying in the dirt, darkness and time defining the seed’s story. And every year, like clockwork, green growth pushes through what looked dead for sure. At this moment, daffodils have been announcing new life like it’s their purpose—spreading sunshiny joy and nodding back to each smile thrown their way.
But sometimes those seeds never bloom. Sometimes, like our dry and weary souls, life feels bleak, buried, dormant and forgotten. All around us is more wilderness desert as far as the eye can see and we might wonder if we’re alone out here. The dark nights have become the dark years. But friends, I believe there’s a super-bloom ready to burst through death and declare new life.
I live in Northern California in a wet and rainy coastal redwood forest but I used to live near the desert in Southern California. In Death Valley, buried under the dusty-dry concrete clay, laying dormant in a kind of dark death, lies wildflower seeds—teeming beyond imagination. They’ve been there for years, waiting, hoping, surviving, trusting that rain-life-abundance will revive their own dark nights. And when it comes, because it always does every decade or so, where death once dominated, LIFE springs forth. Colors blanket the dusty earth, painting a kaleidoscope of wonder.
In a dry and weary wilderness where my soul is parched and I can’t see the light, I am asked if I will choose life or death, blessing or curse. Instead of the deceptive forms of empty sustenance beckoning a quick fix, I turn my attention to Life in it’s fullness. It’s there I open my hands to receive life because life has been offered. Thank you, Lord.
With (love),
Bethany