Article: The Night Office: Loss, Darkness, and the Practice of Solidarity, by Douglas E. Christie

In contrast to its cataphatic spirituality and its emphasis on divine presence, fullness, and light, Christianity’s apophatic spiritual practices offer believers an alternative path that reflects the human experience of divine absence, emptiness, and darkness. Douglas Christie‘s article introduces his readers to this path, a “practice that can help us discover the courage and empathy necessary for entering into those places of profound loss and unknowing that have become so pervasive in our world and standing with those who suffer and struggle there.” Here is the article’s abstract:

What does it mean to enter the night? This question has long haunted the Christian mystical tradition. There, entering the night almost always means accepting uncertainty, insecurity and loss as inevitable and necessary, part of what it is to come to know ourselves in God and in relation to one another. In our own time, amidst increasingly acute encounters with loss, suffering and insecurity, the language of darkness is taking on new meaning and significance. In this essay, I consider what it might mean to retrieve traditions of spiritual darkness as part of a transformative spiritual practice. How might such practice help us cultivate the courage and empathy to engage the profound loss and unknowing that has become so pervasive in our world and to stand in solidarity with those who suffer and struggle there? How might it help us become, in the words of Pope Francis, more “painfully aware?”

Citation:
Douglas E. Christie. “The Night Office: Loss, Darkness, and the Practice of Solidarity.” Anglican Theological Review. 99, 2 (Spring 2017): 211-232.