...in this darkness

In this darkness
I do not ask to walk by light;
but to feel the touch of your hand
and understand that sight is not seeing.

In this silence
I do not ask to hear your voice;
but to sense your Spirit breathe
and so bequeath my care to your keeping.

In unknowing 
I do not ask for fearless space;
but for grace to comprehend
that neither you nor I are diminished.

In this ending
I do not ask to forfeit pain,
but to gain the strength to love through loss,
and cross the bridge of waiting.
---Pat Bennett, 2001 (para John Bell, laca)

When darkness, and silence, and unknowing fall like black-out curtains on a life, it is tough to assume that the things we no longer see, or hear, or know are still there. Perhaps because we are by nature empirical, we are quick to be drawn in by what we sense and experience; we even have pithy sayings and mottos around experience ('seeing is believing' and 'Missouri --- the ShowMe State').

And because of that dependence on what is seen/heard/felt, the absence of experience leaves us at sea, wondering whether we might not have been abandoned to our own devices by a God who has bigger concerns or more interesting company.

And sometimes God may come to us, breaking through the darkness and silence and cloud of unknowing with certain vision and clear voice and absolute certainty. But the times when God is not revealed in this way does not diminish God, or you. You are not less for not having an experiential revelation. Your God is not less for 'failing' to provide the perfect double rainbow and angel song just in time.

Because God is a pilgrim God, as we are a pilgrim people. And in the dark, and in the silence, and even in the unknowing, there is One beside us to hold us up, to breathe with us, to remind us that we are. And in the endings, that One is there, too, guiding us through pain, willing us in time to be strong enough to risk loving, when light returns.