Process of disintegration
I’ve been in the process of disintegration, as Richard Rohr describes it in “Simplicity“, for some years now, coming from a background rich in religious activity as it also has been in sincere, deep faith and a hunger for God. Rohr writes:
“Perhaps that is why faith is so rare and religion so widespread: because religion is very often a means to maintain our familiar image of God, even when it’s pathological and destructive… But faith always invites us to a new and unfamiliar place… in my opinion, this process of disintegration ought to take place at least every two or three years. This is the darkness of faith: when you’ve had to drop the old for a time but haven’t yet found the new. It’s the terrible space in between, where nobody wants to live. We want to retreat to a spot where I know who I am and who God is – even when our self-image and our image of God destroy each other…”
St. John of the Cross describes it as “The Dark Night of the Soul“, or the unknown 14th century author calls it, “The Cloud of Unknowing“. I’ve been steeped in those brilliant books and felt the full effect of periods where faith is uncertain, unclear and dark.
My current state, compared to “dark nights” I’ve experienced in past years, has somehow been different. it is certainly, as Rohr describes it, “the terrible space in between”, as there is no sure footing I can claim. But it is less dark, more freeing. Less scary, more invigorating. I find words inadequate to describe this phase, yet I feel the ache to know what it is I am walking through.
Will my increasing, long prayed for freedom, lead to fuzzy lack of belief in the end? Will I drift into “feel good” mantras and “everything is ok” philosophy? Will Universalism, which only makes more sense especially through the words and life of Christ who came to redeem all, be the final tag that places me in a category of which I may not want to be placed in but cannot get out of?
Or is this disintegration, this dismantling, the time when all that has been fed and sown and grown in me blooms in never before seen ways? When the truth that is my foundation is no longer the focus of all my efforts but freedom springs from the ground on which I have been building? When the structure becomes superfluous, holding me up, but no longer my obsession? Will my two greatest desires – truth and freedom – finally be married and sleep together in perfect harmony?
