In preparation for this weekend’s James River Writers Conference, I’ve needed to revisit my first book project on pain and the Psalms. (I have a terrible memory — what did I write, again?! sheesh.) Among the most memorable discoveries in doing that project was the mystical paradox of darkness. Here’s the first paragraph of a little essay on the topic:
Psalm 88 is an anomaly within the book of Psalms. It’s the only one that seems to lack any expression of hope, sustaining a tone of depression and anger right through to the end. At least that’s how I had been reading it until I took a closer look at the original Hebrew and contemplated the final word, “darkness,” in light of the insights of the medieval mystic, John of the Cross. His “dark night of the soul” has come to be associated with feelings of deepest despair, often including a painful sense of God’s absence. But I discovered that just as there is more to the dark night of the soul than spiritual despair so there is more to the psalm’s final word than simply dreary darkness. Reconsidering the last line of Psalm 88 together with the rich sense in which John of the Cross describes the dark night has led me to think that Psalm 88 maybe, just maybe, ends in amazed (and amazing) relief. Without diminishing the profound anguish of the entire psalm, the final word could spell hope and healing, after all.
