De noche iremos
De noche iremos que para encontrar la fuente. Solo la sed nos alumbra
Last night at choir practice, I noticed this Taize song next to the song we were practising for a church service. I mentioned it afterward to the choir director, and he remarked that if he remembered correctly, it was based on a poem by the mystic John of the Cross.
It does seem to come first from the Cloud of Unknowing, though we do not know who wrote that work in the 14th century, about 2 centuries before John of the Cross discovered it and was inspired by it.
If you’re interested to read it yourself, here is the text of the Cloud of Unknowing.
The general idea is that, as opposed to the notion that we can know the Eternal, Invisible God through our senses and understanding, God in that sense is unknowable. We can only draw ‘near’, in a way, by interposing a ‘cloud of forgetting’ between us and our senses, between us and our thinking, and approach God in darkness.
In other words, only through meditation.
De noche iremos
Have you ever walked in a darkness so intense you could not see anything at all?
The night, darkness, is a perfect metaphor for the contemplative path to Be With God in simplicity and truth.
In other words, the via negativa.
Day time, the light: the usual lens of thinking about God, from what we have come to know and understand about God through the threefold source of authority for Anglicans: Scripture, tradition, and reason.
In other words, the via positiva.
For many, the path to intimacy with God begins with via positiva but at some point continues with the via negativa.
From John of the Cross’ poem The Dark Night of the Soul
In that happy night,
In secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought myself,
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning.
And there it is.
As the Taize song says in my rough translation of the Spanish (the English version is not quite the same)
‘By night we walk, by night, to meet with the Source. Only our thirst gives us light.’
The profound thirst for the Source of our life and being, which can be profound suffering at first, turns out to be a light burning in our heart, illuminating the Way that leads to that Source.
John 7:
37 Ἐν δὲ τῇ ἐσχάτῃ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ μεγάλῃ τῆς ἑορτῆς εἱστήκει ὁ Ἰησοῦς καὶ ἔκραξεν λέγων, Ἐάν τις διψᾷ ἐρχέσθω πρός με καὶ πινέτω.
Jesus declares himself the one who can provide the water so eagerly sought so that those who thirst may drink.
38 ὁ πιστεύων εἰς ἐμέ, καθὼς εἶπεν ἡ γραφή, ποταμοὶ ἐκ τῆς κοιλίας αὐτοῦ ῥεύσουσιν ὕδατος ζῶντος.
He goes on to promise that those who believe in him will themselves be places of living water.
39 τοῦτο δὲ εἶπεν περὶ τοῦ πνεύματος ὃ ἔμελλον λαμβάνειν οἱ πιστεύσαντες εἰς αὐτόν· οὔπω γὰρ ἦν πνεῦμα, ὅτι Ἰησοῦς οὐδέπω ἐδοξάσθη.
The writer of John explains this is referring to the Spirit before the day described in Acts we now call Pentecost, when the Spirit was poured out on followers of the Way (Acts 2).
Through the grace of God, then, not only is the profound thirst and suffering in the darkness met in drinking deeply from Source, but Source pours from us as we believe, as we hold that connection to Source open, for those around us who thirst.