#6 (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by P. Scazzero): God is beyond our finite concepts...

**Note: Most of the words are direct quotes from Peter Scazzero's Emotionally Healthy Spirituality which I am writing down to reinforce my learning.

Ch.6 - Journey Through The Wall

Scazzero says that we need to understand that growth into maturity in Christ requires us to go through the Wall or, as the ancients called it, "the dark night of the soul."

The Wall - Stages of Faith
Scazzero adapted the model in the Stages in the Life of Faith by Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich:

Stage 1: Life-changing Awareness of God--the beginning of our journey with Christ where we become aware of our need for mercy and begin our relationship with Him.

Stage 2: Discipleship--Begin to get rooted in faith as we learn about God and what it means to be a follower of Christ and part of a Christian community.

Stage 3: The Active Life--Involvement in serving God and His people by using our unique gifts and talents.

Stage 4: The Wall and the Journey Inward--God brings us to a Wall or a series of them, crises of faith, that compels us to journey inward.

Stage 5: The Journey Outward--Facing and going through crises of faith, the Wall, needing an intense journey inward to once again move outward to 'do' for God with a difference; we give now out of a new, grounded center of ourselves in God and a deep, inner stillness now begins to characterize our work for God.

Stage 6: Transformed by Love--At this stage the perfect love of God has driven out all fear. Christ's love becomes our love both toward God and others. Our whole spiritual life is surrender and obedience to God's perfect will.

What does the Wall look like?
It is usually a time when our faith does not appear to "work", perhaps through a divorce, a job loss, death of a loved one, cancer diagnosis, disillusioning church experience, betrayal, shattered dream, wayward child, car accident, infertility, singleness, or a dry relationship with God. It is a time when "we don't know where God is, what He is doing, where He is going, how He is getting us there, or when this will be over."
When we go through our walls, we allow God to remove the roots of our bad  habits, the weeds that clog our growth, and the clearer garden means new and healthy can now bloom. "We no longer have a need to be well-known or successful, but to do God's will."

Stuck At The Wall --The Dark Night of the Soul
Some of us are afraid to go through the wall and hide behind our faith to flee the pain of our lives rather than trust God to transform us through it, using platitudes like "God uses all things for good".
But emotionally healthy faith admits:

• I am bewildered.
• I don't know what God is doing right now.
• I am hurt.
• I am angry.
• Yes, this is a mystery.
• I am very sad right now.
• O God, why have You forsaken me?

The dark night is characterized by the evaporation of our good feelings of God's Presence, like the door of heaven has been shut as we pray. Darkness,  helplessness, weariness, a sense of failure or defeat, barrenness, emptiness, dryness descend upon us..we see little visible fruit in our lives.
This is God's way of rewiring and "purging our affections and passions" that we might delight in His love and enter into a richer, fuller communion with Him.
St. John of the Cross in Dark Night of the Soul listed 7 deadly spiritual imperfections of beginners that must be purified:

1. Pride: tendency to condemn and judge; selective in who can teach them.
2. Avarice: discontent with the spirituality God gives and look elsewhere.
3. Luxury: more pleasure in God's spiritual blessings than God Himself.
4. Wrath: easily irritated, lacking sweetness, and have little patience to wait on God.
5. Spiritual gluttony: resist the Cross and choose pleasures like children do.
6. Spiritual envy: always comparing and feel unhappy when others do well spiritually.
7. Sloth: run from that which is hard. Their aim is spiritual sweetness and good feelings.

God uses the dark night to rewire our taste buds that we might taste of Him more fully.
St. John wrote: "God is purging the soul, annihilating it, emptying it or consuming in it (even as fire consumes the mouldiness and the rust of metal) all the affections and imperfect habits which it has contracted its whole life....These are deeply rooted in the substance of the soul...At the same time, it is God Who is passively working here in the soul."
He divides the dark night into 2 levels: the first, "the night of the sense" is one we all encounter, and the second: :"the night of the spirit" is for a very few, 'violent and severe' where you are 'dragged down and immersed again into a worse degree of affliction more severe and darker and more grievous...the brighter and purer is the supernatural and divine light, the more it darkens the soul."

How do we know that we are going through the Wall with God, being deeply transformed by Him?

1. A Greater Level of Brokenness:--we are freed from judging others and 'offendability'. We are so secure in the love of God that we are unable to be insulted. The Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner," has long helped believers remain grounded and dependent on God throughout the day.

2. A Greater Appreciation for Holy Unknowing (Mystery):--St. Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s wrote at the beginning of his 20-volume work: "This is the ultimate knowledge about God, to know that we do not know." At the end of his life he had a vision of Christ in church and said: "I can no longer write, for God has given me such glorious knowledge that all contained in my works are as straw--barely fit to absorb the holy wonders that fall in a stable." Augustine said, "If you understand, it is not God you understand." God is beyond every concept we have of Him. The Wall deepens our appreciation for His mystery and allows us to trust.

3. A Deeper Ability to Wait For God--Going through the Wall breaks something deep within us--that driving, grasping, fearful self-will that must produce, that must make something happen. "Wait on the Lord; be strong and take heart..."(Psalm 27:14). Abraham learned to wait at His Wall. The public and private humiliation he suffered transformed  him into a father of faith for all history. Moses learned to wait at his Wall: in the desert God transforms him into the meekest man on the earth. David learned to wait at his Wall. In the wilderness  God transformed him into a man after his own heart. Jesus learned to wait in obscurity and silence, both as a lowly carpenter's son and in the wilderness. Out of this, He emerged in the power of the Spirit.

4. A Greater Detachment--Detachment is the great secret of interior peace. The Wall cuts off our attachments to who we think we ought to be, or who we falsely think we are. We are to be marked by eternity, free from the dominating power of things. Richard Rohr wrote 5 essential truths we learn as we experience this detachment:
-life is hard.
-you are not that important.
-your life is not about you.
-you are not in control.
-you are going to die.

Final word: We joyfully detach from certain behaviours and activities for the purpose of a more intimate, loving attachment to God. We are to appreciate nature, people, and all God's gifts, along with His Presence in creation--without being ensnared by them.

Prayer:
Heavenly Father, teach me to trust You even when I do not know where You are going. Help me to surrender and not turn inward into myself out of fear. The storms and winds of life, O Lord, blow strongly all around me. I cannot see in front of me. Sometimes I feel like I am going to drown. Lord, You are centered, utterly at rest and peace. Open my eyes that I might see You are with me on the boat. I am safe. Awaken me, Jesus, to Your Presence withing me, around me, above me, and below me. Grant me peace to follow You into the unknown, into the next place in my journey with You.
In Your Name, Amen.