We experience desolation when the very bottom of our private world is removed from under us. The bottom seems to be pulled away, and in its place there is left a terrifying void which cannot be filled by either our own efforts or the concern of our friends. This brings us to the crucial question, "On what do we depend most in our lives?" If we are loyal members of a religious body, we may confidently answer "God", or "Christ", or the founder of some other religious faith. But what is God? We inevitably couch God in anthropomorphic symbols, tending, for instance to use a gender (usually masculine), and we unthinkingly make this artifact contingent on our own desires and opinions. It is all too easy to fashion a god in our own image, which we then start to worship quite devoutly. Those who affirm an agnostic or atheistic position will admit to depending on intimate personal relationships, or possessions, or their place in the contemporary scene. When the rich young man came to Jesus to find out how he might attain eternal life, he was advised to sell everything he had and give the proceeds to the poor. At that stage in his life the rich man could not make that renunciation of his own free will, but it may be that later he was better prepared to let go of the single earthly bond that stood in the way of a full relationship with God.
It is no easy matter to relinquish something very dear to us, but until we do we can never know freedom. In between the loss and the greater life ahead yawns the chasm of desolation. We may do all we can to avoid it, but we may be quite sure that it will remain to confront us, often when we least expect it. It is a fact that desolation is a necessary experience for the person on the road to self-mastery. The reward is such a real knowledge of God that anthropomorphic images may be left behind. This God will never desert one because a presence of aspiration informs all time and space, creating a realm of uncreated light by which all things are made. This light may be identified with Christ, but just as we grope for the essential Christ amid the chaos of human claims and assertions, so we remain ignorant of God until we have lost ourself in the gaping void of the present moment. It is no wonder that the rich man chose to stay with his wealth and leave the demanding company of Jesus and his distinctly unprepossessing little band of disciples! It is always safer to stay with the known than to venture into the unknown.
Life, however, does not treat us in this comfortable way. We are, like the man whom Jesus healed after thirty-eight years of paralysis, urged to take up our bed and walk (John 5.1-9). Sometimes desolation follows a removal of some object around which our life revolved, and then its course can be clearly charted, but there are occasions when our sore is beyond healing and we have to prepare for a new life, sometimes in this world and sometimes in the world beyond death. But whatever we may feel when we are desolate, one thing is certain: we are on the move rather like the Israelites on their exodus towards the Holy Land. Not infrequently they yearned for the prison that was Egypt when things seemed to be going wrong for them in the long journey through the wilderness, but they had to go on. Fortunately for them their leader Moses under the guidance and providence of God was able to supply their needs. They eventually became more civilized, and were able at least to glimpse a finer way ahead even if they could not stay the course for long. This was the basic history of the Israelites up to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 587 BC; when a band of exiles from Babylon returned some sixty years later they had learned what obedience to God really meant, and their religion became more inward and spiritual even though the Temple was rebuilt. The desolation that followed the Babylonian destruction was fructified in the emergence of a new conception of religion that stemmed from Moses and the great prophets, but was now at least in part capable of being practised in everyday life.
When we lose something irreplaceable, at least in the short term, we enter the well-recorded experience of bereavement. Its most harrowing anguish accompanies the death of a loved one, but the desolation of loss can follow the disappointment of our dearest hopes in any sphere of endeavour. And here we move to the heart of desolation: the removal of hope. Chapter 6 was devoted to the hope that does not pale, but what about the hope that seems irrevocably smashed, so that disaster, failure and the unbearable emptiness of an unfulfilled life is all that is left to us? The experience is one of a total void far worse than any concept of death that we may have. After all, to the agnostic death is only like a dreamless sleep that bears of no awakening, a general anaesthetic that is destined to continue for ever. But the void of desolation is terrifyingly alive: every function of the body is retarded yet makes its pain of dysfunction miserably felt, so that no physical discomfort is allayed, no mental pain softened, no spiritual disillusionment disproved. There is also an obscure but very real feeling of shame, so that one does not wish to show oneself in public. All this, of course, shows how wrongly our self-image is set. We enjoy presenting ourselves to the world as well-set, successful people, success being interpreted as an abundance of the commodities that the prince of the world, alias Satan, teaches us to hold dear. It is not the commodities that are wrong so much as our attitude to them; desire makes us their prisoners. It is strangely ironical that in the phase of desolation we are set free from the meretricious values of the world. This is indeed our personal via dolorosa, and we are making the well-tried journey to our own particular cross. All those around Jesus were filled with a mixture of horror and contempt. We imagine that mixture in all those whom we meet, even sometimes those whom we regarded as our friends, but the attitude of rejection lies much more in us than in them. It must also be said that most people's memory is short-lived, provided the matter does not impinge too squarely on themselves or their families. Therefore there are few on whom we can depend. "Put no trust in princes or in any mortal, for they have no power to save. When they breathe their last breath, they return to the dust, and on that day their plans come to nothing" (Psalm 146.3-4).
This is certainly the universal end of all humans. What we want on a personal level is essentially illusory. At the most the fulfilment of our plans gives us temporary pleasure, unless our lives have truly been dedicated to the loving service of our fellow creatures; in that service we lose ourselves and find our renewed self in the faces of all those for whom we have striven. The person in their little hell of desolation is beginning to learn the way of discrimination between the transitory and the permanent, between the egoistical and the universal. In our time of desolation we are peculiarly alone, because our sensitivity to human contact can be almost unbearable. Any kindly gesture is easily misconstrued as pity, a most unbecoming and even dangerous emotion. On the surface it is merely a feeling of tenderness to someone who is in distress, but deeper down there is also an attitude of regret, of feeling sorry, for the person as well. One feels distinctly superior and slightly judgemental as well. One feels one ought to do something to help, but from the position of being able to distribute one's largesse to someone inferior to oneself. This type of "duty" is unconsciously demeaning to the afflicted individual. No wonder that person tends to shy away from all such dutiful help, and in their extreme emotional sensitivity they tend to see all assistance in this objectionable light. Pity can become dangerous when the desolate person accepts the help of the dutiful one at face value, and then, if he or she begins to depend increasingly on the assistance of the benefactor, a state of tension can develop in which the relationship between the two eventually becomes fraught to the point of an explosion. The benefactor feels that too great a demand is being made on their generosity, while the victim becomes increasingly disillusioned and bitter. Compassion, which is mentioned in Chapter 7, is of quite another order; here there is an identication with the sufferer so that one shares their affliction. One knows intuitively that the only help one can give - apart from material assistance where this is urgently required - is communicative silence. There is an immense support in this, for all our deepest emotions are laid to at least a temporary rest in the silence of the present moment.
Desolation is relieved in fitful sleep, but eventually the person wins through after a variable period of pain, especially if assisted by sensitive and knowledgeable friends. As one emerges from the incommunicable hell of desolation, one is encouraged inwardly by a promise of a future where one can function in buoyant self-esteem. This is how hope breaks into a mood of black dereliction: the inner being both lightens and expands, so that it seems to reach out to the light and draw that light into itself. This light is the uncreated light of God, though in this stage of expression it is felt in the heart rather than seen by the eye of the soul, as in the height of mystical illumination. It sounds absurd to speak of a light that is felt rather than seen, but the point of contact is the warmth that makes one glow in a fresh vision of further existence where one has reached beyond the old life to something startlingly new. To endeavour to describe inner emotional states is scarcely possible except to the person who has passed beyond the limitations of purely rational sensation to the inner world of feeling and intuition - returning to the four personality functions of sensation, feeling, thinking and intuition that we considered in Chapter 5.
There is some desolation that is not relieved as easily as this. It goes on, and any point of hope assumes the nature of a frank illusion. No one who deals with patients suffering from motor neurone disease or inoperable cancer can escape this experience albeit as an observer rather than a sufferer - when the victim is a loved one, the observer suffers at least as acutely as the beloved. An especially harrowing example is contained in the passion of Christ. First there is the preliminary horror of Gethsemane, when in the agony of suffering Jesus asks that, since all things are possible for the Father, the cup may be removed from him, yet according to the Father's will and not his own (Mark 14.3 6). The nature of this incommunicable suffering is obscure. One suggestion is the imminence of death, from which Jesus, like any other mortal, shrinks. I think that in addition to this, Jesus was assailed by the evil of the world brought to him by the devil and his demonic angels. Jesus survives this agony through his own spiritual power (the Father remains quite silent as far as one can tell). Then comes the pain and humiliation of the crucifixion. The only "word" from the cross reported in Matthew's and Mark's gospels is the first verse of Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15.34). I feel that Jesus was doing something more than merely quoting a psalm, since the agonized call reported in the gospel is both damaging to the Christian witness and shows the terrible suffering of Jesus. Could he have lost faith in his call from God at this terminal stage of his life? To many believers this suggestion is as incredible as it is blasphemous, but we must remember that Jesus was entirely like us in his testing, but without sinning (putting himself first to the harm of other people) (Hebrews 4.15). It is not impossible that Jesus was suddenly assailed with severe doubts about either the validity of his mission or his success in carrying it out - or both together. Certainly his Father was eloquently silent during his Son's agony.
As in the early temptations in the wilderness, when the devil tempts Jesus to throw himself from the parapet of the temple (Matthew 4.5-7) but Jesus refuses to put his Father to the test, so now once more he is tempted to throw himself down from the cross (Matthew 27.39-40), but this time it was not merely a gesture to prove his great spiritual power but simply an act to preserve his life. The great proof of God's caring for him and what he stood for is completely absent, and the terrible cry from the cross may be interpreted in the light of this failure of supernatural help. Nevertheless Jesus held on to his life right until death closed this lamentable scene; he showed what it meant to be of human stock, and the soldiers at the foot of the cross were the first to express their admiration. He did not lose his nerve when death alone awaited him. From this we can derive a greater definition of faith than that which we considered in Chapter 7. Faith is continuing on one's way when all apparent hope has been removed. It was the final way of the cross, and it is pursued, albeit unknowing of its full consequences, when we too move inexorably towards dissolution at some time in our lives.
The difference between Jesus' agony and ours lies in the magnitude of his mission and service and the consequent sorrow at the final denouement. By contrast we are, to quote Psalm 90.5-6, mortals whom God cuts off, and are asleep in death. We are like grass that sprouts; though in the morning it flourishes and shoots up, by evening it droops and withers. In Chapter 1 I strongly praised those people who are incurably afflicted with diseases or handicaps that severely curtail the quality of their lives, but nevertheless soldier on in a faith that goes far beyond rational hope - the blind, the deaf, the paraplegics and those who suffer from other types of severe crippling, epileptics and diabetics under poor control because of the nature of their illness, and above all those who struggle courageously with mental disease. Few of these people arouse long-lasting sympathy, especially epileptics and the mentally ill, and so they are obliged to go on in spite of the darkness that so often accompanies their travail. All too often nobody wants to know, any more than they did the passion of Christ, and yet in each case a hope of supernatural quality keeps them on the path of life, just as it did Jesus, until the mercy of God decrees a time of generous withdrawal to the state that is to inform us all once the body has gone.
Desolation courageously confronted is usually succeeded by consolation as a new approach to reality is shown us. And so we can make use of our present sadness to move timidly and yet with purpose into what life holds in store for us. To make the most of an unfortunate event or a personal tragedy is the way of life shown by an emotionally mature person; there is little railing at God, or providence, but rather a determined effort to flow into the new situation, unpleasant though it may be, and see how much it can be used for further experimentation in the way of constructive living. This is the intelligent, emotionally mature human response to misfortune of any kind. When such a circumstance happens to me I always thank God first that the damage has been no worse than it is, then I pick myself up and note the extent of the misfortune and determine what can be done about it. I assume that my negligence has been the root cause of the trouble, and make a note of this for further reference. It is better to concentrate on one's own attitude than start by blaming other people, unless of course there has been an accident involving more than one person, when all the workings of the legal process may have to be involved. Consolation implies hope, as in the matters I have just discussed. The consolation comes primarily from the Holy Spirit giving us a completely new strength to face our future life, whether it be a bereavement or an injustice that evades the legal process. "If in some province you witness the oppression of the poor and the denial of right and justice, do not be surprised at what goes on, for every official has a mightier one set over him, and the highest keeps watch over them all. The best thing for a country is a king whose own lands are well tilled" (Ecclesiastes 5.8-9).
But what hope did the earthly Jesus have in front of him? He died nobly, but the forces of injustice had scored a great victory. The same consideration applies to the victims of injustice who have been killed in every generation. In these instances desolation had proceeded to a silence that was not at all communicative, but was simply an indication that all living processes had come to an end. On a much less harrowing note this can be said of all of us who make the great transition which we call death. The death of Jesus seen from the point of view of Good Friday is not only the tragic failure of a noble mission but also the triumph of injustice and cruelty over all the finer qualities of human nature. The subsequent resurrection event gives an answer to this hard question. When Jesus arose again on the third day, a new man had come with the amazing re-appearance. He was no longer subject to the limitations of the physical body, but could come and go where he pleased. The tragedy of the passion was succeeded by the spontaneous joy of giving new life to the very weak and cowardly disciples who not long before had retreated from their Master. He had changed, and was now capable of changing his disciples in a way that was only begun while he was in the world with them. The existential proof of Jesus' resurrection, that clearly transcends any purely rational explanation such as we often hear at present, was the very real resurrection of the disciples from nearly dead individuals to vibrantly alive friends who were soon to spread the knowledge of their Master throughout the length and breadth of the Roman Empire. In Christ therefore, desolation had proceeded to transformation, the emergence of a new person who still, two millennia later, remains the pattern of a fully realized human being, a constant challenge to those of us with faint hearts and agnostic intellects.
Can one say the same, if to a much lesser degree, of the innocent prison-camp victims whose witness has so disgraced the twentieth century? And what about the young who have been stricken by fatal diseases like cancer, or whose lives have been terminated by terrible accidents? Here an eye of faith is needed; not the fundamentalistic faith contained in a holy book or a religious tradition, nor exactly the heroic faith we have been describing above which persists when all reasonable hope has been renounced. It is a fundamental faith in the nature of the human even when their kind have been responsible for monstrous crimes and tortures. The glory of human creativity in the form of great music, art and literature, to say nothing of scientific research devoted to the service of the entire created order, gives us a view to what we all might aspire, within the limitations of our own gifts and talents, when we move beyond the demands and expectations of the little ego and embrace the whole of life in self-giving devotion. Value judgements are the heart of the matter: faith can be defined as the capacity to choose the nobler of two propositions and to work towards its fulfilment. Nobility in this respect involves the three ultimate values: beauty, truth and goodness (better defined as love, inasmuch as the aim of love is to help each person to be themselves as God would have them be). There is clearly a close link between faith in the ultimate goodness of the human despite all evidence to the contrary, and a faith that persists when all apparent hope has been destroyed.
A great deal depends on the environment around those about to make the great transition of death, whether in a concentration camp or a hospital. Those serving in hospices for the dying know the matter very well; they flow out in pure love to their patients, so that nothing is too good for them. They are treated, perhaps for the first time, as people who matter in a world that is shortly to lose them to the unknown realm of death, that "undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns", to quote from Hamlet's famous soliloquy. Once an individual's self-esteem can be affirmed, a new person may break through and greet the great mystery of the afterlife with considerable conviction, especially when they are met by figures of people whom they knew earlier on in their life. In the end we grasp the full meaning of the life beyond death by personal experience in the depth of the soul. In other words, when we are quite still, the knowledge of immortality is not far from us. The evidences of survival of death culled from parapsychological sources are of most use to those who are investigating the subject; those who are making the move dynamically have a more personal experience once the overlying fear has dissipated in a friendly atmosphere.
We will know the change from the earthly clod we so often show ourselves to the diaphanous being that is our deeper nature once we are freed from dependence on worldly things, not so bad in themselves but imprisoning when our whole life is dedicated to them. I feel that the type of person who has died in the hell of a concentration camp will likewise know much more about themselves in the new life they are about to enter. If they have been able to comport themselves with nobility to their fellow prisoners while in one of these dark places of hell, they will step onwards to the place of light and love where much new information will be given them. In the end values do count, and if we can master the discipline of living responsibly even when we are surrounded by disorder and cruelty, we will not be the losers in what is to reveal itself once our passions are spent, and we can rest with thoughtful hope on to the future before us. This is the faith that gives substance to our hopes, no matter how muted they may be in a moment of crisis, and convinces us of realities we do not see.
Great masters of prayer tell us with one accord that we cannot reach the full practice of prayer until we have spent our time in the desert, rather like Jesus before the three temptations in the wilderness, and more especially the final temptation to despair at the time of his death. One can only pray effectively when the ego is moved consciously out of the way, and the deeper soul allowed to relay the love of God to the whole personality, and from that personality to the entire world in the work of intercession. Until we have traversed the valley of desolation we will see ourselves as the master of the world; assuredly not the whole world itself, for I speak here of our inner universe which we feel we know tolerably well. That it is in intimate connection with the worlds of other people will be something hardly available to its understanding, and so any real communication between it and the greater world will be impossible. The desert experience of desolation breaks down many mental barriers, and at last the previously invisible world is accessible to the individual through the mediation of an enlightened soul. It is then that silence ceases to be a dead, or even an embarrassing experience, but becomes a truly communicative one.
When we are truly ourselves in the fresh wind of desolation, we can start to live like responsible people, no longer attached to the opinions and prejudices of our fellows but true to our own nature. At that point we can enter a collegial relationship with many more of our like-minded associates. This is indeed the way for real friendships to commence and flourish.
It should finally be noted that desolation is not the same as depression. The former is a very tragic mood, the latter a disease when it assumes clinical proportions, with its disastrous lack of self-esteem, change in sleep rhythm, feeling of utter hopelessness and tendency to precipitate suicide. Desolation is not often devoid of underlying hope even in a desperate situation. However, a situation of desolation may trigger off depression in an individual already predisposed to the condition. Two Shakespeare sonnets have been of great value to me in periods of desolation.
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth -
My sinful earth, these rebel powers array -
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?
Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more;
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men;
And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.
When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possest,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising -
Haply I think on thee: and then my state,
Like to the Lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with Kings.
I also like Emily Dickinson's inspiration.
To learn the transport by the pain
As blind men learn the sun,
To die of thirst suspecting
That brooks in meadows run,
To stay the homesick, homesick feet
Upon a foreign shore,
Haunted by native land the while,
And blue beloved air -
This is the sovereign anguish,
This is the signal woe.
These are the patient laureates
Whose voices trained below,
Ascend in ceaseless carol,
Inaudible indeed
To us the duller scholars
Of the mysterious bard.
One is reminded of Paul Tillich's words, "The faith which makes the courage of despair possible is the acceptance of the power of being, even in the grip of non-being". Tillich calls this "the courage to be", the title of possibly his best-known book (The Courage to Be (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1962), p. 176). Simone Weil says, "Only if man passes through terror and anguish can he retain his will to love" (what is at stake is clinging to God's love, despite all the darkness and absence of God). Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the end of his Letters and Papers from Prison comes to very much the same conclusion when he speaks challengingly but confusingly about the death of God. Karl Rahner is clearer when he says, "He who does not love mystery does not know God, for he does not see the true and only God". Martin Luther speaks of "the faith which has learnt to stand on nothingness". (These quotations come from Elisabeth Ott's book Die dunkle Nacht der Seele - Depression (Schaffhausen: Novalis Verlag, 1982).) In our travail and feeling of guilt we may take comfort from 1 John 3.19-20, "This is how we shall know that we belong to the realm of truth, and reassure ourselves in his sight where conscience condemns us; for God is greater than our conscience and knows all".
It is indeed a privilege to be human and experience these deep emotions that bring us to the very core of our being, the soul where the indomitable spirit burns with a divine fire that will never be extinguished. In the end it will take its place humbly yet majestically in the uncreated light of God, of which it is a mere terrestrial outpost in our world of space and time. But through the divine guidance informing us by way of that spirit we can never be content until we know the truth. This truth is no exotic, esoteric theory or instruction confined to a favoured group who have scoured the very universe for knowledge, for ultimate gnosis into the secrets of the divine. It bursts forth in self-giving love to the very weakest of our fellow creatures. In that moment of sacrifice our eyes are opened so that we are able to see clearly for the first time in our lives. It is thus that desolation may pass through a phase of consolation to an experience of inspiration, in which truths of even greater magnitude are revealed to us as we pass onward in the strange, savage, beautiful journey of life.