Holy Darkness

Holy Darkness

Connections with Lewis: Till We Have Faces

November 16, 2016

Orual and Psyche meet again on the mountain of the gods. In their profoundly emotional exchange, Psyche tries her hardest to articulate to Orual the beauty she has discovered. But the message fails to connect with Orual who only focuses on her own loss. Orual is disinterested in Psyche’s story and only wants her to return; for things to be the way they once were when Psyche was with her. Psyche begins to speak of her husband. In response, Orual asks what he looks like. “He comes to me only in the holy darkness. He says I mustn’t - not yet - see his face or know his name.” This puzzles Orual as much as it angers her. What kind of a lover would conceal himself from his bride? In Orual’s mind darkness can is exclusively associated with things corrupt and undesirable. For Psyche, however, it is pure longing that the darkness provokes in her; a longing which is always reaching out and never grasping. This insatiable desire brings her alive so much so that Bardia mistakes her for a goddess. Even Orual admits that never before has she seen Psyche so full of vitality. This scene may be read as a metaphor for God. In Exodus 3 God reveals himself to the Israelites as “I AM WHO I AM;” as one who can’t be named. In ancient times giving your name to someone was viewed as surrendering to that person’s will. God refuses to be manipulated or controlled by human caprice. Paradoxically, we encounter a God who discloses himself most fully in darkness. The place we least expected to find him is the place of deep unknowing. Remember when Moses summits Mt. Sinai. Traditionally, the mountain top has been a metaphor for keen insight. It is a place of striking perspective, of seeing the whole scope of a thing. On the top of Mt. Sinai God reveals himself to Moses in the form of a cloud. It is in this cloud of unknowing that God both reveals and conceals himself. Perhaps then all of nature is a “holy darkness.” What a transformation of consciousness would occur if we began to look at the physical world as the phenomena in which God is hidden and by which God is concealed.