Living in Desolation

That's an unhappy title, isn't it? It conjures images of the aftermath of an urban battle: broken buildings, stone-strewn streets, silence and a stray dog. The people are long scattered; everything that the city once was, its cafes, shops, homes and offices, is gone. 

It's not an inaccurate image, but perhaps an overdrawn one. So keep it in mind as you consider this. "Desolation" is a technical term that comes from St. Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. It is his name for the experience of the absence of God. 

There are three things more we need to say about this experience. 

First of all, desolation is not any form of emerging atheism or agnosticism. Christian believers who experience desolation may well experience doubt about aspects of the faith, even to the point of wondering whether the whole Christian thing isn't the result of some sort of delusion that has been passed on from previous generations. Such doubts are neither to be worn as a badge of honor (as some contemporary writers suppose) nor are they necessarily cause for concern that one's faith is slowly ebbing away forever. They simply are. They come and they go again. They may well lurk within what I would call a "desolate" life. But they don't define it. While we're on the subject, it is one of the hallmarks of modernity that such doubt is not peculiar to religious believers. It is part and parcel of the serious irreligious life, too. That is to say, most thoughtful atheists and agnostics are themselves haunted by the possibility that the opposite just might, after all, be true. Modernity is defined in part by the inability to get rid of God's shadow; it is defined in part by the doubt that niggles away in the corner of all cherished beliefs, whether they are theist or atheist, religious or irreligious. 

The point here, however, is far more simply expressed: while these kinds of doubts may well be part of living in desolation from time to time (and for some of us maybe even most of the time), they do not define it. Desolation is not mere doubt. Far from rejecting or refusing or not knowing God, desolation is a type of knowing God. Desolation is knowing God because he isn't there; knowing God in his absence  and as an absence. Experiencing God in desolation is the ache that comes when we see a place at the dinner table which was once filled, but now sits set and empty. So even if the ruined city is over drawn, it does capture something profoundly true about spiritual desolation: the broken urban battlefield painfully recalls something beautiful that once was; on good days, it may point forward in hope that it will be again. But it is known and encountered as not now. That's desolation. 

When some Christians encounter desolation in real life, whether in themselves or others, they might be tempted to read it as a symptom of spiritual immaturity or even a sign of sin--despair, unbelief or, again to use the classical language, acedia. But it's just that: a temptation. Something that needs to be resisted, rebuked, from which we pray for deliverance. Desolation is not immaturity or sin; it is a form of spiritual knowledge. And it does not exist on its own. Which is the second consideration. St. Ignatius contrasts desolation with consolation, knowing God as presence. For Ignatius, the normal Christian life is a constant navigation between both poles. God is encountered sometimes as a presence--the beautiful city, the garden full of life, the supper with everyone present and whole. When he is, we are consoled. But, and this is important, we cannot live in constant consolation. The Christian life simply doesn't work that way. It moves, it wends, it is never fixed. Like Peter on the mount of transfiguration, we may well want to build homes for ourselves as close as possible to the cloud of glory. But, like Peter, if we are to follow Jesus, we will need to leave the mount and the glory behind. Until the Parousia, consolation is not constant.

In fact, not only is consolation not constant, it is my wager that it is rather relatively rare; that there are many believers for whom consolation is a brief respite, a welcome interruption within a larger and largely desolate framework for Christian living. And that's the third thing. Desolation--knowing God as an experience of absence--is not simply part of the normal Christian life; it is, for many believers, the larger part of the normal Christian life. That is to say, the poles are not equidistant and the tack back and forth is not evenly paced. Living among the ruins, recalling the past and hoping for the future, is, I expect, the lived life of most Christians.

Certainly,  it is mine.