The Dark Passage You Cannot Map

In the monastery at Avila, Teresa once described the interior castle as having rooms the soul must enter without knowing what lies ahead. The deepest chambers require not torches but surrender. This is the courage Joshua 1:9 demands — not the courage of armies, but the courage of one who steps forward when every familiar landmark has dissolved.

Consider what happens in centering prayer when the mind finally releases its grip. There is a moment — practitioners know it well — where the sacred word fades and you hang suspended in what John of the Cross called pure faith. No consolation. No image of God to cling to. Just the vast, undecorated Presence. Everything in you wants to retreat to thought, to manufacture some feeling of safety. But Yahweh's command to Joshua was not "be comfortable." It was "be strong and courageous, for I am with you wherever you go."

The contemplative understands that true courage is not the absence of fear but the willingness to remain open when the soul enters territory it cannot control. Thomas Merton wrote that we must journey past the false self, past every constructed certainty, into the ground of our being where God alone dwells.

This is your invitation: when prayer grows dark, when silence feels like absence rather than Presence, do not flee. Stay. The God who spoke to Joshua at the Jordan's edge speaks also in the wordless depths. Courage, in the contemplative life, is simply the decision to keep your heart open one moment longer than your fear demands.