From the book, “The Power of Stillness” (multiple authors—Jacob Z. Hess, Carrie L. Skarda, Kyle D. Mansfield, Ty R. Mansfield:
It’s really hard, dare we say impossible, to have life experiences go through us and not have them affect how we see God. Staying authentically, fully present in our relationship with Him, allowing ourselves to experience the full range of our reactions to Him. with mindful curiosity and wisdom, allows us to peal back and shed the disillusionment and false perceptions we cling to about God.
It took years for Carrie: Let me say that again, it took years. But now I crave prayer and see it as a personally transformative means of experiencing divine love. And I don’t even need sticker charts.
Waiting for a Settling
This kind of insight won’t arise if we walk away from discomfort in our quiet times. When students come across physical or emotional discomfort during meditation, Jon Kabat-Zinn invites them to “cradle the discomfort,” reflecting the kind of tenderness and compassion that one can bring to difficult moments.
There is something to be said about committing enough time to see the wrestle through, as one bishop told us about spending longer blocks of prayer during a difficult period. He said: “That’s the great thing about designating a that time for prayer with a sense of conviction. Because, then instead of inching forward toward it, you already clear out enough time to wrestle with yourself with the hour before God.”
This obviously involves greater patience to wait upon the Lord, anticipating that things can resolve (more easily) if we give them bit more space. Thus, Richard Rohr writes: “Do not try to settle the dust. Do not rush to resolve the inner conflict. Do not seek a glib, quick answer, but leave all things for a while in the silent space.”11
Sometimes the internal voices are so loud and relentless, once again, that even a moment of inner calm is hard to come by. A lingering problem, a lurking obligation, unaddressed anger or hurt, guilt, building excitement, the residue of some meditation, or even the lag of a powerful dream can make a search for calm self-reflection or restoration like sitting on a tossing train car. At these times we sometimes believe our only option is to “stick it out” and endure bravely.
When confronted with this kind of opposition, we have an alternative to stiffening our neck or running from our trouble. Sometimes we can simply observe the inner turmoil and abide it, rather than hardening to it.
Holding it All
We often narrowly define “spiritual experiences” as predictable and pretty encounters with the light. But a lot of spiritual growth is not soft and fuzzy, it’s hard. Wrestling with God in the darkness; getting lost in the mists while being taunted; being an invisible outsider, only able to reach the hem of the one who could heal; the boring grind of walking across the plains toward a land you’ve never seen; being a parent responsible for a child whose mission you don’t fully understand; weeping alone when friends who were supposed to ride this out with you are literally asleep—these are spiritual experiences.
When a spiritual wrestle is intense, perhaps the greatest is simply staying present. In fact, it’s only when we embrace the whole experience that the ordinary is truly transformed into the sacred. Joseph Smith’s first verbal prayer started out with a typical spring day with an unremarkable kneeling not far from his own backyard. But by enduring the subsequent crippling darkness, as well as the incredible of seeing and being seen by God, Joseph experienced a transformation of the ordinary. If Joseph had not stayed present with these intense and unexpected realities, not the plainer routine aspects of his life’s mission, the fulness of the Restoration could not have unfolded.
Once Joseph took his question to Heavenly Father, of course, the light did not immediately flick on. He hit resistance: overwhelming, real, knock-you-to-the-ground darkness. Compared with any other moment (in which attention to God may feel somewhat easy), Joseph’s account illustrates the degree to which staying present to God in a moment of despair can require substantial effort—even “exerting all [our] powers” (Joseph Smith—History 1:16).
Christ’s atoning event, which we look to and celebrate as triumphant, also centered on our Lord’s willingness to be present to the darkest of dark and to the most bitter pain ever endured. Only then, in experiencing them, did our Savior receive the eternity-changing power to succor us through our own infirmities.
Both Gethsemane and the Sacred Grove highlight the crucial capacity to endure both dark and light, to exercise the discomfort that lurks that lingers around anything potentially sweet. This, at times, includes tolerating the painful questions, the unconventional (and sometimes only partial) answers, periods of threatening darkness, and the intensity of being tutored by God. ~~Jacob Z. Hess, Carrie L. Skarda, Kyle D. Anderson, Ty R. Mansfield, The Power of Stillness (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2019), p.68-70
