In the dark is where I seem to live most of the time, speaking symbolically, of course, yet a few days ago "in the dark" was literally true. The darkness did not last too long, but every light in the house, in the neighborhood, in the world went out. So far no one knows why, or if someone does, he or she is not talking. This darkness was of the lights-out-Mammoth-Cave-in-the-dark variety, if you have ever done their under ground cave tour. For a long minute they turn out the lights. It is so dark you cannot tell whether your eyes are open or closed. Truly. That is the way it was in our front room. No glowing red or blue or green or yellow dots from the various devices. Nothing. Spooky.
However, when I got up and felt my way to the kitchen, I could see a red glowing light in the distance, beautiful light actually. Then it changed to green and violet and an intense blue. Mary has these "snowflakes" hanging on the deck, and they gave off enough light actually to see a bit. Impressive! We did not realize they were that strong. Their presence was oddly comforting. I could see something and was no longer in the dark. About that time Mary also had a lantern lit and then the lights came back on. All the devices came back to life and the world was relatively safe once again. And once again I was in the dark simply metaphorically, feeling my way around metaphysically, reading books like Father Robert Barron's Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master, a Crossroads Book. Barron explains aspects of Thomas's Summa, for example "the eternity of God."
"In the end, (Barron writes) , the affirmation of God's eternity means that we have a way out of the physical and psycho-spiritual ravages of time. To be sure, time eventually wears out our bodies, ageing us, pushing us toward decline, but it also wears us out spiritually and psychologically by robbing us continually of the present moment. Because we exist in time, we can never finally rest in the beauty of our experience. Instead, the present slips inevitably and irredeemably into the past, leaving us with only memories and impressions. To be one with the eternal God is not to intensify our sense of time (in everlastingness); on the contrary, it is to be raised up to that rapturous state of nunc stans, the eternal present, in which all events, all experiences are wonderfully "now." In those rare moments that we appropriately refer to as "ecstatic," we lose a sense of time, a feeling of past, present, and future. In those moments, we and the world that surrounds us simply are.
"Those ecstasies--and not, for example, the agonies of waiting endlessly in line--are proper anticipations, foretastes, of what it means to be united to the God who is eternal in Thomas's sense of the term." (99-100).
The author, Barron, explaining Thomas has been going on like this for a hundred pages, and there are still 86 to go. I find the text truly exciting. Even if you do not understand the concept of the "eternal present," still the description of our ageing experiences is truly accurate. Yesterday, I was sitting in the car outside J.C. Penney's in Richmond, waiting for Mary. The wait became an example of what Barron was explaining, for without a book the wait would have been dreary, mostly; with the book the experience became ecstatic because I understood what he was saying, and I was lost in the timelessness of the text. The whole book has been like that; it is one of those books I do not want to stop, to quit; I want it to keep going. And, of course, to keep being clear to my frequently befuddled mind. I may forget things after I have read them, but I do not forget that I have read a truly good text.