Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor

Becoming acquainted with Barbara Brown Taylor through reading Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith and now Learning to Walk in the Dark has given strength to my spiritual journey. Our Contemplative Prayer Group finished this book in May and as a result of the group discussions, it was filled with gemstones for me that I would have missed without their insight. I am indeed blessed with this wonderful group and I thank God for bringing us together.

It took a few chapters for the author to get the foundation established for the reader to have an understanding where the book was guiding you. You keep finding mindsets you have on darkness that has influenced your paths. But as the book jacket tells us "Taylor is our guide through a spirituality of the nighttime, teaching us how to find God even in darkness, and giving us a way to let darkness teach us what we need to know."   

My copy of this book is really marked which is what I use when I review a book at a later time ... may as well start on page one for this book. Taylor begins chapter one with this appropriate scripture: "I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name. Isaiah 45:3."   Here is one of the many quotes scattered throughout the book: 

There is a tendency for us to flee from the wild silence and wild dark, to pack up our gods and hunker down behind city walls, to turn the gods into idols, to kowtow before them and approach their precincts only in the official robes of office. And when we are in the temples, then who will hear the voice crying in the wilderness? Who will hear the reed shaken by the wind? ... Chet Raymo, The Soul of the Night

And at the end of the book the prayer of Thomas Merton from his book, Thoughts in Solitude.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.