I don’t think that what God, the potter, wants to make of us, the clay, ever meets our expectations or even our dreams. Although I’ve always had the ability to be a bit “withdrawn” like someone might expect of a person with a contemplative vocation, I naturally have none of the confidence needed by a contemplative in the world.

None. Literally none. Once upon a time, I either needed to judge people harshly or end up – almost – afraid of them. I had a “need” for distance. Even today, if the contemplation of Jesus in my neighbours everyday vanishes, so does my confidence to approach people, ask favours, seek the most basic help, or get people-tasks done. Approach the clerk in the store? host a party? make friends with the new guy in the office? No no no no no…

It’s paralyzing, sure.

But God was having none of that.

It’s like when C. S. Lewis says that we invite God into our cottage and he starts tearing down walls (ouch!) to make a mansion. Not our choices. All his.

To a certain extent, just saying yes to the most basic of God’s graces gives some change.

But in my case, I know that nothing was so transforming as what Saint John of the Cross calls the “dark nights”: when the imagination and the senses, and later the will, don’t delight and seem to vanish. Only faith, without imagination and without delight in any of the senses, pulls us on. God wants to clean us up, quickly, to get on to pure contemplation. At the time, I still imagined that I might be a contemplative in the world and – you know – not get very muddy, not deal too much with the daily frenzy of life. God, I’m sure, was laughing, but like a father laughs at the cute ideas of little children.

So when the imagination and the senses faded away in that dark night, I was face-to-face with having to love Jesus and see him in people, without any pleasing imaginary aids. In that situation, it’s either yes or no. Is Jesus there or not? Can you feel it? No, well, he still is. Carry on and trust God. You can’t go this road without confidence. Confidence to do anything with people is now the same as confidence in God.

Thus ended my debilitating weakness. (I know that it rears its ugly head every time that contemplation is slipping away or, moreso, if a habit of sin is setting in or I’m losing sight of just how much my own faults throw an infinite distance between God and me.)

It’s amazing just how often the saints wrote about these procedures of God.

I could say, with Saint Paul, that exactly where I was weak, God wanted to show his strength (2 Cor 12:7–9).

And I could say, with Father Louis Lallemant, that, without contemplation, we’ll be very unfinished and never be able to raise ourselves above the basic trappings of our weaknesses; but with contemplation, we’ll do more for ourselves and for others in one month, than we could otherwise do in ten years.