There is something about the deep darkness of a cave that brings a hush over everyone who enters. Last week, in our ongoing effort to explore our new home in the Southwest, we visited Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Seeing the Caverns had been on my husband’s wish list since he was a child; now they were just a quick road trip from home.

The morning began with the frantic hustle of people who wanted to get an early start, in part so that I could be back in my office for an afternoon meeting. All this planned rest and recreation was stressful! Once we got to the entrance to the cave, however, everything changed.  Stepping inch by inch down the slope into the mouth of the earth was shockingly intimidating, especially since this was not the first time we had been in a cave.

Tentative step by tentative step, our voices grew quieter.  We had been told to keep our voices down to avoid disturbing the resident bats, but this hush was different. As the world around us grew darker, there was a distinctive and very human need for silence. Even while we could still see the light at the mouth of the cave, our voices had settled into whispers, and those used only when a simple gesture towards an interesting feature was not sufficient to communicate.

Step by step, even our communicative gestures faded. Step by step, the silence fell. Occasional voices from other visitors pierced the darkness, we knew we were not truly alone. Nonetheless, we only rarely heard and even more rarely saw anyone else on that long descent down into the depths of the earth.

As our voices quieted, so did the voices in my head, the ones that almost never stop reminding me of the next meeting, the next deadline, the next task at hand, and, worst of all, whatever anxiety is rattling around in my soul. Step by step, the internal voices hushed as well, replaced only by my family’s footsteps, and the eerie dripping of water.

As the silence fell, I experienced an aloneness, even with my family around me, that was not at all lonely, a quiet that was not at all silent.  And in the quiet, came this: “In his hand are all the depths of the earth, and the heights of the hills are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands prepared the dry land.” (Psalm 95, BCP 2019, p. 14)

In the hustle and bustle of daily life, we sometimes find our own thoughts, noise, business, and busyness more comforting than the still small voice of God. But in the depths of a cave, we are cut off from the noise that chains us to modernity and can hear afresh. That is intimidating! Descending step by step into silence and darkness, with the high hills above and nothing below but more darkness, is not for the faint of heart, no matter how well paved the trail.

This was the world of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, a world we rarely visit today, but one we genuinely need to understand. This was the sort of experience that an unnamed author described as the “Cloud of Unknowing”—God is the cloud who both restricts our wider vision and calls us step by step into deeper trust and relationship with himself.  In some way, this is even our end, as we will all go into the dark of the earth while the hustle of the world carries on unabated after us.

Of course, this is also the darkness into which Jesus descended and emerged victorious. The darkness, the cloud, the cave—this is not our true end. In the end, the Cloud of Unknowing opens forth onto the light of the presence of God. The earth will give up its dead. Still, for now, it was not an unwelcome surprise to feel the weight of the dark and silence in our own descent to the depths of the cave.

As Advent, the darkest season of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, approaches, we will descend as a Church into the darkness as we wait for the new light of Christ to appear for us at Christmas. The world grows progressively darker, the days shorter, and the hustle and activity of the light grow dimmer in our eyes. For many Advent is a depressing time of yearning for light that seems to have irrevocably faded; our youth, our memories, our lost loved ones, our shattered dreams haunt us most in this season. Yet with each darkened day, allow the hush of the season to settle in. Let the Cloud of Unknowing envelop you, because in the end, it is not darkness but Light that will enfold us all.