Most people who hear the name of John’s best-known work assume that it is the memoir of a survivor describing the worst period of his life. Because so many of them have been programmed to think of “dark” as a synonym for “sinister,” they open The Dark Night of the Soul expecting John to tell them how awful it was and how he got through it by hanging on to his faith in God no matter what happened to him. Such readers are bound to be disappointed for any number of reasons. In the first place, John does not have much to say about religion. His language is passionate and speaks directly to the
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