“If you have striven to know God for a decade or more,” she writes, “you are almost certain to cross a spiritual wasteland, which ranges from dryness and boredom to agony and abandonment.” Anyone who has read the classics of the Christian spiritual life recognizes this wilderness as a predictable stop on the journey into God. Augustine’s Confessions, Teresa of Ávila’s Interior Castle, and John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul all talk about it. As variously as people describe it, they all discover that if you are determined to walk the way of Jesus, there comes a time when you must leave
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