Lessons In The Dark

“In the night also my heart instructs me.” – Psalm 16:7

“Your religion is what you do with your solitude.” – Archbishop William Temple

David doesn’t actually write “my heart” here. He writes, “my kidneys,” Hebrew kilyah. According to an article in the American Journal of Nephrology, “While the Syrians and the Arabs viewed the liver as the center of life, the kidneys, in contrast, held a primary place of importance in Israel. In Hebrew tradition, they were considered to be the most important internal organs along with the heart. In the Old Testament most frequently the kidneys are associated with the most inner stirrings of emotional life. But they are also viewed as the seat of the secret thoughts of the human... the kidneys thus are primarily used as a metaphor for the core of the person, for the area of greatest vulnerability.”

Sounds a bit strange, but perhaps not unlike the way we use the word “heart”; after all, the translators merely substituted one organ for another. Internal organs that function in involuntary darkness. Have you marveled at the recesses of your body, the things it does where no light ever shines? Your atrial valves opening, the ventricles contracting, millions of nephrons filtering a hundred milliliters a minute? In college, while every else partied on a Friday night, I would slip into a dark lab, anesthetize rats, and filet them open to find their kidneys. I saw my first live human kidney during a laparoscopic case my third year of medical school. I remember the first time I slipped my gloved hand into the recesses of a patient’s open abdomen, slippery organs parting before my fingers. 

Makes me think about mental laparotomies in the dark. In the moments stripped of distractions and prompts, lying there at night, where do our minds wander? What do we habitually think about when we don’t have to think about anything? What do we most like daydreaming about? What fantasies give us most comfort? What unprompted feelings surface in the dark? What involuntary longings rise?

Perhaps we think about a romantic figure or storyline, a dream house, a fantasy vacation, a job promotion, an object to acquire. Perhaps we feel anxiety, anger, boredom, despair, anticipation. These things, David says, teach us something valuable. Those feelings may be our truest ones; those longings a window into the deepest parts of ourselves. The things we think about, as Temple suggests, may be what we truly adore, what we worship. They are our gods. To consume them without regard, Keller suggests, is like popping pieces of candy between meals: these habitual comforts can blunt our hunger for God.

At times my thoughts in the night have illuminated lifelong addictions or idols that I have needed to work through. At times they relate to aspects of myself I have been unable to exercise in this stage of life, and for which I am thankful. At times they are sheer escapism, and I need to face what I fear. What do your thoughts and feelings tend towards in the dark, and what do they teach you?