Between the Dark and the Daylight, Joan Chittister

Joan Chittister is a Benedictine nun and author of over 50 books of theology. Somehow I had never heard of her before I requested this title from Blogging for Books. Between the Dark and the Daylight, which came out in February, strikes me as a work of practical spirituality with a self-help bent. It’s not very religion-specific; in fact, Jesus is only mentioned four times, and the word “Christian” appears just once.

Based on the title, I was expecting something like Barbara Brown Taylor’s Learning to Walk in the Dark, which is more about metaphors of darkness and how times of doubt and suffering may actually be helpful for people of faith. Although there is likely some overlap between the two, Chittister’s subtitle – Embracing the Contradictions of Life – gives a better idea of what her book is about. Her focus on oxymorons and pairs of opposites spurs readers to re-evaluate and redefine experiences that are always envisioned as negative: frustration, confusion, loss, solitude, and doubt (in this last she reminds me of Peter Rollins).

“To the average person whose life is exemplary most of all for its ordinariness—to people like you and me, for instance—it is what goes on inside of us that matters for the healthy life and real spirituality. … Whatever it is that we harbor in the soul throughout the nights of our lives is what we will live out during the hours of the day.”

Chittister takes emotions seriously, but at the same time she gently nudges us to look below the surface and ask what’s really going on within.

In Chapter 2, “The Delusion of Frustration,” for example, she insists that “Frustration is a cover-up for something we have yet to face in ourselves. … It’s what we use to explain the sour or pouty or demanding or manipulative attitudes we have developed. It is the right we assert to be less than we are capable of being.”

Rather than seeing uncertainty as negative, we should consider it as fostering “the spirit of invention and possibility”: “Life is about participating in the fine art of finding ourselves—our talents, our confidence, our sense of self, our purpose in life.”

Rather than letting failure drive us into despair, we must “pursue the possible in the imperfect,” for “hope lies in taking what we have … and using every heartbeat within us to turn it into something worthwhile.” As Churchill once said, “Success is bounding from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

“The Creativity of Confusion” and “The Liberation in Loss” are two more stand-out chapters, with too many quotable lines to mention here.

This book has been quite inspirational for me. It’s refreshing to see that Chittister doesn’t advocate mute resignation to what life/God/Fate has in store for us; “it is as much our responsibility to shape life as it is for life to shape us.” I especially appreciated her advice to “Plant yourself where you know you can bloom.”

If I were being critical, I might say that her prose is a little repetitive and too reliant on quotes and anecdotes from external sources. She is certainly more focused on ideas than on writing style. This is a common complaint I have about theology books: if academic, they’re inaccessible; if popular, they’re averagely written.

Nevertheless, I think Chittister’s work will be revelatory for a lot of people. And you don’t have to be a Catholic, or even a Christian, to find wisdom here. (My NetGalley request to read the book was initially declined because I’m not a Catholic blogger, a curious instance of narrow, discriminatory thinking.) Anyone who wants to pursue a life of joy and purpose – who dares to believe that life could be more than a cycle of frustration and hopelessness – will want to give this a read.

My rating: 

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