Through the Valley of the Deep Darkness: Holding onto the Ancient Testimonies

By Thomas Arner

Through the Valley of Deep Darkness was written at the suggestion of a grief counselor. She believed Reverend Arners story of overcoming hatred, anger, and the desire for revenge and discovering rituals that lead to peace would be beneficial to others. The evil within Reverend Arner came to the fore when his one-year-old grandson died in a fire set by the childs father, and his daughter, the childs mother, suffered second- and third-degree burns over 70 percent of her body, requiring a six-week stay in the University of Virginia Trauma/Burn Unit; she was not expected to survive. Also part of this story of overcoming was the trial of the childs father on capital one murder, arson and attempted murder charges. Reverend Arner shares the spiritual resources within a community of faithful relationships which enabled him and his wife to overcome, to come through the valley of deepest darkness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Sep 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466955035

Thomas Arner

Thomas Arner is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ having served small membership congregations from 1962 to 2000. He has contributed to Voices from the Alley: Rural Ministry in the United Church of Christ. Wrote monthly articles for the Center Daily Times, State College, Pennsylvania. Serves as chaplain in Augusta Health Care Center, Staunton, from 1997 to the present, and served as chaplain for Manor Health Care, a national nursing home company and as chaplain at Brookline Village State College, Pennsylvania.

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PRELUDE

Introduction

Even though I walk through the valley of deepest darkness, I will fear no evil… (Psalm 23).

T he phone rings 9:30 p.m. Sunday evening. Marian was trying to relax, playing computer games in my upstairs study. I was in the living room doing the Sunday crossword puzzle. Thoughts rush in: What has happened? What’s happening? Who is involved? Family? A C hurch member? A female voice asks, Will you take your son-in-law to the hospital? There has been a fire at the apartment. Elise and the baby have been transported to Augusta Medical Center. (Now Augusta Health Care Center). Will you take him to the hospital, or do we need to find someone else?

Of course, we will take him. What about Elise and the baby?

The voice responds, All we know is Elise and the baby were taken to Augusta Hospital. On that note, the person hung up. In those few words, in that brief moment, Marian (my wife) and I were plunged into the abyss of deepest darkness.

To be sure, we were not the first persons to be so plummeted. The psalmist wrote about going through the valley of deepest darkness, the literal translation of that sentence in the Twenty-third Psalm. Over the years of ministry, I had been with many persons in such deep darkness, and we had been in the valley of the shadow of death, but this was different.

That phone call came on Sunday evening, October 10, 1999. It was the twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, for those familiar with the Christian calendar, or the twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time for some others.

That morning at St. John’s Reformed United Church of Christ, Middlebrook, Virginia, I completed preaching the last sermon in a series on the Apostles’ Creed, I Believe in Eternal Life. That evening I needed to hear my own words afresh.

To be sure, preaching on the Apostles’ Creed might be considered rather ordinary, even humdrum, or at least boring. It is not easy to be inspiring when one preaches on church doctrines. The Creed is rarely a topic of animated conversation even in those congregations where it is used in Sunday worship as an affirmation of faith, and many churches do not make the Creed a part of worship. For decades the Creed has fallen out of common use in many churches, even in some liturgical congregations.

I had undertaken this mundane, ordinary series not because I had run out of preaching ideas or preaching material. That late summer and fall of 1999, I preached the series on the Creed after a number of encounters with persons—persons within the church, some alienated from the church, persons whose desires were unfulfilled, persons who were seeking for hope and not finding it, persons longing for confidence to face life, persons seeking faith as they encountered various kinds of life crises, persons with empty spaces in their lives, persons who were struggling to get through valleys of deep darkness, persons in quest of healing and wholeness in their brokenness, persons whose lives were empty and were seeking to be filled, persons suffering losses and knowing only the pain of those losses without hope, faithful persons caught in threatening crises never before faced and doubting the saving presence of a caring God. Many of those persons cried out, as a father pleaded with Jesus to cast a demon from his son: I believe; help my unbelief! (Mark 9:24, NRSV).

And now we, my wife and I, were among those persons. On January 30 of that year, my mother suffered a stroke, was hospitalized, had another massive stroke in the hospital, was pronounced brain-dead, placed on lifesaving machines, and died two days later without regaining consciousness.

In my planning to preach that fall, I meditated on all those persons and on God’s Word to us. I opened myself to the Spirit as I sought to connect the stories of those persons and others with the story of God’s love and grace for us in Jesus Christ. I tried to hear their cries. I was certain God heard their cries, but what did God have to say to them through me? It is reported that Dr. George A. Buttrick once stated from his university pulpit,

Everyone goes at last into the deep… The real issue, for life or death, is the nature of the deep.

All these persons I had encountered, and who flooded my mind that day, were in some sort of deep, and so was I, so were my wife and I. In that deep, each one needed to hear of the God who comes into our deeps with love to go with us and enable us not only to survive our deeps but to live as renewed creatures in a positive relationship with nature, with others, and with God.

To put it another way, I was striving to communicate God’s love and grace to persons who were faith challenged, people in one personal deep or another. The psalmist sings, I praise God for his word, I trust God, so I am not afraid (Psalm 56:4a). So I wanted to sing those words, and I wanted those in the pews, specially those who are faith challenged, those to whom I strive to communicate God’s caring Sunday after Sunday, to sing that melody with me.

Thus on that Monday after Easter, I sat in my study with the Bible open before me, meditating on the list of the lessons laid out in the Common Lectionary, a series of readings used by many churches. As I read, meditated on what I read in God’s Word, and prayed, I found myself in the deep. It goes without saying that whenever I sat down to prepare to preach God’s Word revealed through Jesus Christ (when I was an active pastor), I faced the deep, the deep of listening to God’s Word and seeking to find ways to communicate that word effectively to those in their deeps.

Yes, that April morning was another time in the deep for me. In my deep, the faces of many of those seeking, hurting, empty, crying-out people welled up in my heart’s eye, especially those within St. John’s congregation who were among them. I recalled their stories, and I prayed that the Spirit of the resurrected Christ would go with me and connect me to the grace of God that I might assist others to be more connected with Christ and discover the light to walk with him so they might find their way through the darkness, which had overwhelmed them, that they might discover a way out of the deep, whatever its nature.

Besides, that morning, as I said, I was among those needing to be connected to Christ. Without the story of God’s descending love, my story was incomplete. As a wounded one, in my personal deep I was seeking that word that would connect me to the resources I needed to deal with my loss and to grieve not as those without hope. I was searching the scriptures that I might have something to share with others suffering losses and grieving as I was grieving so they might find God’s healing, that we might find healing together, and sing a new song, as the psalmist put it.

These are some of the faces that appeared to me that morning as I sought to prepare myself to go with them. There was the pained face of a young single-parent mother of two preteenage daughters. This thirty-something woman had been diagnosed HIV positive. This woman shared that she had been cut off from her family of origin and from the congregation to which she had belonged since childhood. Her family and her church considered her disease the result of her sinfulness. She found herself in the valley of deepest darkness, in the deep, alone, abandoned, terribly afraid for herself and, above all, for her children.

This woman’s family had cut her off, broken all contact with her and her girls. The congregation in which she had grown up communicated in strong terms she was not welcomed. She was diagnosed HIV positive. Alone, abandoned, separated from familiar contacts, she was frightened for her own life and terrified as she considered what might happen to her children if she were to die. She sought medical attention for herself as well as social services for her children. She longed for answers but not the easy, judgmental answers of well-meaning people, including the clergy. This woman never used biblical words, but every word she spoke, all her body language, communicated her fear, her desperation, and her anger as she found herself in the valley of deep darkness, in the deep, without hope or without anyone to whom she could turn. The very being of this young woman breathed her abandonment. In her deep she had no spiritual resources and found no one to go with her, found no one going with her.

Or there was Jim, a diabetic gentleman on the Augusta Health Center Skilled Care Unit. On a previous hospitalization, surgeons had amputated one leg to save Jim’s life. Now the other leg had been amputated. His wife sat by him in the hospital day after day as Jim recovered from that surgery and underwent therapy. She had taken action to make the house accessible for Jim. I was chaplain on the skilled unit. Jim attended regularly our Thursday morning devotional service, part of the rehab program. One afternoon, Jim had the charge nurse call me to his bedside. He was in a panic. He felt guilty about the new role his wife needed to play and had begun to assume. He was also angry because his role in the family had been altered.

Moreover, as I listened Jim shared that he was afraid to go home. He was afraid he would not be able to manage even with the physical renovations that made his home handicapped-accessible. More than this, he was afraid that he would not make it. Jim was in the deep. Jim had been an active church member all his life. He believed in God and God’s love for him, but at this turn of events in his life, Jim’s faith was shaken to the core. I heard his emptiness in his words.

Jim spoke of needing something to grasp with conviction, something to see him through this crisis, something to hold on to. I heard Jim. He, too, was in that valley of deep darkness, in the vast deep. In that deep he was seeking for hope that he could not only survive but live with meaning and purpose. Jim could not share his feelings with his wife or other family members, not even his pastor. He was overwhelmed by the darkness of his personal deep. Jim also felt alone, abandoned, and without hope.

Or there was George. George was also a patient on the AHC Skilled Unit. One Thursday morning, Shelly, the rehab program aide, asked me, Would you have time to visit George in room 13? George is down. He didn’t feel up to attending the devotional service, but he would like to see a chaplain. As I said, it was a Thursday, following our weekly devotional service in the rehab unit. (When a hospital patient states, I want to see a chaplain, he or she means I want to talk to a chaplain.)

I replied to Shelly, Sure. What more can you tell me about George?

George has had a stroke. He has recovered rather well, and is due to be discharged in a day or so, but the doctor has told George he cannot return to his home and be alone. He needs assistance getting around. He needs someone to help him take care of his physical needs and prepare food. Therapy has not helped him regain the full use of his legs. I thanked Shelly for the information and went to visit George.

George looked up as I knocked on his door and introduced myself. I’m Chaplain Arner. Shelly tells me you would like to see a chaplain. May I pull up a chair? George nodded his OK, and I pulled up a chair and sat facing him. George was a large man, tall and heavyset. I had no sooner sat down, and George erupted.

They tell me I can’t go home! They say I can’t be alone, I can’t take care of myself. As George spoke, his shoulders visibly sagged, and with the look in his eyes of one beaten, he spoke of his despair. As George talked, it became clear he felt isolated and abandoned, in the deep. He lashed out again, "Yes, they say I can no longer live alone. I’ve lived in that house for sixty-some years. My wife, she died a year ago, and I started housekeeping in that house. We raised three children in that house, two sons and a daughter. These three married children live in different parts of the country. I don’t see myself living with any one of them. It’s not that they wouldn’t keep me. I don’t want to go with any of my children.

I can’t expect them to take care of me. I want to go home. Besides, I have so many memories in my home. I don’t want to go anyplace but to my own home. I know my way around there."

George was afraid he was losing his place, a place that had provided security and comfort, emotional and physical comfort, a place of meaningful memories. George, too, was in a valley of deep darkness.

Or there were John and Mary. Both were eighty-five. They were married sixty-plus years, parents of two sons. Talk of opposites! Mary was a round bundle of merriment, about four foot ten at best. John was about six foot four or five, with broad shoulders and a slim waist. Even at eighty-five John was a handsome man. In their productive years, John had managed ice-cutting crews when ice was cut from ponds in the winter and stored for the year-round use in iceboxes, preelectric refrigeration. Mary had cooked for those crews.

John and Mary had lived in a sturdy house more years than I remember. They had inherited that house from the original owner for whom they had provided care. Then Mary, at eighty-five, had a stroke that left her with some paralysis. Mary and John’s sons, concerned for their parents’ well-being, in consultation with their family physician, had John declared mentally incompetent and placed their parents in a nursing home, a good facility, but it was not their home.

And John wept bitter tears almost every time I visited. They said I’m no longer able to take care of myself. John and Mary both felt in the deep and longed for something to hang on to. Their life story was broken; it was fragmented.

After another stroke, Mary was placed in that nursing home’s skilled unit. On each of my visits to her bedside, Mary, sobbing in bewilderment, would cry out, What have I done that God should punish me so? What have I done? Both John and Mary were in a valley of deep darkness, isolated, abandoned, at a loss for meaning. Everything that had provided meaning was taken away. The language of John and Mary spoke of a longing for assurance, for confidence they would make it through that valley, of their pain and loss of value and purpose. Their desire was to escape the deep in which they found themselves.

I also remembered Glen. Glen and his wife, Doris, had bought a small farm. They had twin daughters—recently graduated from college, setting out on their own—and a teenage son, a senior in high school. Immediately upon Glen’s college graduation, he was employed by a large agribusiness. Glen had worked diligently and with determination. His efforts were rewarded with appropriate wage increases and promotions. Now Glen was top salesman in that business’s petroleum section. Two weeks after their daughters had moved into other communities where they had found employment, one as a hospital prenatal nurse and the other as a teacher, Glen was called into the president’s office of his company and told that his position had been terminated. The company was facing hard economic times and was letting go high-paid personnel. After thirty years with that company, Glen worried about his mortgage and providing an education for his son as well as providing for his wife and himself. The deep was pouring in around him. Glen lived in a geographical region with few employment opportunities, especially for men fifty or more years of age. Yes, Glen found himself in a valley with deep darkness enveloping him. I listened to Glen and his wife. I heard them.

Or there was Frank. At a church dinner meeting, I overheard a fellow member ask Frank, How are you doing? Frank had suffered a stroke.

He answered, What’s left of old Frank is doing rather well considering.

What’s left of old Frank… I heard him.

Frank was a big man, accustomed to being in charge, but he knew that he was no longer the man he had been. In his deep, Frank also struggled to find light in his darkness. In due course, I had the opportunity to listen to Frank and his wife and be a presence, to represent the presence of Christ to them.

Indeed, each of these persons, real persons, looked for something to make life go down a little easier, looked for a way to survive and overcome the deep in which they found themselves. These persons felt trapped in deep darkness by the strange, unexpected events, never experienced previously, that now threatened their lives and their faith. Each one sought a different story than the one being written out for them. They were seeking to be connected to the One who could see them through their valley of deep darkness, through the deep. Each one longed for assurance that he, she, or they could make it through each empty, dark valley he or she entered. Or as another woman had noted, I don’t have anything to hang on to. Each person I have named was longing and searching for something to hang on to in their deep, a deep unforeseen, a darkness engulfing them totally.

Wayne Oates, one of the leaders in the developmental days of the pastoral counseling ministry, speaking to pastors at a Johns Hopkins Hospital seminar, told of a time he was a hospital chaplain in Louisville, Kentucky. An elderly patient, a mountain man, called for a chaplain. He asked Oates point-blank, Can you make this ole axe head float? That mountain man referred to a tale about the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 6:1-7), who made an iron axe head float.

The persons I have named and those to whom I ministered at St. John’s Church would not use those biblical terms, but many persons in all kinds of crises, in all sorts of deeps, are afraid they are sinking in one deep or another. They are faith challenged by these new events in their lives, events that strip them of value, meaning, and direction and leave them empty and alone and disconnected.

And these were real persons, not stereotypes. Yes, each one could have represented many other persons, but each was unique, each searching for something to hang on to in their deep. Each one was seeking to be connected to something eternal, to the grace of God, which would provide a way through the deep.

So in my study on that post-Easter morning of planning for preaching for the summer and fall of 1999, those persons I have held up, as well as those persons in the pews of St. John’s Church and myself, in one crisis or another, came to my mind. I prayed. What can I offer my St. John’s people in the deep? What can I hold out to Shirley fighting cancer and a heart ailment? What could I bring to John, whose wife had died of breast cancer and found himself now on oxygen after a stroke? What could I share with another husband and wife who each had had several major surgeries? What did God have to offer to George, whose wife was the victim of Alzheimer’s disease? What could I offer them that they could hang on to in the dark, in their emptiness, in their hurt, in their deep, in their darkness? What was the Spirit trying to say to me that I could share with those hurting, searching souls that would enable them to float? What was God trying to say through me that would enable them to get through their valleys of deep darkness? What was God trying to say that would enable those persons and me to endure our deeps?

In those moments of prayer and meditation, those moments of reading the scripture lessons for that summer and fall again and again and seeking their meaning, in my own deep, as the faces of those named and others passed before my mind’s eye, with their pain and hurt, another image emerged. That image was remembered from our days in Herndon, Pennsylvania, a small community in western Northumberland County on the east shore of the main stem of the Susquehanna River. A half mile or more into the river from Herndon is White Island, two hundred acres of good farming soil. A person can reach White Island with a medium-sized tractor or other large trucks. The Adams boys of Herndon, who farmed the island in the ’70s, and who continue to farm it, used a Euclid—a large earth-moving truck used in strip mines and road construction—to make the trip from the mainland to the island.

Now, I said a person can reach the island by tractor if he followed the underwater ledge. I do not know who or when someone discovered that ledge; I believe that it was discovered in the 1850s, but whoever found it marked it with buoys so that future generations might follow it. Over the years, various persons fording the river to White Island made certain the buoys were secure. One does not need to follow those buoys to get to the island, but there are places where drop-offs occur, creating deep holes, and the wader or driver can find himself in trouble, in deep water. If a person follows the markers, however, one can get to the island without problems. The markers of that ledge assure one a relatively safe passage. The markers in the river enable one to make the journey safely.

So as I meditated on what God’s Word was revealing through me to the members of St. John’s congregation to hang on to in their various crises, in their deeps, on how to connect them more securely to the risen Christ, those buoys that marked the ledge in the Susquehanna River at Herndon came vividly to mind. At that very moment, the Spirit came to me and inspired me to see the articles of the Apostles’ Creed as akin to those buoys that marked that Susquehanna River ledge.

The various articles of the Creed were the markers in the River of Life, markers that could help one get through the deep, markers passed on from faithful followers of our Lord so we, too, could be faithful regardless what life could throw at us. Those markers, the articles of the Creed, attested to by others over centuries, could help us make it to the other side, speaking metaphorically. Those markers could provide one with comfort and strength, with confidence to face each day in whatever deep. The Creed connects us to God’s story of salvation and provides us with hope.

Whenever a person is troubled and confused, the articles of the Creed can be markers in the valley of deepest darkness, in whatever deep, to enable a person to deal with all of life, the ordinary days as well as the extraordinary days of his, her, or their faith journey.

So it was that on Sunday, July 11, 1999, I began to preach on the first article of the Apostles’ Creed: I believe in God the Father almighty… On that Sunday, I told the congregation of the marked ledge in the Susquehanna River at Herndon, Pennsylvania, the ledge that ran from the east shore of the river to White Island. I reminded them that the articles of the Creed were like the buoys that one could follow safely to that island. The articles of the Creed were tested over the centuries by the lives of men and women striving to be faithful to God as revealed in the scriptures and attested to in the Creed. For centuries the faithful had testified to the power of the Creed to see us through crises, through the deeps. I reminded them they could trust God, who came to them again and again in their deeps. As the Creed puts it

I believe in God

The Father almighty,

Creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

And born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate,

Was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into hell,

On the third day he rose again from the dead.

Ascended into heaven,

And is seated at the right hand of God

The Father almighty.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

The holy Catholic church,

The communion of saints,

The forgiveness of sins,

The resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting.

To put it simply, the Creed is the shared faith of the church, the people of God, over the centuries. A person can make this faith testimony, this story of the people of God, his own, and it can provide those markers to see a person safely across the river or through the valley of deep darkness, through the deep, even the deep of the valley of the shadow of death. As the believer rehearses the Creed Sunday after Sunday, that ritual informs them anew that they stand in the midst of centuries of saints who have gone through many deeps, many valleys of deep darkness, and endured.

Why lift up the articles of the Creed as markers for souls in deep darkness? The Creed is the testimony of the faithful. In the churches of the Free Church tradition, persons may stand up and testify to the grace of God helping them through a given week; they may testify to their story as part of God’s story. The Creed is the testimony of a faith community. It is a summary of the faith passed on from one generation to another. People may stand to profess the faith of the historic church, and individuals can make that faith their own. These faithful persons continue to testify to others that the faith passed on through the centuries is their faith and it can be the faith of still others who hear the testimony.

The first marker is I believe in God the Father almighty… The second marker is I believe in God the Creator. Each Sunday thereafter we held up another marker and reminded the congregation those markers could see them through the valley of deepest darkness, through the deep. I also adjusted that message for the weekly devotional service on the skilled nursing unit at the Augusta Medical Center, now Augusta Health Center.

So we came to October 10 and completed the series. I believe and am sustained by the promise of everlasting life with God the Father almighty. Little did I know how much my wife and I and other family members would need those markers, not in the future, but that very day. At the beginning of that Sunday, I could not have imagined how deep we would be cast into that valley of darkness. Without any preparation, without any warning, that evening Marian and I found ourselves on the brink of that valley of deepening shadows, in a vast deep, in the very valley of death. Like those we have held up and like multitudes of others, we needed the markers of the Creed to hang on to; we needed those markers to get us through the valley of deep darkness that night and many days to come.

Late that Sunday evening, Marian and I groped for those markers in the darkness, in the deep, doubting that we