Dark Night Of The Soul Songs Of Yearning

The first English translation of the classic sixteenth-century Spanish love poem of the soul and its commentary by a spiritual seeker outside of the Church.

When prayers go dry on the tongue, and any sense of God in the world is lost, it seems the spiritual seeker has nowhere to turn. This is the dark night of the soul that the great sixteenth-century saint John of the Cross experienced when he could no longer feel God's presence and when prayer and spiritual practice no longer inspired him. The poem he wrote while in prison, on a scroll smuggled to him by one of his guards, has never been translated complete with his later commentary by anyone outside the Catholic church. Mirabai Starr brings this work to the twenty-first century in a brilliant and beautiful rendering.

When prayers go dry on the tongue, and any sense of God in the world is lost--this is the dark night of the soul described by the great 16th-century St. John of the Cross. Written in prison, his text, for the first time, is now translated by a spiritual seeker outside the Church.

Mirabai Starr,, who has studied Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism, brings the seeker's sensibility to Dark Night of the Soul. She is a published writer of fiction and essays and is adjunct professor of philosophy, religious studies, and Spanish at the University of New Mexico at Taos. She has been studying St. John of the Cross's text for more than twenty years.