On the Dark Path

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the place of wandering and exile in contemplative practice, considering in particular Michel de Certeau’s claim that instability, uncertainty, and wandering (which he describes as leading “elsewhere” or “nowhere”) are fundamental to the mystic quest. It considers also Hadewijch’s assertion that “those who have glimpsed that [mystical] truth [hasten], on the dark path, Untraced, unmarked, all inner.” And it examines—in the context of a journey with a friend across Germany to the death camps of eastern Poland—whether this mystical sense of “elsewhere” or “nowhere” or “void” can help one face and respond to places of deepest loss and emptiness in recent historical experience. And whether the construction and experience of heterotopias (e.g., Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin) can help us cultivate contemplative practices of shared vulnerability and instability that make it possible for us to join with others who are wandering in the night.