Anthodites are exceedingly rare geologic wonders, clusters of flower-like crystals that cling to the cavernous ceilings of only a few caves the world over. Anthodites like it dark — a blackness that only a cave can provide — but when exposed to the light, they appear the purest white.
They also appear to die.
Not in a literal sense, of course. These are rocks, after all. They continue to hang there, just out of reach, like calcified moss dangling overhead. But they no longer grow. The utter darkness and near-vacuum-like qualities that the anthodites’ cavernous home nurtured over the long sweep of a multimillion-year history ended abruptly when an explorer’s pickaxe and a subsequent whoosh of air and light exploded into the cave.
Or so said the Skyline Caverns tour guide. I was still reeling in shock that we’d stumbled upon such a unique and uncommon site so close to our campground in Virginia.
These gems are exquisite, fragile and old. To say that the anthodites in this system of caves are thousands upon thousands of years old does not adequately convey the span of time which it takes for these precious crystals to form, nor does it begin to contextualize the sorts of changes that occurred across the planet while these rocks were growing in the dark. I was reminded that when we talk about time in geology, we mark its passing not in years but in eras.
All to say, standing there in the cold hollow of those winding tunnels, I was struck by the vastness of God and God’s creation. There is the sweeping nature of God, the God beyond all time and space, that was apparent in that cave. But so, too, there was something intimate and small and quiet.
I couldn’t get past the fact that the anthodites — these stunning works of natural art — grew only in the dark, only in the void, and when the light burst through — and with it, air and all that we know to be necessary for life as we understand it — their growth ceased.
God is in all things and so all things can reveal to us something of God at work in our universe. But this particular thing felt wrong. The onset of light should not end growth; it should nurture it! Breaking free from darkness should beget new life not a stage of perpetual paralysis.
All of my analogies fell short. And yet, there was something deeply and spiritual compelling in witnessing those crystalline buds exploding from the ceiling.
And so here’s what I wonder as I think on those rare anthodites. For us in our own lives, darkness is unavoidable. It sweeps into our stories often unbidden and unwelcome and it can pull us down into our own cavernous lows.
St. Ignatius himself reminds us that such desolation is unavoidable; countless other saints write about seasons of dryness and darkness when God seems to have fallen as quiet as the void.
But I wonder if there’s not something forming within us during these seemingly interminable days, something beautiful and precious and rare, something that can only grow in such utter night. Most importantly, it may be that whatever it is that is forming within us can only form during this moment, this darkness, this quiet gloom of the heart.
So, while we welcome the light and we welcome the fresh air, I wonder if we might better welcome and protect those cave-like flowers that grow in the hardened soil of our souls. There is beauty there, too, and if we try to wrest our way free of our moments of shadow too quickly, we may miss the opportunity to hold the fragile gems that could only grow in the darkness.
