Afraid of the Dark

I don't do so well in the night anymore. And, lately, I've been waking up in the wee hours of the morning crippled with troubling thoughts; a sense of foreboding. I thought that clearing things out physically would make me more calm, but it seems to be having the opposite effect. At least that's what I'm chalking it up to. Maybe it's something I ate.

While I don't know the source of this annoying new development, I do know that it's frightening and it makes me not want to go to sleep. I don't want to be alone with my thoughts. I'm still going to move forward with my original plans.  I think my best bet is to keep on keeping busy as much as possible.  To that end, I was reading this afternoon; this psalm from Thomas Merton captures the feelings a little.

I have prayed to You in the daytime with thoughts and reasons,
and in the nighttime You have confronted me,
scattering thought and reason.

I have come to You in the morning with light and with desire,
and You have descended upon me, with great gentleness,
with most forbearing silence, in this inexplicable night,
dispersing light, defeating all desire.

I have explained to You a hundred times my motives
You have listened and said nothing,
and I have turned away and wept with shame.

Is it true that all my motives have meant nothing?
Is it true that all my desires were an illusion?

While I am asking questions which You do not answer,
You ask me a question which is so simple that I cannot answer.

I do not even understand the question.
This night and every night, it is the same question.

This nearness to You in the darkness is too simple and too close for excitement.
Your reality, O God, speaks to my life as to an intimate, in the midst of a crowd of fictions:
Lord, God, the whole world tonight seems to be made out of paper.
The most substantial things are ready to crumble or tear apart and blow away.