"Longing remembrance is born when there is love and absence."
Rubem Alves

Seems this dark night of the soul is indeed about longing remembrance. Longing remembrance of God's loving presence and my spirit and God's Spirit joined as one, breathing together as one.
There is within me the imprint of the gracious love of Christ, of what has been and is now absent.
My spirit desires, longs, yearns to return to that time. Did not the disciples feel the same as they grieved and mourned the death of their Lord?
Did they not live with longing remembrance?
It seems that I will live with longing remembrance for more time to come. It hasn't really abated nor changed. A restless spirit that seeks but cannot find, though not for a lack of trying, or a lack of prayer. I keep plugging along with this longing remembrance ever a part of my heart and my being.
And I cling to that longing remembrance, as though awaiting its promise of return and a hope that cannot be fully explained.
I touch and eat bread and inhale the perfume of the wine and drink it, and although I know my Lord is present there, I am filled with longing remembrance within my soul.
I miss the joy of my salvation, my delight in the Lord, and I cannot recreate it. It must come from outside of me. It must come from God's Spirit, which cannot be controlled. So I wait, with longing remembrance, soulful, sad, hopeful despite the time it is taking. I miss the passion, the joy, the delight, in all of its fullness. I am learning how to be content with thimblefulls. But still the desire for more is there. The more I used to know and have and live within.
Perhaps, with the passion of Christ so close, perhaps, with the my time here coming to an end, and nothing new as yet on the horizon, I am grieving, and filled with longing remembrance even moreso.
There is the greening of the grass and fields, the greening of the woods, and my insides groan of the winter's bleak, brown, still unawakened landscape within me.
With longing remembrance I cling to the love I've known and had and still have, but feel not. It is lonely with the Great Silence. But I wait, and do and serve...all with longing remembrance.