Darkness, Questions, Poetry and Spiritual Hope

I liked the quote in Darkness, Questions, Poetry and Spiritual Hope that said "One can never understand what hope is really about unless one wrestles with despair. The same is ture with faith. There has to be some serious doubt, otherwise faith becomes merely a dogmatic formula, an orthodoxy, a way of evading the complexity of life rather than engaging honestly with life." I think reading the book A Grief Observed really brings this statement to life. I think reading this statement before i read and discussed "A Grief Observed" would not of had as much effect or meaning. But after reading about C.S. Lewis' struggles, it really brings a deeper understanding. "Darkness complicates our comfortable Sunday school answers..." It causes us to ask questions that we may not be able to answer. Darkness causes us to question things we might of been so sure of before.
I also like the point of he made about the question of "Where is God?" is much different from "Where is God in the Darkness?". Its would be easy to answer the question "where is God?" when things in our life are going great. But hard to answer when we are going through "darkness" in our lives...
I also have learned as Professor Corrigan has pointed out that important questions create silence. Important questions need thought and meditation. you can not quickly come up with an answer for these questions. We need to pause, listen to the question, repeat the question, and live the question as a process. Its ok not to have an immediate answer to questions.
Jesus promises us "I will never leave you. The presence of God with us in the dark makes it possible for us to sit with the question of darkness without being destroyed by madness."
"Unless we face the darkness, we have nothing to offer those who are hurting and we have no resources for ourselves when we get our own turn at pain"