Two Faces of God

Tavard, George. The Inner Life, Foundations of Christian Mysticism.
Paulist Press, 1976. pp. 93, 94

"All along the spiritual life, God may be known also in these two ways,
as light, presence, ground of our being, fulfillment, spouse; or as night,
darkness, absence, cloud, abyss of all being, the inaccessible, the
all-other. Some spiritual tempers are better attuned to perceive the
immanence, others the transcendence, of God. The way of immanence usually
leads to an illuminated knowledge and awareness of God, the way of
transcendence to an obscure awareness of him in the night. But the two may
also alternate in everyday experience. And the obscure knowledge of God as
absent may well be better than the joyful knowledge of him as present, for
it is less liable to illusion and misinterpretation."