Praise and Lament in a Time of Darkness

Rainer Maria Rilke, whom Robert Bly used to call “the greatest poet of the last 500 years,” gives us useful and profound advice for living in a fraught time like ours in this one sentence: “Walk your walk of lament on a path of praise.”

“Ukrainian children are fleeing Russian aggression. Przemyśl, Poland 27/02/2022 ” Photo by By Mirek Pruchnicki from Przemyśl, Sanok, Polska. Wikimedia Commons.

This sentence summarizes the essence of what mysticism is. It marries the Via Positiva and the Via Negativa: the joy and wonder, reverence and gratitude along with the suffering and grief.  It tells us to hold the grief in an embrace of Joy.

It echoes what Julian of Norwich wrote when she talks of learning to live with both “mirth and mourning” and how “we live with a wondrous mixture of well and woe” and how “the mingling of both well-being and distress in us is so astonishing that we can hardly tell which state we or our neighbor are in.  That’s how astonishing it is!”

And a promise from God. God does not say, “You will not be tempted; you will not be troubled; you will not be distressed.”  What God said was, “You shall not be overcome.”  Again, “Listen to these words and be strong in absolute trust, in both well and woe.”  Aren’t these lessons we learn from Martin Luther King Jr, Fred Shuttlesworth, Nelson Mandela, Dorothy Stang, John Lewis and President VolodymyrZelenskyy for their trust that gave birth to courage?

Zelenskyy speaks via video link in Prague to 70,000 people demonstrating against Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Isn’t this what Mary Oliver, the “praise poet” is also writing about when she insists that we pray by paying deep attention to the beauty that is in nature all around us?  Oliver, who had been raped by her father as a child, knew about the “the dark river of grief,” and spent a lifetime healing herself–and the rest of us–through her prayer of “paying attention” to the wonders and gifts of Mother Earth.

We need to dive deeper into the beauty of existence itself while humanity’s sins and Putin’s war rages on—in order to survive.

Let us learn not to shut our eyes to the suffering that is so in our faces today, but also to wrap it all in a song of praise and thanksgiving for what is deeper than human maleficence: The miracle of our existence and Earth’s hospitality and the Universe’s 13.8 billion years of gestation that have brought us this far.


Adapted from Matthew Fox, Original Blessing, p. 144.  

And Matthew Fox, Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic…and Beyond, pp. 101, 103f.

To read a transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.

Banner image: Photo by Lukas Robertson on Unsplash

Queries for Contemplation

What does Rilke’s teaching to “walk your walk of lament on a path of praise” say to you?


Recommended Reading

Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic–and Beyond

Julian of Norwich lived through the dreadful bubonic plague that killed close to 50% of Europeans. Being an anchoress, she ‘sheltered in place’ and developed a deep wisdom that she shared in her book, Showings, which was the first book in English by a woman. A theologian way ahead of her time, Julian develops a feminist understanding of God as mother at the heart of nature’s goodness. Fox shares her teachings in this powerful and timely and inspiring book.
“What an utterly magnificent book. The work of Julian of Norwich, lovingly supported by the genius of Matthew Fox, is a roadmap into the heart of the eco-spiritual truth that all life breathes together.”  –Caroline Myss
Now also available as an audiobook HERE.

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10 thoughts on “Praise and Lament in a Time of Darkness”

  1. Richard Reich-Kuykendall
    Richard Reich-Kuykendall

    Matthew, Your question for us today is: “What does Rilke’s teaching to “walk your walk of lament on a path of praise” say to you?” Your answer is that “This sentence summarizes the essence of what mysticism is. It marries the Via Positiva and the Via Negativa: the joy and wonder, reverence and gratitude along with the suffering and grief. It tells us to hold the grief in an embrace of Joy.” Then you say that Julian of Norwich agrees in saying “the mingling of both well-being and distress in us is so astonishing that we can hardly tell which state we or our neighbor are in. That’s how astonishing it is!” Finally you say that Mary “Oliver, who had been raped by her father as a child, knew about the “the dark river of grief,” and spent a lifetime healing herself–and the rest of us–through her prayer of “paying attention” to the wonders and gifts of Mother Earth.” So, what does Rilke’s teaching say to me? It says that I’m right there with Rilke, Julian and Mary Oliver on this…

  2. The deep darkness of evil makes the light of wisdom shine even brighter.
    We do not praise the dark/soul perpetrators of evil, like Putin. But we do praise light bearers of true virtue and wisdom like Navalny, Zelensky, Mary Oliver, Nelson Mandela, Hildegard, Jesus, and hosts of others past and present….

  3. Isabel Stanley

    Rilke’s beautiful phrase ,”to walk your walk of lament on a path of praise,” reminds me of WH Auden’s powerful poem, “In Memory of WB Yeats” written on the eve of World War II in 1939 at the time of the Irish poet Yeats’ death. It was a time when “all the dogs of Europe bark[ed] . . . each sequestered in its hate.” Auden freely admitted that “poetry makes nothing happen” but insisted that it was “a voice,” an essential voice to “teach the free man how to praise” despite being “in the prison of his days.” Today the people of Ukraine and others are in a distressing prison of circumstance. May they be given the gift of praise.

    1. Richard Reich-Kuykendall
      Richard Reich-Kuykendall

      Isabel, Thank you for sharing! Auden’s poem is truly powerful and moving, especially in light of our current world situation.

  4. Gratefulness.org Word for the Day on 19 January 2022 is one I keep close: “Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope.”—Rebecca Solnit.

    I read somewhere that hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up. The courage of the people of the Ukraine is like a flame of hope; they may be killed or imprisoned but their light can never be extinguished and can light us up to act.

  5. Jeanette Metler

    Often humanity causes me to weep, however it is in the beauty of nature that I find a safe refuge… in which I am offered comfort, consolation and yes even wise counsel… that not only gives me a sense of hope, but that also fills me with a sense of gratitude. And every once in awhile humanity surprises me, revealing a good news story that reminds me that there still remains an ember of something beautiful and true within the hearts, minds and souls of humanity… that not all is lost. And these little embers that burn… kindle something within me… to keep moving forward, one day at a time, one step at a time… doing my best to keep that spark within me alive.

  6. 💔❤️🙏 that teaching of Eckhart confused and confounded me for a good while. But now I see that if we place evil as something not cut off from divine reality but a teacher within divine reality teaching us so many lessons like our utter dependency on God and interdependency on one another, and in times of darkness, our need to be prophets and stand firm for justice and speak truth to power so war can be avoided. We have a long way to go as a human race but like you said evil does not have the last word.

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