How the Dark Night of Society & Earth Meets Advent

In yesterday’s DM, we meditated on Rilke’s powerful poem about the darkness, the via negativa, that is integral to the season of Advent. 

It has special meaning today in the political sphere because Climate Change and Global Warming are presenting humanity with a stark reality of profound suffering of Mother Earth.  And a president-elect and his party have made explicit that they seek to dismantle laws passed to slow down the ongoing assault on Mother Earth.  And to “drill, baby, drill” instead. And launch mass deportations. 

They are also on their way to replace a government of, by and for the people (which itself needs profound re-making) with government of, by, and for the super-rich.  An oligarchy, in other words.

All this spells darkness for humanity and millions of other species and certainly for efforts at maintaining and improving on a government based on recognizing the basic common dignity and needs of every citizen. 

Thus many sense that we are slipping into a dark night of society and economics and politics indeed.  In this context, meditations on Advent and its sense of positive darkness seem especially apropos.

Psalm 139, for example, which was the favorite psalm of Howard Thurman, the spiritual genius behind the civil rights movement, sings this way about the via negativa:

Oh, where can I go from your spirit,
or where can I fall from your face?
If I climb the heavens, you are there.
If I lie in the grave, you are there.
If I take the wings of the dawn
And dwell at the sea’s farthest end,
even there your hand would lead me,
your right hand would hold me fast.
If I say: ‘Let the darkness hide me
and the light around me be night,’
even darkness is not dark for you
and the night is as clear as the day.  (Ps.139:7-12)

Feminist philosopher Carol Christ tells us how women in particular have tasted darkness and nothingness and have learned its lessons while recognizing also how important it is to move beyond it.  Women must even read themselves sidewise into analyses of the experience of nothingness.  Women need a literature that names their pain and calls them to see the emptiness in their lives as an occasion for insight rather than as one more indication of their worthlessness. 

Women need stories that will tell them that their ability to face the darkness in their lives is an indication of strength, not weakness. 

Such strength is a requisite for all as we face the nothingness that climate denial and democracide will unleash on us all in the near future.

This is one reason why meditations on the darkness of the Solstice and of Advent are critical at this time. 

Along with the promise that shines in the light of Hannukah, and the glory and doxa of Christmas, and the call of Kwanzaa to live a life of principles and integrity that put community first.

*Carol Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 17.

Adapted from Matthew Fox, Original Blessing, pp. 148-158.

See also Fox, Meditations with Meister Eckhart, pp. 35-64.

Banner Image: Dark night of winter. Photo by Leyre on Unsplash

Queries for Contemplation

Have you had experiences of Nothingness?  What did they teach you?  Are you having experiences of Nothingness as you look forward to what is coming from Project 2025 and other movements that countenance matricide, democracide and ecocide?  Are you gearing up for resistance?

Recommended Reading

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story

Meditations with Meister Eckhart: A Centering Book

A centering book by Matthew Fox. This book of simple but rich meditations exemplifies the deep yet playful creation-centered spirituality of Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart was a 13th-century Dominican preacher who was a mystic, prophet, feminist, activist, defender of the poor, and advocate of creation-centered spirituality, who was condemned shortly after he died.
“These quiet presentations of spirituality are remarkable for their immediacy and clarity.” –Publishers Weekly.