Experiencing Dark Times

Who likes to live in dark times? When the fool rules instead of the wise; when evil is called “good” and good is called “evil;” when the word “truth” is used to spread lies; when fear is all around? 

But this is what happens when societal bonds break down. The prophetic books in the Bible are replete with these kinds of descriptions, which were written not as “signals” to tell future generations about “when” the world would end, but as warnings about what happens when we stop caring for each other and chaos ensues. It does feel indeed like an end.

The very first step that the Creation Spirituality tradition suggests at times like this, is counterintuitive to many of us. It consists of not blocking out the experience of chaos and pain, but entering it consciously. Facing the darkness, admitting the pain, allowing the pain to be pain, is never easy. This is why courage — big-heartedness — is the most essential virtue of the spiritual journey. 

It takes courage today, to simply not look away — which is still a possibility for those not yet touched personally by the evil that is being unleashed. But it is precisely the courage to feel what is happening that is pivotal, even before taking action. Matthew Fox keeps telling us that the Via Transformativa, that is, all actions taken on behalf of the good of the whole, must be rooted in the Via Negativa, that is, the experience of the pain of the whole (our own pain, as well as the pain of others). Otherwise, our actions will be shallow or desperate.

I was very impressed by those Jewish survivors of the Shoah who came out in London, UK, on the day of the Shoah remembrance (celebrated there on January 27), to speak up about the genocide in Gaza. They said that “Never Again” applies to everyone, and that they refuse the exploitation of their pain to justify yet another Shoah like the one planned and executed by Trump and Netanyahu in Gaza.* 

Courage. It takes courage. The people who gathered in London on a cold day exude courage and dignity. What moved them to get out of their homes to fight against the ethical morass in which so many are getting caught? These are the people keeping high the banner of the ethical teachings of Judaism. But why are they able to do so? Because they experienced pain very deeply and, at the same time, they refused to be swallowed by it.

Pain is bad. Yet, when experienced with courage, pain and suffering can become our teachers. There is a strength learned from suffering that cannot be learned any other way. Suffering converts the fuel of Eros into the energy of living Eros out in our personal and social lives. Beauty is not learned or valued without the suffering that makes us big enough and strong enough to be proper vessels of the beautiful. 

I see these Foxian sentences as perfectly applicable to Stephen Kapos and the other Holocaust survivors in London, to whom goes my deference and my most heartfelt thanks.

* Stephen Kapos, “Never Again Means Never Again for Anybody,” Double Down News, January 28, 2025. 

All quotes from Matthew Fox’s Original Blessing, pp. 142 and 145.

Banner Image: People at prayer at the Wailing Wall, Jerusalem. Photo by Godot13. Wikimedia Commons. 

Queries for Contemplation

Are there moments when I am turning away from reality/pain? How am I recovering my native courage?

Related Readings by Matthew Fox

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