Next In-person walk: Saturday, March 14, 9-10 a.m.
Covenant Presbyterian Church back parking lot, 2222 at Mo-Pac, Austin
Next Zoom discussion: March 14, 2026 10:30 AM Central Time (US and Canada), Zoom link is here.
By Janet Davis
Walk In: Losing Our Lives by Choosing the Descent of Lament
In this culture we display a compulsive avoidance of difficult matters and an obsession with distraction. Because we cannot acknowledge our grief, we’re forced to stay on the surface of life. Poet Kahlil Gibran said, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” We experience little genuine joy in part because we avoid the depths. We are an ascension culture. We love rising, and we fear going down. Consequently, we find ways to deny the reality of this rich but difficult territory, and we are thinned psychically. We live in what I call a “flat-line culture,” where the band is narrow in terms of what we let ourselves fully feel. We may cry at a wedding or when we watch a movie, but the full-throated expression of emotion is off-limits.
The bias against going down arises from our cultural conditioning. Christian mythology teaches that resurrection and ascension are the proper directions for a spiritual life. The very earth is seen as a fallen place, and our bodies are perceived as fallen objects that can be redeemed only by the soul finally getting out of this tawdry place and moving on to its final reward. You rise above, getting better, higher, and lighter. But low-lying places of regression, of descent, of lamentation are not less sacred. Poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes, “No matter how deeply I go into myself / my God is dark, and like a webbing made / of a hundred roots that drink in silence.”
Right now, your heart is beating in utter darkness inside your chest. You were conceived in the dark of your mother’s womb. Everything that is happening aboveground is because of what’s happening below, in the shadows. We have to descend into the dark, yet we are continually trying to climb out of it….
Francis Weller, from The Sun
Questions
Do you fear going down? Is there a path of descent you have been avoiding though distraction, neglect or superficiality? Perhaps you have even labeled your avoidance as faith.
Do you have any examples in your life of people who faithfully chose lament or sorrow?
How might you open to the possibility of meeting God’s darkness this month?
Center: Meeting the Holy One in the Depths of Darkness
That he can still speak.
That in the depths of his pain and his dying, he does
not cease to say what he needs to say.
That as he lets go, he leaves them with words of
comfort and release, of lamentation and love.
Forgive. You will be with me. Behold. Forsaken.
Thirst. Finished. Into your hands.
Knowing that these are his last words, but not his
final ones.
That after this, there will be a span of silence. And
that soon the silence will come to an end.
For now, we watch, we weep, we bear witness, we
wait.
Questions
Can you sense the Presence of God within each of these last words of Jesus, spoken in the deepest darkness? Feel your way through the list in such a way as to come to taste the darkness of God.
What darknesses, within or without, are you being called to simply bear witness to?
Which of Jesus’ final words resonates most with you right now?
Walk Out: Saving Our Lives by Being with Those in Darkness
Please
If you are one who has practice
meeting the pain of the world,
we need you. Right now we need you
to teach us it is possible to swallow
what is weighty and still be able to rise.
We need you to remind us we can
be furious and scared and near feral
over injustice and still thrill at the taste
of a strawberry, ripe and sweet,
can still meet a stranger and shake
their hand, believing in their humanness.
We need you to show us how
we, too, can fall into the darkest,
unplumbed pit and learn there
a courage and beauty
we could never learn from the light.
If you have drowned in sorrow
and still have somehow found
a way to breathe, please, lead us.
You are the one with the crumbs
we need, the ones we will use to find
our way back to the home of our hearts.
Questions
When have you had the opportunity to be with another person in darkness?
How has that calling and opportunity shaped your understanding of and relationship to times of darkness or lament?
How might you choose to meet those in the dark this month? What might you teach, remind, show, or offer them
One Response
Oh, wow, another powerful article. This is a TOUGH one, especially now. I love that you are not afraid to ask, and process the opportunities, of these hard questions. It takes all kinds of of courage and willingness to be vulnerable and to walk, or sometimes run, through those dark times. Thank you for your beautiful words, as always. Love and hugs.