Learning to Walk in the Dark: Because Sometimes God Shows Up at Night

by Barbara Brown Taylor

“The soul does not grow by addition but by subtraction,” wrote the fourteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhart.

Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. —Psalm 19.2

Pema Chödrön

We are all so busy constructing zones of safety that keep breaking down, she says, that we hardly notice where all the suffering is coming from.

This is not a how-to book, but if it were, the only instruction would be to become more curious about your own darkness. What can you learn about your fear of it by staying with it for a moment before turning on the lights? Where can you feel the fear in your body? When have you felt that way before? What are you afraid is going to happen to you, and what is your mind telling you to do about it? What stories do you tell yourself to keep your fear in place? What helps you stay conscious even when you are afraid? What have you learned in the dark that you could never have learned in the light?

Will you do this?