Little Pieces of Light: Darkness and Personal Growth (Revised and Expanded)

by Joyce Rupp

All agree we need light for our journey, but we also require darkness.

we walk within the land of dim shadows, let us consistently hold two truths close to our hearts. First, darkness offers an opportunity for growth. Second, the time will come when night fades and light takes over again. We do not have to sit on the Job-like dung heap of darkness forever, but we must accept a place on it for a while.

We do need a healthy concern regarding dangerous darkness in order to be protected from what seeks to maim, wound, or destroy us. This kind of darkness consumes people’s minds and sucks out their peace.

as do highly resentful, bitter persons who refuse to be healed.

Wherever there is intimidation or a brutal taking away of life in any form, dangerous darkness resides.

This “holy dark” consists of situations that bring gloom, struggle, and depression.

When we no longer have a person, creature, profession, or anything claiming our heart, a part of our self feels like it died.

Fear shoves through our security, our intelligence, and all the wisdoms we’ve learned. This emotion wheedles its way into our mind and convinces us of all sorts of untruths. Fear manages to misdirect our path and lead us astray with its spooky voice and false suggestions.

Bryce Courtenay

“The imagination is always the be...

When I allow fear to take over my imagination, I often believe the darkness will overpower me and I will not be able to find my balance. I fear being beaten down forever, that I will always feel lonely, desolate, and empty and will never regain my energy or my taste for joy and beauty.

Anxiety tends to surface when enormous risks come

Apprehension may loom large when the wide gap in a relationship becomes increasingly apparent

do about our fear

Accept it as a natural response to darkness.

Expect fear to arrive and acknowledge...

always asking in my dark times, “What’s the worst possible thing that could happen?” Then, “How probable is this?”

“What is it that scares me so much?”

help us turn around and look at it,

loneliness, vulnerability, illness, failure, dying, joblessness, lack of identity, rejection, loss of faith, or any other thi...

The more I believe in the possibility of darkness to activate my personal growth, the less power fear will have over me.

Finally, I also need to

“lighten up” when I am in darkness.

I must also accept that I will

never be exactly the same as before I experienced

someone is there to offer kindness and support as I wait in the dense obscurity.

another person

the divine pr...

two messages

“Do not fear”

am with...

the thought of being inside that airless, eerie tomb with its damp smell of death does not entice me at all.

I tend to forget that the wisdoms guiding my life once lay dormant in the dim corridors of myself.

Easter cannot happen without this waiting stage.

tomb or cave

where “a person goes when there is a great work to be accomplished,

There’s nothing “romantic” about interior darkness.

This place of “in between” contains agonizing silence and painful hollowness.

In the tomb times of our lives, who of us would ever believe that our hearts would be singing again with the sweet sounds of joy and eagerness?

the power of the Radiant Light in us urges us to stay in the struggle, to wait in the dark, to believe in the value of this stage of our journey, and to trust that our own budding and blossoming will come again.

There are no clocks or calendars telling us when our inner resurrection will happen.

Maureen Murdock

descent to the underworld:

there is no sense of time;

all-pervasive blackness is moist, cold, and bone-chilling. There are no easy answers in the underworld; there is no quick way out. Silence pervades when the wailing ceases. One

We can’t peer into the tomb of ourself and see if something grows in there either. It’s truly a journey of trust in the transformative process.

we cannot know in the womb of our darkness what our growth will look like until we eventually resurrect.

How readily nature accepts this dark passageway of life—snakes

we humans scream out against this “leaving behind” and “letting go.” Sitting in the darkness and waiting doesn’t come naturally for us even though each of us “sat” for nine months in our mother’s womb, a development as mysterious and marvelous as that of a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly.

learned much about their faith, their insecurities, their strengths and weaknesses.