Lance Phillips • May 19, 2026
I’m not a religious person but sometimes the language of religiosity is useful to reframe approaches to difficult ideas. We live in dark times, ethically dark, often emotionally dark, and, certainly, dark with regard to prospects for better days. The college students I teach, while valiantly going through the machinations of getting educated and engaging their critical thinking skills, often struggle with what their future could be. Many do not see a path, clear or otherwise, to better days. Who can blame them? Things look bleak for the environment, for civil rights, for the economy. When I hear this kind of self-defeating talk, I tell them to focus on their own growth and the influence they have on others.
Here’s where some good old 14th century Christian mystic language comes in. Briefly, in the 14th century a Christian treatise was published anonymously, called The Cloud of Unknowing. It breaks down, essentially, how to have faith without certainty. Of course, this idea showed up again, with respect to art, in Keats, in the 19th century; and in Voltaire, with regard to everything, in the 17th century. In all cases, the root question is how do you connect with an overwhelming idea, which promises no certainty?
From The Cloud of Unknowing:
“Interior work proceeds through lack of knowing, patience, and love.”
The only way forward in dark times is to pursue the idea that things will improve, even if there is no evidence to suggest that that is the case; in fact, especially if there is no evidence of the possibility of improvement. This requires you to replace bitterness with joy, despair with hope, and dis-ease with comfort, even when you don’t know or don’t feel patient or don’t want to love your prospects. This might seem like a tall order, while trying to make ends meet and be present for those surrounding you. It is, but it is absolutely necessary. The only way forward is to believe there is a way forward.
The Cloud of Unknowing lays out a plan—granted this plan is predicated on the Christian idea of God—but it will work for any overarching ideal with which you choose to engage.
- The Cloud of Forgetting
- Start from scratch. Don’t get bogged down in what you think you already know. Move forward with, as Zen practice would call it, Beginner Mind.
- The Cloud of Unknowing
- Make peace with not being able to know everything. Sometimes the effort spent trying to understand something gets in the way of safeguarding your own mental health. No one can control or know everything.
- The Work of Love
- Understanding and Love are two different things. Love doesn’t always require understanding. Offering Love to yourself, or to those around you doesn’t mean condoning behavior. It doesn’t mean understanding behavior. It means seeing Love in everything and reciprocating. Change and growth come next.
- The Necessity of Patience
- Being Patient can feel lonely but it is the root of Love and Understanding and Working for Change, both interiorly and exteriorly.
Get comfortable with the unknown while working to orient yourself better to your own resilience.
REAL RECOGNIZE REAL.
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