The Good Fight; Silence & Mystery

By the Daily Meditations Team

2/08/2026

This is a weekly summary of the previous week’s Daily Meditations.

February 2, 2026: More Lessons From Soviet Occupation Re: Government Violence in Minneapolis (MF)

Adam Bucko grew up in Soviet-occupied Poland. He writes about the horrors, the killings, the fear. Then he suggests: …Contemplative prayer matters, but only when we understand it rightly….We pray…in our fear, our grief, our anger, our confusion, and we bring all of it into stillness.

To sit in contemplation is to open ourselves to the Living Presence at the heart of everything, a quiet but insistent movement toward wholeness, toward justice, toward communion.…

Those priests I remember from my childhood (who were killed by the Soviet regime) understood this intuitively.…They became part of extended families, assisting households broken by violence….They understood that social change happens not as a result of lone heroes, but from communities and movements acting together over time.*

Woody Guthrie~ All You Fascists Bound To Lose

“All You Fascists Bound to Lose,” from a radio broadcast by Woody Guthrie. Video by UnAmerican Bandstand.

February 3, 2026: Bearing Up While Fighting the Good Fight (MF)

St. Paul instructed us to “fight the good fight.” What are some ways to stay grounded in the fight? Pay attention to good news alongside the sad. Take walks in nature. Interact with friends and loved ones. Appreciate good people. The Monks Walking for Peace are a wonderful example. (See related DM here.)

Also inspiring are the thousands of Minnesotans who show up, in arctic temperatures, to protest and work to impede ICE. Look for allies, like Rachel Maddow on MSNOW. Find inspiration in people like John of the Cross, who modeled how to survive dark nights of the soul and society.

February 4, 2006: God (GG)

Gianluigi has noticed that when he speaks as a theologian, he has to remember that people can project all kinds of things on the word “God.” Sometimes even GG has to admit that God is difficult to define.

Matthew, in his book Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God… Including the Unnameable God, offers some practical advice. Who is this, what is this, that is without a name and whom we can never name?

He says: How eager we are to seize and to hold and to name and to categorize and to box up into concepts and then rules and then doctrines and then dogmas.…Words fail us in the face of mystery.… Perhaps, as Matthew says, we need to cease naming and projecting when it comes to Divinity.

The mystery of creation, by Navajo shaman/artist David Paladin:
“Floating Upon the Mist of Nothingness, the Gods Dreamed of Man
and Danced in Wonderment.” Published with permission.

February 5, 2026: Mystery (GG)

The deepest realities of life cannot be completely understood with our intellect. But that doesn’t mean they should be rejected. There are, for instance, “everyday mysteries,” such as the marvel of being alive, the portal of “Sister Death,” and relationships with beloved humans and pets.

And then there is God, the mystery of mysteries. In his book, Naming the Unnameable, Matthew says: What is mystery is very shy around words and namings. Mystery does not want to be named. It wishes to remain hidden. The uniqueness of the Divine, the immensity of the Divine, renders it a great mystery that may well be without any name.

February 6, 2026: Silence (GG)

Silence and silent meditation are amongst the most precious human activities. As Matthew Fox writes: Mystery invites silence…. and Stillness leads to an encounter with the Divine. Often the encounter is far beyond words.…

Brain researcher Andrew Newberg demonstrated that in deep states of meditation we go beyond thought and drop into an “experience of boundlessness…”

Psychotherapist and mystic Estell Frankel tells us: “Evidently, our brains are hardwired to experience the mystical state of oneness we call ‘God’ and Kabbalists refer to as ayin or Ein Sof (literally, ‘Without End’). Ein Sof is the boundless and transcendent aspect of divinity that is beyond all form….

What kind of society could we germinate if we cultivated such habits such as stillness and mindfulness?

February 7, 2026: Leonard Cohen on Saintliness (MF)

Buddhist and Jewish musician and sage Leonard Cohen asks the question: What is a saint?* He answers this way: A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility….I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence.

Matthew says: A saint takes us to the edge of what it is to be human, a saint does not live safely in a box. He adds: There is something edgy or “remote” or wild or different or extreme about saintliness.…Love is at its center….In the streets of Minnesota and beyond.

Leonard Cohen – Anthem (Official Live in London 2008)

“There is a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in” – Leonard Cohen sings “Anthem” (Official Live in London 2008)

*Adam Bucko, “They Killed Him in Public and Called It Order: On Practicing Contemplation When the State Kills,” Contemplative Witness with Adam Bucko on Substack, January 25, 2026.

Banner image: The peace, the silence, and the beauty of falling snow. Photo by Cynthia Greb. Used with permission.