“Falling and rising is the way”

“Falling and rising is the way” describes a recurring rhythm in spiritual life: moments when God’s presence feels certain alternate with periods when God seems absent. The phrase, associated with Howard Thurman, presents this movement not as a failure to achieve lasting religious certainty but as part of the way faith is lived and renewed.

A Rhythm of Presence and Absence

The book traces this pattern to Plotinus and Origen, and describes its two poles in stark terms: religious experience can reach great heights, while at other times the person feels left in a desert, longing for God but unable to find God. Such absence can be painful and can threaten faith. The phrase holds both conditions together, resisting the idea that spiritual life proceeds in a steady ascent.

That rhythm also belongs to the book’s account of mystical experience. Mystics seek God, not simply visions or unusual sensations; direct awareness of God may be powerful yet temporary, and its passing can leave a renewed longing for the presence that was felt. Because such an experience cannot be produced at will and is understood as a gift, a period of spiritual dryness is not necessarily evidence that faith has failed. The movement between presence and absence is part of the account, not an exception to it.

Thurman’s Meaning

Thurman places the phrase within the cycles of deep certainty and confused questioning that he believed people experience in their religious lives. He does not present uncertainty as the final word: he describes an inner light that brings a person back. A true encounter with God, in his account, gives life a new focal point and leads toward surrender to God.

That surrender is not merely a private feeling. Thurman describes it as a gradual transfer of the self’s center, a slow moral conquest that redirects life beyond private desires and personal risks. He argues that a genuine encounter can be tested by whether it changes who a person is and how that person lives. The phrase therefore joins spiritual fluctuation to moral consequence: falling and rising matter because the return can release new purpose and energy.

Thurman’s own formation took place amid racial segregation in the United States. His grandmother, a former slave who could not read, inspired his faith; he read the Bible to her, though she refused to hear passages by Paul because Paul had told slaves to obey their masters. This background makes clear that the spiritual life the book associates with Thurman is not detached from history and injustice. The phrase does not erase those conditions; its emphasis on renewed direction sits alongside a life shaped by them.

Practice, Patience, and Return

The phrase does not promise that a person can summon God’s presence by effort. Thurman describes prayer and the reading of Scripture, especially the Psalms and Gospels, as ways of becoming ready and receptive. The initiative remains with God: people may move toward God, but the touch that changes them is not theirs to command. This distinction makes the expression a call to persistence rather than a technique for guaranteeing a spiritual high.

The book’s concluding reflections extend the same patience to ordinary spiritual practice. Prayer, meditation, study, and silence may feel rich on some days and dry or useless on others; their cumulative effect over years matters more than any single experience. The contrast between richness and dryness echoes the phrase’s alternating movement and supports its practical counsel: anticipate change without giving up.

Nor does the goal amount to collecting extraordinary experiences. The book describes mystics as longing for God and, at the deepest level, hoping for union with God. It connects that longing with love, including the difficult work of loving people who are hard to love. In this sense, “Falling and rising is the way” is both a description of spiritual experience and a measure of endurance: absence may return, but faith can be redirected toward love and renewed purpose.