There is so much suffering and grief in this life, in our world. How we do we ever sing anything besides dirges or dance passionately or dream of unknown worlds or launch ourselves into discovering what is yet to be known?
No stranger to the land of sorrow knows how to navigate the muffled world where loss echoes in each sight, sound, taste, and touch. And even if we grow more experienced, it is still odd and unbalancing and disconcerting for who isn’t there, what is gone, where and when we can never go again. It is especially difficult because society, for the most part, expects us to grieve privately and keep doing, to reassure others we’re okay, and generally not to be messy where others might be reminded of their own troubles and pain and especially if they bear any part in the ones we’re experiencing.
It is, of course, not only the big sorrows that we must navigate. Life has a multitude of little sorrows, disappointments, failures, misses, and mistakes and how we live with those. Do we allow ourselves to be swept over by shame, guilt, or grief, immobilized and devastated? How much can we bear before it isn’t a matter of what we allow but what tidal wave we cannot possibly hold back? I particularly feel it when I disappoint people greatly, failing on a promise, even if the circumstances are beyond my control. I can easily end up whelmed and miserable, until I can remember to treat myself with the care I would offer a beloved friend. Being out of work or furloughed against our desire, facing stacks of bills and no relief in sight, a misunderstanding, an argument, another day of being less able than yesterday to put on socks or remember the people we love — any of these and more can whirl us into deeper grief and suffering.
Amid these sorrows — our losses, our keenly experienced lacks and limits — we yearn for something to help carry us through. Some of us may experience that something as the Holy, or find it in community, or meet that life raft in the arts or in social justice efforts or in hiking through the wilderness. But we who have leagues to go before we sleep and faithful promises to keep cannot touch those centers that help us carry on if we cannot slow down, breathe, and offer ourselves and each other the love and generosity we would to a beloved friend. A friend who is suffering is invited in, offered the soothing comforts we can offer, welcomed into remembering they are loved and lovable, in all this with others who care, and are needed here and now. If you have ever received such a gift from someone when you’ve been in need, you know what a life-changing few moments that gift is.
Whirled up, we need space to slow down, find each other, let our sorrows be what they are. We need space to grieve and to be afraid and we need each other to hold onto, to remind us of how we’re shaped by love and the love we still have to offer. We need generosity and radical welcome, each of us in our own struggles, each with our own sorrows, tending gently to each other. And then we may be surprised to find the song, the breath, the helping hand, the faithful word, the warmth of sunlight that turns us once again to appreciating this world’s goodness alongside this world’s sorrows. We may be surprised to turn once again to bold heartedly living the best we can as we are, finite, broken, yearning, grieving, whelmed and overwhelmed, discovering that here too beside our salty tears, prisms still create rainbows, promises may yet be pursued, and our hearts that have faltered may yet fly.
