Tag: suffering

God in Disguise: a guest appearance on Fuel Radio

3 Comments


Last week, I had the privilege of being interviewed as a guest on a friend’s podcast, Fuel Radio. It was fun to reflect with Rod Janz on the process of writing my book, God in Disguise, the lessons I carry with me from having been immersed in urban poor communities in India, and the way my spiritual journey has continued to unfold since my book was released last year. In particular, I enjoyed having the chance to intentionally remember the ways that failure and pain have unexpectedly become catalysts for the deepest healing in my life over the past few years. You can listen to the whole half-hour podcast here.

If you’ve read God in Disguise, I’d love to hear from you about how to book resonates (or doesn’t) with your own spiritual journey. Whether you’ve read the book or not, have you ever experienced an unraveling of your faith or your worldview? What happened next? Have there been times that you have found God in unexpected places, or found healing through what felt at the time like a dark and hopeless situation?

Prayers for the deported

Leave a comment

Today, The Mudroom has published an essay I wrote about the grief of journeying alongside refugee claimants who are denied asylum, and the ways that my coworkers and I have learned to care for our souls so that we can continue to reach out to new arrivals despite the recurring pain of having friends deported. Here’s how it starts:

Silently, we sit around in a circle as my co-worker picks up the first candle, speaking a name and a prayer as she lights the wick and sets the tiny flame down in the middle of the table.  We each follow suit, one prayer and tongue of fire after another.

God, we don’t know where they are or if they’re alive…

Please keep her safe…

Please provide whatever he needs…

Just don’t let them be alone….

May she know that she is loved.

Each candle on the table represents a friend who has been deported. Each prayer is for a family or an individual we have accompanied through the process of making a refugee claim in Canada. These people have all failed to secure the protection they have asked for, often because their story was not believed…

You can read the rest of the piece over at the The Mudroom.  If you are someone who works with/lives alongside marginalized communities facing frequent violence or loss, what are the ways that you have learned to tend your soul in such a way that you are able to continue loving and reaching out without succumbing to burnout, hopelessness, or compassion fatigue? How can we strengthen ourselves to live as friends and allies with the oppressed over the long haul? I’d love to hear from you.

The Longest Night of the Year

2 Comments
the longest night of the year

photo credit: Adam Hill (http://www.adamhillstudios.ca/)

Last night I attended a special service at my church known as “The Longest Night of the Year,” or “Blue Christmas,” when we as a community remember those for whom this season is marked by grief rather than celebration. We make space to bring our unfulfilled longings, losses, and pain into the open instead of hiding them behind any kind of festive veneer, and we sings songs that are full of both sorrow and hope.

The room was dark except for a few radiant candles. Sometimes the room was filled with beautiful, gentle music; other times it was hushed and still. We passed around a fresh cedar bough–a symbol of cleansing and healing–and as each person held it in their hands, they were invited to name their sadness aloud or take a moment of silence to bring it to mind. Then they would pass the fragrant branch to the person beside them and we would all speak over them, “Oh God, surround them in your love.”

Many of us shed tears, but it was not a depressing atmosphere. It was honest and sad, but hopeful. We believed that Jesus is coming, and that he has come–that Jesus is with us now. I believe that many of us left feeling both stronger and more vulnerable than when we came in. (At least, that’s how it was for me.) That space was holy. I cannot think of a better way to observe Advent.

Earlier this week, I wrote a reflection on grieving with hope for SheLoves Magazine’s Advent series. It’s a brief meditation on one of the lesser-known women in the Christmas story, and what it means to celebrate the light even while we are surrounded by darkness:

“Women figure prominently in the story of Jesus’ birth. From an early age, I learned about Mary’s unwavering trust in God, and her courage; I was told about Elizabeth’s joy at the fulfillment of a dream she had long since abandoned. Yet as an adult, I find that the most haunting female presence in the story is a woman I never learned about during my childhood—a woman who technically wasn’t even there…”

Head on over to SheLoves Magazine to read the rest.

A refuge in each other

Leave a comment

refugees boat people

Last week, I attended a memorial service for a woman I had never met—the mother of a man who was unable to see her before she passed away because he and his family are in the midst of a lengthy refugee claims process. They can’t leave Canada until their case has been decided, but their extended family is spread out across the globe. For more than a decade, their story has been shaped by war in their home country, and separation in other countries as various family members have had to settle wherever they could find asylum and safety. The “service” was an informal gathering of friends and fellow refugee claimants from diverse backgrounds and religious traditions. There were Muslim blessings and Christian prayers, heartfelt stories, tears, hugs, and hot tea. So many in the room could identify with the powerlessness of being halfway around the world, separated from loved ones whom they might never see again, unable to help in their distress or to be involved in their lives. I’m sure that nothing could have dulled the pain this family felt as they grieved the loss of a beloved parent, but perhaps being with others in this way was helpful in opening up a space to grieve well: to name their loss, to mourn deeply, and to begin to heal.

I saw so much of the Kingdom of God in that room: an inclusive and diverse community of people taking care of one another. I saw so much courage and strength in people who find the will every day to continue living in the midst of uncertainty, fear, and sadness; who learn a new language and raise their children and start a new life in a foreign place they never chose in the first place. In the midst of a bewildering situation of suffering that we all struggle to understand, they are asking their questions together, praying together, being together. In their compassion for one another, I sensed hope—despite all the evil and sorrow in the world, the people in that room have not been robbed of their humanity. They still choose to love one another.

It was humbling to be allowed to take part in that community.

My thoughts and prayers are with refugees around the world this week who find themselves waiting, in refugee camps or in boats adrift at sea, for someone to offer them safe harbor. I pray that more of us and our governments would be willing to make room for them in our societies; to open our borders and our hearts to extend the welcome of Christ to our neighbors.

Runaway Radical

Leave a comment
I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, Jonathan Hollingsworth and his mother Amy tell a very important story about spiritual abuse–one that exposes the secret pain of so many in the church who have been hurt by manipulative pastors and other leaders who maintain their own power with legalistic interpretations of scripture. On the other hand, the book seems to zero in on counter-cultural expressions of living out Jesus’ “hard teachings” as the root of the problem, rather than the toxic individuals and theology that resulted in a traumatizing outcome for Jonathan.At this stage in my life, it was necessary for me to leave the slum to begin working through my personal baggage. However, I have close friends who were able to sustain healthy lives in that same context for nearly twenty years, raising their children in the slum and building deep and meaningful relationships with their neighbors. I know others who have done the same thing in the slums of Cambodia, and Manila. My former pastor at a church in inner-city Los Angeles is also living a difficult, sacrificial, rewarding life with his family–hearing gunshots at night isn’t “safe,” but they have counted the cost. There are thriving communities of people across North America who have chosen “radical” paths of service and solidarity, and who have learned together how to sustain themselves emotionally and spiritually in the midst of that.

The word “radical” is often conflated with the word “extreme,” but the meanings of the two words are distinct. “Radical” comes from the Lain word for “root,” and when we speak of the radical call of Jesus, we are not talking about going to extremes, but about getting down to the roots of something. The Way of Jesus is not concerned with outward action for its own sake, but with healing the heart: his message of compassion, forgiveness, and sacrifice addresses the roots of injustice in our world, and the roots of dysfunction in our own hearts. But sometimes the decisions and actions we need to make in order to dig up the roots of greed, fear, hatred, or indifference in ourselves and in our world may look extreme–especially to a culture and a society that has founded its prosperity and happiness on things remaining exactly as they are.

Reflecting on my own spiritual journey towards grace and my experiences with pursuing justice, community, simplicity, and solidarity with the poor,I have written a review of the book for Sojourners. Click on over to check it out.

Forgiveness in the thick of it

Leave a comment
          In our house, we host a weekly event after Tuesday night community dinners called Creative World Justice. The purpose is pretty much what it sounds like—to worship, learn, and brainstorm together about the creative steps we can take towards promoting justice in the world, as individuals and as a group. We’ve just begun a series exploring violence and nonviolence, and last night I had the privilege of leading a discussion on nonviolence in the Bible, particularly in the life of Jesus.I’ve read these verses so many times myself over the years, and I’ve often taken part in theological discussions and detached, intellectual conversations in which we have discussed violence on an impersonal, even hypothetical level. We hold the world’s problems at arm’s length, arguing back and forth about historical wars, current large-scale conflicts that are far enough away to exist for us only in newspaper headlines, or potential scenarios of aggression or crime in which self-defense would be necessary.

But last night, Jesus’ words and example of forgiveness and enemy love had never felt more powerful. The room was full of people for whom violence is a personal issue. Many of them grew up in violent homes, were abused as children, belonged to gangs when they were younger, had boyfriends or husbands who beat them up, or perhaps served jail time for beating up someone themselves. One woman came into the discussion reeling from the news that a close friend had been the victim of an extremely savage crime this week—one which may yet take her life; it remains to be seen whether she will make a recovery in the hospital or not. Is it offensive or even ridiculous to talk about forgiveness against the backdrop of such vitriolic hatred and evil?

Jesus’ teachings about forgiveness and nonviolence are difficult for us all, but especially for so many people in that room, whose lives have been shaped in significant ways by violence. I really respected the courage of my new friends to take his words seriously and to grapple with them right in the thick of it all. I admired their humility and honesty in sharing the difficult emotions and the fragile places in their lives that have made it difficult for them to respond to violence in any other way than with retribution. Some of them are also very new on their journey with Jesus, and I was inspired by their passion to soak up this new way of being in the world.

In the face of so much raw honesty and pain, I was humbled myself by the reminder that this nonviolent path is not a solution that I have to hand out to people. It’s not anything I have mastered myself, and it certainly is no short-cut or cure-all for the pain. It’s a difficult and lengthy process of inner transformation, and it is a learning curve that we are all on together, stumbling and backtracking and finding our way forward again. But it is a potent anecdote to the fight-or-flight world and the survival mentality that we’ve all been raised with. In fact, it is exactly in the thrall of horrific violence that forgiveness and creative, compassionate resistance are needed: to overcome evil with good.

A new beginning (and a poem from the ashes)

Leave a comment
We’ve been in Canada for a month now. In some ways, it feels that we’ve been here much longer: we have been the eager recipients of hospitality in a loving community that has sheltered us and softened our landing in this new country. Even as new arrivals, we have shared most meals with friends, entered into daily and weekly rhythms of prayer and worship with others, played with children, and felt at home. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this as we begin to get our feet under us again. Just sharing the domestic sphere of cooking, cleaning, and common space with others brings a sense of belonging that is rare to find so quickly when one shows up in a new city without an existing network of relationships, or even a job. It’s ironic to think that we’ve moved into a “joint family” living situation only after leaving India, where we were surrounded by people who found it strange for the two of us to be living “alone”!

This community is centered around hospitality. When we briefly passed through this community several years ago, we were inspired to participate in extending this invitation of hospitality to neighbors who often brought their struggles with mental illness, addiction, prostitution, homelessness, or poverty into the house. Some of them are refugees and migrants. Others have been internally displaced within their own culture and society.

This time, however, we’ve returned to the community as strangers and foreigners in need of hospitality ourselves. This time, we feel most inspired by the hospitality that has been extended to us, from community members and neighbors alike. Community dinners at our house bring the whole diverse and quirky lot of us together, and it can be quite the adventure. The lines are blurred between who is hosting and who is being hosted; who is extending grace and who is receiving it. Several people from the neighborhood are long-time friends of the community who know what it’s like to live on the streets or to fight through an addiction, and they have become important partners in extending hospitality to others—they are some of the best cooks we have, they share their insight and their stories with us, and they offer compassionate, listening ears to newcomers.

***

We have yet to really process what it means to have uprooted ourselves from the slum in India and moved here. It will take time to unpack that experience; even our last day in the slum was stuffed full of the roller coaster of emotions I had felt throughout the time I lived there: waves of sadness, anger, tenderness, frustration, laughter, happiness, and grief. I felt exhausted by everyone’s desire to be with us as much as possible in those last hours. I felt overwhelmed by the intensity of their need. I felt humbled, too, by the gifts we received: one last, home cooked meal with our Indian family; hugs and kisses on the cheek from the little children who have become like nieces and nephews to us; a painting from my “little sister.”

“Just think,” our former landlady had told us earlier that week, “when you first arrived here, no one even wanted to offer you a room, because they didn’t know you. Now there’s not a single person in this neighborhood who isn’t sad you’re leaving.”

Those words express the heart and soul of what our time in India meant. By the time we actually walked out of the community, it felt like we were attending our own funeral. Thirty or forty people escorted us up to the main road in a somber procession and blocked traffic as they crowded around to hug us, say their final goodbyes, and flag down an auto rickshaw for us. Many people were sobbing openly. So were we, by the time we drove away. I feel many things about leaving, but in that moment the only thing I felt was immeasurable loss.

Sometimes these experiences elude the grasp of everyday language. They can’t find full expression in words of any kind, but poetry more closely approximates their meaning. I wrote some poetry a few days before our departure:

On the occasion of my leaving
this battlefield and second home,
strewn with unfulfilled hopes, half-discovered mysteries,
love, laughter, triumph, and sorrow,
a poem:

For the children locked up in dark rooms,
and the ones singing film songs, flying kites, playing marbles in the alleyway;

For the parents screaming at their children,
and for the mothers tenderly nursing infants; the proud fathers with toddlers in their arms;

For the women with broken bangles and bruised eyes,
for the grown-up boys who beat them;

For the men earning survival with their sweat and exhaustion,
and for the ones drowning in a malaise of alcohol and ganja,

For the feuds and fights and angry words,
reverberating off the narrow brick walls of the alleyways, and lodging in wounded hearts;

For the communal prayers also, and the generosity of neighbors:
meals for widows, and foreigners, and orphans;

For all the beauty and pain I have seen,
For the cruelty and the love.
Both have taken my breath away, in turns.

No victims here, and no heroes;
No one evil and no one righteous
(myself included)
All facets of the human heart laid bare
In these dusty alleyways and close quarters

Where there are no secrets
(except the ones we keep from ourselves),
And no illusions
(besides the ones in our own minds).

For all of us:
May we find peace
Instead of everything else we go in search of,
To fill the space where love alone belongs.

A death in the neighborhood

Leave a comment
There’s so much more I want to write about the things that go on in the lives of my neighbors and in my own life, but sharing it in short bursts online seems an inappropriate avenue. It would take a book to convey the complexities of all our lives, tangled up as we are in each other’s stories, and to explore all the things I am learning and unlearning in this wild, beautiful, and terrifying place. I intend to write that book someday, after more of the dust has settled and I am able to understand my experiences more clearly than I can today. But for now I’ll have to settle for sharing the soul of what’s on my mind, without sharing the details of the stories that have brought it about.It’s sad and confusing to see a life end with no apparent redemption in the arc of its story.

The bulk of my time and energy since has gone into being with those who are still alive and must carry on, but the suddenness of death in our neighborhood—again—turns my thoughts toward the reality that whether we die unexpectedly or old and boney, there is no surprise in the eventual end of life for each one of us. We are finite creatures, and death is unavoidable. I so often approach life as a project: I plan out the arc of my life, what I will accomplish, where I will go, who I will become. I try to assume control by planning, scheduling, keeping busy. But then I am reminded how quickly grief and loss could change my life completely, stealing away the people I love most, taking away the relationships and routines that make up the day-to-day fabric of my existence. I am sobered by the reality that all of this is beyond my control, and in the end life is not so much what I create for myself as it is what comes to me, and how I choose to respond.

All this meditation on death isn’t intended to be morbid. It’s actually a reflection on life: in light of the impending obliteration of all my worldly ambitions and activity, what is really worth my attention and energy in the meantime? What will remain after that final deconstruction of everything I have sought to accomplish and become? No status, recognition, or accumulation of possessions or material comforts will matter. Only the actions which I join to God’s larger action in the world will last, because God will continue to act in the world after I am gone, just as He was doing before my birth. Joining God in loving, serving, working for justice, and promoting truth is what will continue to matter beyond my lifetime. This is also what grows my own soul, and what prepares me for my continuing journey toward God, beyond the expiration date of this temporary body.

This doesn not mean that our bodies and spirits are entirely separate from one another, or that “spiritual” things are more important than “material” ones—God’s love is the cornerstone of the whole universe, and it’s the basis of everything else that is. In fact, the resurrection that Jesus talks about includes our bodies–scripture talks about God’s plan for healing and restoring the earth and raising us to live again within it, not taking us away to live somewhere else as disembodied spirits. So the warmth of the morning sun on my neck, the chirping of birds in the trees, the steaming cup of coffee in my mug, the laughter that I share with friends, and the gratifying soreness I feel in my muscles after exercise are all good and important things. They are gifts from this loving God who is the author of Life itself, and in whom everything lives, moves, and has its being. Life was God’s idea—sex and good food and sand between our toes.

But the trick to really enjoying all of these material gifts is being able to let them go. Detachment from each of these pleasures as an end in itself is the only way to embrace the Giver himself. It is also the only way that we will be able to experience the full breadth of existence, instead of constantly struggling to avoid suffering, grief, and loss (which are also gifts to us, if we have eyes to see). Spiritual teachers from the time of the Buddha, or probably earlier, have taught that life is suffering, and they have sought to free themselves from that suffering. But Jesus takes things a step further by turning suffering itself into a means of liberation: his suffering and death have transformed those things into sacred tools which can serve our good. Death has no power to destroy us, if the growing weakness and eventual defeat of our bodies gives us the chance to learn at an accelerated pace important that have eluded us throughout our lives. At the moment of death, we are no longer able to maintain our beauty, health, strength, usefulness, or whatever else we used throughout our lives to try to earn love, or to perpetuate the illusion that we were independent and in control. Freed from all these things, we have the chance to learn for the first time that we are loved apart from any of it—loved for ourselves alone.

Paradoxically, the path to authentic life takes us smack-dab through the middle of death. This is the mystery of resurrection: not simply life or death, but crucifixion and rebirth. Life has the final word, God has the final victory… but He has won by way of passing through defeat. This reflection on the transience of my life makes me long to move at last from compulsion to contemplation; from building a life and creating myself to accepting life and surrendering to the process of uncovering the self which God has already created: the one that so often gets lost or obscured behind the images I project to the world, the coping strategies I employ, and the things I strive to do or become.

 

Easter

Leave a comment
Picture

“The Incredulity of Saint Thomas” by Caravaggio

 

In my little corner of the world, I see a lot of suffering and death. I spend a lot more time contemplating the crucifixion and that silent Saturday when Jesus remained in the tomb than I ever used to in the West. It’s easier to believe in victory and new life when most of the people around you are doing well, and most of the stories you know turn out OK. It’s harder to keep faith in resurrection when most of the people around you aren’t doing OK; when they’re doing horrible things to each other and having horrible things done to them. Sometimes you lose track of the plot line when bad things happen one after another with no resolution and no catharsis, just banal disappointments that drip out like a leaky faucet.These days I often find myself walking through thin places between hope and despair, and the question is unresolved in my mind as to whether or not anything we do is worth it; whether all will be made well in the end. But there is room for all of that in faith—there has to be. Without that kind of desperation, what is the meaning of hope?

These last few days as I have contemplated the story of Jesus—his tragic death, his closest friends betraying and abandoning him, his anguished voice wondering aloud from the cross whether God is still with him in the midst of so much pain—something new has come into focus for me for the first time:

The resurrection was a surprise.

Everyone, everyone had given up on Jesus. His closest friends and followers whom he had literally spent years teaching and preparing for this moment. He had told them so many times that he would suffer and die, but that wouldn’t be the end, and they couldn’t grasp it. When he was tortured and killed by the state and the religious institution they were still fumbling around in the dark for what the kingdom meant and how it was possible that their fearless leader could have failed to accomplish his mission. He was dead and gone, and they thought it was over. The women mourned him and prepared spices to pay their last respects; the men returned to their fishing nets, disillusioned.

I think it was only their total despair which catalyzed such unbelievable joy when these disillusioned followers discovered Jesus alive, and it was this tangible experience of moving through death and loss to new life that made their faith so strong from that point onward. If they had confidently expected his triumphant return all along, then perhaps they wouldn’t have had a real sense of being delivered from any real danger or pain. Real suffering brings questions to the surface, and even to the lips of Jesus: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

So Jesus didn’t hold his friends’ doubt against them. Peter, poor Peter who had denied his best friend and teacher three times to save his own skin: Jesus cooks him breakfast on the beach, reinstates him, and entrusts him with the future of his movement (“On this rock I will build my church…”). There is resurrection in Peter’s own heart as Jesus forgives him and Peter learns to trust himself again. Later this former turncoat will be faithful to the point of death on a cross himself.

I often feel overwhelmed by the current state of the world, and I wonder how the kingdom can ever come. I find it hard to imagine history somehow rolling on from the present into heaven on earth. But I read this story and I realize that there is a place in the Easter narrative for the grief and confusion I so often feel. For Peter and the others, there was as little continuity between their experience of absolute loss on Friday and absolute joy on Sunday as there is between my current experience of the impoverished, suffering world as it is and the world as it will be when it is restored.

I am not lost. I am seeing Saturday. But Sunday morning will come, when I least expect it.

And it does come, even now—in those little signs of hope, tiny as mustard seeds, that spring up through the ground of despair. We see resurrection in our relationships when we offer forgiveness after conflict seems to have killed off affection and friendship, or when we creatively imagine new possibilities out of apparent failures. We catch a glimpse of the kingdom when we share a joyful meal with people of different languages, cultures, and religions, choosing to build community instead of walls. There is resurrection in my own heart when old wounds are bandaged and they heal. There is hope when we sow and sow and sow, and then one seed (maybe one in a hundred) bursts into life, we know not how.

I wrote last year about hope being a candle in the dark, never quite filling the room but never ceasing to burn either. Sometimes hope still feels like a lonely candle, but other times I get the sense that what I’m seeing is not just a small flame in the darkness, but rather slivers of a huge light behind everything that’s merely been painted over with black. Perhaps as we work to uncover more and more, we discover that the darkness, convincing as it may be, is what is surface-level and temporary, while the light is what is real and permanent and strong.

May we have the courage to suffer with Christ in the people around us.

May we have the faith to live in hope of new life,

the eyes to see it coming,

and the joy of helping to bring it into being.

May we practice resurrection in our lives.

Blessed are those who mourn

Leave a comment
Picture

An oil pastel reflection on Rachel’s lament (Matt. 2:13-18), inspired by recent events in our neighborhood.
          Last month there was a very sad day in our community when two children—a one-month old baby and a two-and-a-half year old boy—died suddenly of fever and diarrhea within hours of each other.

On this particular day, I sat under two white funeral tents, one after the other, staring at two tiny, motionless bodies with perfect, chubby baby faces that looked as though they might only be sleeping. I sat with the grieving mothers and siblings and aunts and grandmothers and felt their sadness seep into me. My husband went with the men twice to the graveyard, helping to carry the bodies which felt much too light, watching over them while the other men went into the mosque to pray namaz on the way to the cemetery, and helping to bury them as each of the men poured one or two handfuls of dirt into the grave. No one will ever know what these children actually died from. Were their mothers anemic during pregnancy? Maybe, but nearly three quarters of poor women in India are. Was it dengue, or some other mosquito-borne illness? It could be—others are dying of that this time of year. Maybe it was as banal as dehydration. But it’s unlikely that their births were ever officially registered, so their deaths won’t even contribute to statistics of child mortality, and there certainly won’t be any information on how to prevent future deaths, if these deaths were indeed preventable. Both mothers have lost children before, in what could only have been similarly baffling circumstances. I used to be confused by my neighbors’ apparent paranoia with taking their kids to the doctor for every little cold and cough, but now I understand—with every illness, no matter how minor, memories of other children remind parents that this could be the fever or the cold or the cough that suddenly ends their child’s life, for reasons that they don’t understand. I have spoken before about poverty of relationship, but poverty is also about lack of information, lack of control…

In this culture, a bed will be carried outside of the house into the alleyway, and the body of the person who has died will be laid on it. Then someone will set up a white tent over the area (for white, rather than black, is the color of death in Asia). The viewing goes on all day, and there is a custom of women sitting together, gathered around the body for hours and hours, not really saying anything to console them but just bearing witness to the grief of the person’s family, crying with them, and being together. Then the men carry the body to the graveyard for burial. When they come to wrap the body and take it away, a wail goes up from the crowd of women and the mourning reaches an inconsolable crescendo. This is the moment of final separation from faces never to be seen again. Sometimes people don’t even own photos of their children.

At first, I was uncomfortable with these rituals that center around crowds and noise when my culture treats grief with such distance and silence. This was not the reverent hush of a funeral home, or the solitary contemplation of a graveside service. Funerals here are crowded, and between all the stories being passed from one person to another about the circumstances surrounding the death, all of the ruckus of the babies on hips and children running around underfoot, and all the vocal lament of those closest to the deceased, funerals here are loud.  But I am coming to understand the value of this type of mourning process. My neighbors are well acquainted with grief, but that doesn’t dull the pain. Sitting together, each is able to enter into the sorrow of the other through the door of her own experiences with loss. No one tries to hide their sadness. Emotional demonstration is accepted and encouraged. There is power in that kind of solidarity where one is sure that all of the people around her truly understand what she is going through and that she is free to express it, because their pain resonates with hers.

I keep thinking of Jesus’ words: “Blessed are those who mourn” (“for they shall be comforted”), and I wonder: what did he mean? Perhaps those who mourn are also connected with God’s heart in an intimate way because God also mourns—She knows what it’s like to lose a son. God knows the grief of watching powerlessly every day as precious children die of preventable disease, violence, and poverty. Perhaps Jesus is also alluding to the coming of his Kingdom in which thing will be set right, people and families and societies will be restored, and life to the fullest will be the rule instead of the exception. But I think part of Jesus’ meaning must have been for right now. Maybe it’s that we can’t receive comfort until we’re willing to face our loss, share our pain with others, and actually go through a process of mourning—no stiff upper lip, no denial or repression. Mourning invites people to come and comfort. It invites community. If this is the case, then I am realizing how often I have missed out on the blessing that is meant to come in the midst of pain.