Will we walk with one another?
With the approach of All Saints, which we will celebrate this coming Sunday, the 4th of November, (is it really November already), I have been thinking about suffering. Suffering in the sense of loss, as these times come near, this thin time when our ancestors begin to dance on our hearts and in our homes, we often are reminded of the pain of losing the ones we love.
I was caught by surprise on Saturday as I said the hymn during Roger's memorial service and tears began to flow from my eyes, and I choked up. I was surprised because I thought I had dealt with the death of our brother in the weeks leading up to his service. But suffering isn't something you deal with, it isn't something that has a time line. No, suffering is something that evolves over time.
Suffering evolves over time because our particular contexts shift and change. Broken hearts heal because we begin to believe we can love again and our experience of love is changed so that we can love another. But those broken hearts always resurface at different times in our lives because of some particular event or situation or moment that occurs that reminds us of why our heart was broken in the first place.
Suffering evolves over time because of how we see the death of a loved one; how we remember them in our lives and in our hearts changes as we begin to reform and shape a new way of living without that person in our life day in and day out.
Suffering evolves over time because our particular contexts change and move us into new ways of seeing the world and those we live with and those we love.
I have watched many people, members of Gethsemane go through deep and suffering losses, losing people they love and seeing their own lives turned upside down because of it. But one of the things that I am always grateful for is the ability of members of Gethsemane to acknowledge that suffering is real, but then also to not let that suffering be the final word on their own human condition.
We must always recognize people's pain, people's agony, we must always go to those places where people find themselves to be hurt so we can sit with them, walk with them and hold them as they are in need.
To ignore the pain of others, to ignore our own pain is to deny the reality of suffering and also to deny hope for a future where God wipes away the tears we cry, where God fills our broken hearts with love and joy, it is to deny the hope of a future where the people of God, all the universe as it was created by God, sings the praises of God with joy.
We cannot allow suffering to be the final comment on our condition, it is why God put on human flesh and walked among us, it is why the little baby Jesus screamed on the night of his birth. Our cries are the cries of YES to God, yes to the hope we have for God's presence in our lives. It is often in those places of fear, and tears, sadness and pain that we find God at work.
I often will challenge people I am counseling to stay with the tears when they come up, to stay with the pain as it surfaces, because that is usually where we can find God at work, that is usually where we can find the answers to the sadness that fills our hearts. Answers not in the sense of resolution, but answers in the sense of hope, in the sense of I see now why my emotions are coming up in the way that they are.
As All Saints comes, our homes, our lives will become thin, meaning the world we live in, and the indwelling of the Reign of God will come closer than they usually do, our ancestors are more active, and more ready to celebrate their lives, and their own hope for a future with all of us as we live our lives in the bodies that we have and in the contexts where we live.
Do not be afraid of meeting the sadness when it rises in your heart, and do not resist the pull to cry or be sorrowful at the thought of someone you once loved who is no longer with us. Enter into the pain, the tears, the sadness, the suffering this All Saints as we can then hear Jesus' words to us more clearly, "Lazarus, come out!"
I have come to tears many times in the past several months, a broken heart from a lost love, a broken body preventing me from being active and healthy, a broken spirit because of the loss of a dear friend. Each time I have welcomed the tears, each time I have opened my heart to the suffering. Each time I have felt cleansed, made new, prepared for the things that I had in front of me.
My only grief, my only sadness, is that I wish I could have done my crying, walked in my suffering with all of you. My deep sadness is that we are afraid to walk with one another in the suffering that we feel. We do not allow ourselves to show the true face of our suffering for fear of rejection, and we do not ask about another's suffering because we do not know what to do.
I hope and pray, this coming Sunday that we can greet one another honestly and truly, acknowledging the suffering we have felt and embracing each other in the hope that this faith community has for its future as a vessel of God's love.
I was caught by surprise on Saturday as I said the hymn during Roger's memorial service and tears began to flow from my eyes, and I choked up. I was surprised because I thought I had dealt with the death of our brother in the weeks leading up to his service. But suffering isn't something you deal with, it isn't something that has a time line. No, suffering is something that evolves over time.
Suffering evolves over time because our particular contexts shift and change. Broken hearts heal because we begin to believe we can love again and our experience of love is changed so that we can love another. But those broken hearts always resurface at different times in our lives because of some particular event or situation or moment that occurs that reminds us of why our heart was broken in the first place.
Suffering evolves over time because of how we see the death of a loved one; how we remember them in our lives and in our hearts changes as we begin to reform and shape a new way of living without that person in our life day in and day out.
Suffering evolves over time because our particular contexts change and move us into new ways of seeing the world and those we live with and those we love.
I have watched many people, members of Gethsemane go through deep and suffering losses, losing people they love and seeing their own lives turned upside down because of it. But one of the things that I am always grateful for is the ability of members of Gethsemane to acknowledge that suffering is real, but then also to not let that suffering be the final word on their own human condition.
We must always recognize people's pain, people's agony, we must always go to those places where people find themselves to be hurt so we can sit with them, walk with them and hold them as they are in need.
To ignore the pain of others, to ignore our own pain is to deny the reality of suffering and also to deny hope for a future where God wipes away the tears we cry, where God fills our broken hearts with love and joy, it is to deny the hope of a future where the people of God, all the universe as it was created by God, sings the praises of God with joy.
We cannot allow suffering to be the final comment on our condition, it is why God put on human flesh and walked among us, it is why the little baby Jesus screamed on the night of his birth. Our cries are the cries of YES to God, yes to the hope we have for God's presence in our lives. It is often in those places of fear, and tears, sadness and pain that we find God at work.
I often will challenge people I am counseling to stay with the tears when they come up, to stay with the pain as it surfaces, because that is usually where we can find God at work, that is usually where we can find the answers to the sadness that fills our hearts. Answers not in the sense of resolution, but answers in the sense of hope, in the sense of I see now why my emotions are coming up in the way that they are.
As All Saints comes, our homes, our lives will become thin, meaning the world we live in, and the indwelling of the Reign of God will come closer than they usually do, our ancestors are more active, and more ready to celebrate their lives, and their own hope for a future with all of us as we live our lives in the bodies that we have and in the contexts where we live.
Do not be afraid of meeting the sadness when it rises in your heart, and do not resist the pull to cry or be sorrowful at the thought of someone you once loved who is no longer with us. Enter into the pain, the tears, the sadness, the suffering this All Saints as we can then hear Jesus' words to us more clearly, "Lazarus, come out!"
I have come to tears many times in the past several months, a broken heart from a lost love, a broken body preventing me from being active and healthy, a broken spirit because of the loss of a dear friend. Each time I have welcomed the tears, each time I have opened my heart to the suffering. Each time I have felt cleansed, made new, prepared for the things that I had in front of me.
My only grief, my only sadness, is that I wish I could have done my crying, walked in my suffering with all of you. My deep sadness is that we are afraid to walk with one another in the suffering that we feel. We do not allow ourselves to show the true face of our suffering for fear of rejection, and we do not ask about another's suffering because we do not know what to do.
I hope and pray, this coming Sunday that we can greet one another honestly and truly, acknowledging the suffering we have felt and embracing each other in the hope that this faith community has for its future as a vessel of God's love.
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