Monday Morning Musing: Carrying What is Too Heavy

We moved into our home last week, thanks be to God. It's so good to have a place to settle and I am reminded of the gift and privilege a home is and I hold in my heart those who are unhoused or displaced or who feel unwelcome where they are supposed to be found.

When the movers moved us in, I marveled at their physical strength. They could carry boxes that I cannot lift. They had a physical strength that allowed them to do so.

It seems that this is a season when we are, collectively, being asked to carry what is too heavy. To move our grief from here to there requires too much inner strength, emotional muscles we do not have. We grieve for the suffering in Israel and Gaza and Ukraine and Russia. In war, there is always suffering on all sides, because there are always innocent victims on all sides. Hamas has enacted terrible violence and as a result, the suffering impacts many communities. We are grieving over our own country, caught in a struggle for our values, our soul, our humanity. Basic rights are somehow at question again; how can this be? What died among us that allowed this to happen, again? We grieve the way this has weakened us as a people, for division always weakens the fabric of who we are. We grieve the ways life has not quite reset itself after the pandemic and the uncertainty with which we walk in the world. And we grieve with the world, with Creation that we have so mistreated and abused that she struggles to find a rooted place.

I've been thinking about the myriad of ways people respond at the death of a beloved. Some become outwardly stoic and lean on platitudes to help them carry on. Some become the do-ers, making arrangements and bringing in food and handling details (this would be me). Some look out beyond the grief because they need to know what's there and if it's possible to get there in the easiest possible way. And others, well, others sit in the room and weep, or hold space, or tell stories. They do not rush from what has been lost.

I don't know whether we have the time to do the latter, with what is at stake in the world. My metaphor doesn't quite stretch that far. But I'm determined to put down the grief when it becomes too heavy and listen for the stories others have to tell about it, and weep when I need to.

The poet Wendell Berry has a much loved poem that seems just right for this season.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.