Visitation, Lament, and Summer

June 1, 2021

Columbus, Ohio

Yesterday was the Feast Day of the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth. This story captures my imagination. I wonder about what Mary needed when she set out to find her much older cousin. I wonder what Elizabeth thought when she spotted Mary walking down the lane toward her home. We do know there was great rejoicing; even the children within them leapt with joy. What we do not know, what we are not told, is how they might have fortified one another for what was ahead.

Yesterday was also Memorial Day. In typical western fashion, we have taken a day of national mourning and turned it into an occasion for barbecues and fireworks and lawn games. Lament and mourning are hard for us in this country. Our sorrow quickly turns to outrage. We don't know how to sit with sadness or sojourn with loss.

Today I turned the calendar over to June 1st, which feels like summer, even if it isn't. We are all anxious to travel again, to visit places other than our living rooms and see people in spaces other than Zoom.

May our return to the familiarity of summer come with a measure of care for those who are vulnerable and unvaccinated. Even in our rejoicing, may what we do fortify the whole, so that we might be healthy and strong in many ways. And let us not forget the sorrows of the losses we have endured in this time. They will be our wisest teachers.

Here is a poem written by Emily Dickinson, whose words often give voice to lament. While entitled The Battlefield, we remember that the battle might be anything.

The Battlefield

They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,

Like petals from a rose,

When suddenly across the June

a wind with finger goes.

They perished in the seamless grass,--

No eye could find the place;

But God on his repealless list

could summon every face.

Emily Dickinson