Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis Isaiah 61:1-4

March 2, 2008

Doorways to the Realm of God: 2. “Good Grief”

You’ve heard me say that the beatitudes are pithy paradoxes that turn our normal way of thinking on its head. Well, here’s a paradox for you: “Blessed are those who mourn.” Or as it sounded like when Jesus first said it: “O the blessed joy of those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” How joyful are those in pain? That’s kind of what it sounds like.

Pain is something we instinctively avoid. A child may touch a hot stove out of curiosity. But he or she is not likely to do that again. They learn why touching a hot stove is bad.

But many of us learned something else about pain. Not only are things that cause us pain bad, but we got the message that feeling pain or acknowledging pain or showing our pain was bad. This is curious, because what is instinctive is to express pain, yell, cry, or weep, so that the distress and trauma doesn’t get stuck, but moved through our body and soul. Some of you might remember a number of years ago my talking about the research by anthropologist Riane Eisler and geographer James DeMeo. Their studies of ancient peoples convinced them that our culture’s unnatural attitudes towards pain originated with the nomadic sheep-herding tribes of the cold wind-swept plains of northern Asia. These people stayed on the move to find fresh pastures and water for their flocks. They developed a kind of emotional armor because of the harsh climate they had to endure, their inability to feel at home in any place they live, and their need to avoid emotional attachments to the animals they raised to kill. Their tough lives didn’t really allow them the luxury of deeply feeling the effects of hardship, pain and death.

And then things got even tougher. About 6500 years ago, the climate grew colder and drier. There wasn’t enough grazing land to support their herds. Droughts and hunger further hardened the emotional armor of these nomadic people, and they began to fight neighboring tribes for scarce pastureland and water. The tribes that could fight the most fiercely controlled the land and survived.

As the droughts and chilling continued, they began to mount invasions into Europe, Russiaand the Middle East. Wave after wave of these “barbarian invasions” continued for about 2000 years. Gods and goddesses of nature and fertility were replaced with gods of war and vengeance. Autocratic rulers acted as the human agents of these gods and demanded blind loyalty and subservience. The men were inducted into armies, where they received both the military and the emotional armor to raid, rape, loot, and plunder for their warrior kings.¹ A culture of toughness, competition and violence replaced the more peaceful agrarian communities that once populated Europe. These harsher values have influenced Western politics, economics, religion, psychology and even entertainment, right up to our own times.

Let’s think how it has affected us. What messages did you learn about dealing with physical pain or other kinds of pain? (Big boys don’t cry. Don’t be a sissy. Don’t show any weakness. Be tough. Suck it up. Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about.)

What effects did this have on how we developed emotionally? It forced us to deny, repress and wall ourselves off from our own bodies, our own emotions, our own experience. It forced some of us into our heads, so that we lost the capacity to know what we were feeling. We became numb from our head down. And what was numbed was our heart and our soul–our capacity for understanding what other people are feeling, for opening ourselves deeply to our loved ones, and for trusting ourselves deeply to God.

We didn’t only hear these self-negating messages on how to deal with pain when we were growing up. They swirl around in the air when we go through times of loss and grief. What unhelpful messages have you heard in the face of loss or misfortune? (You have to be strong. He wouldn’t want you to cry. It’s time to get over it and move on. We just have to accept God’s will. Just think of all the good times you had. Just think of all the people who are worse off than you.)

There may be some truth or wisdom in some of those “words of comfort.” And we know that people who say these things are trying to help us feel better. But they’re not comforting when they deny or gloss over or minimize our pain. Why? Because they deny, gloss over and minimize us–the truth of our own heart and soul. The truth is, there is nothing anyone can say that’s going to take away the pain. What does is help is when someone recognizes and acknowledges the pain, shows that they’re not afraid of it, and in some way walks along with us as we feel it–even if it’s for only as long as a silent hug or knowing handshake. And it can help when they talk about how much our loved one meant to them, because it shows that they are in some way sharing our loss.

The truth is anyone who risks love in this world will risk pain.

As popular spiritual writer C S Lewis wrote:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change your heart. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. [Because] the only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.²

So it’s to people like us, who go through trials, hardships, disappointments, loss, and grief, that Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn. How blessed and fortunate are those who find the way back down into their own heart and soul, embrace the part of themselves that has suffered loss, grief and wounds, and open that part up to comfort and healing.”

This past week I read an article written Jeanette Koron, whose mother died when Jeanette was just four years old. She remembers her mother being wheeled away on a stretcher, unable to speak, but looking at Jeanette intently, trying to communicate with her through her eyes. Jeanette stood speechless, motionless and all alone, frozen in place on the cracked sidewalk, knowing that her mother was dying and being taken from her forever.

Her father took the death hard, became distant, and started drinking heavily. Jeanette didn’t have anyone to help her through her grief. Six months later looked up toward heaven and bellowed out to God, “I want my Mama! I want my Mama!” She thought that God would give her mother back to her if she shouted loud enough. But her shouts only brought her older brothers and sister running up the stares, and they stood and giggled at her outburst.

As her father fell apart, Jeanette was sent to an orphanage. One day when she was feeling especially alone, she thought of the Virgin Mary, and more out of need than faith, prayed, “Mary, be my mother now.” She felt Mary’s quiet presence in the background of her life.

Eventually Jeannette became a teenager, got more interested in boys than Mary, got married, had children, and lived an ordinary life. But then a series of crises broke through her veneer of being successful and in control. Jeanette went into a tailspin, feeling alone, overwhelmed and desperate.

She decided to give faith one more chance to salvage her life, and she joined a local prayer group. With the support of people who embodied love and faith to her, she opened herself to Christ’s Spirit, and felt a surge of joy and hope that she had never known before.

But this was just the beginning of her healing journey. Over the next year, she spent many hours in tears, during the prayer meetings, alone at home, and alone in her car. She writes, “They were cleansing tears that allowed me to grieve over the loss of my mother and other sorrows. I began to recognize the healing power God has given us in the gift of tears.”

But Jeanette’s grief was so deep, she needed help to fully release its grip. Two spiritual friends took time to pray with her for a healing of memories. As they were praying one time, she felt bound, paralyzed and unable to speak. One of the friends said, “I’m getting an impression of ice.” Yes, she realized. This was exactly how she felt when she stood frozen as her mother was being taken away to the hospital to die. Naming that and praying her way through it helped her feel freer.

But there was still one more thing holding her soul captive. One of her prayer partners sensed it in a prayer gathering, and told her to say aloud that she forgave her mother for dying. How could she say that? It wasn’t her mother’s fault. And the four-year-old inside her said, “No, I don’t want to!” But her friend was persistent. So Jeanette said through a tight throat and the emotions of a bewildered and hurt child, “I forgive you, Mother.” With that simple statement, the last band of anger, resentment and mistrust of life and people and God that had started when she was four was finally released. She was filled with peace and a sense of freedom, and she has not felt her mother’s loss as a heavy weight since then.³ Jeanette had opened, grieved and healed.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Comfort comes from the Latin words com, which means “with,” and fort, which means “strength.” When we embrace our wounded heart and soul with compassion, we bring the healing strength of love into inner selves, and we let the inherent strength of our heart and soul become available to us. And all the energy that it took to hold that pain inside us where we wouldn’t feel it is released for the business of living in the present.

Fourteenth Century Persian poet Rumi wrote,

I saw Grief drinking a cup of sorrow, and called out, “It tastes sweet, does it not?”

“You caught me,” grief answered. “You ruined my business. How can I sell sorrow when you know it’s a blessing?”

Have you known the blessing of mourning–of being reunited with your own heart and soul, of allowing your pain and sorrows to move on through you and release you from their heavy weights, of finding your heart opening in compassion to what others are experiencing, of opening your awareness to the cries of those who suffer in our world? When our hearts and souls, open to each other, open to the world around us, and open to God, then we are fully available for God’s healing love to move freely through us and out into the world. We become living agents of God bring healing into our wounded world. And in that there is unfathomable fulfillment and joy.

“O the blessed joy of those who mourn. For they shall be comforted.” Thank you, Jesus, for helping us find the deep joy that’s hidden even in our pain.