Weeks before departing for my Holy Week Camino pilgrimage in April, I am out for one of my practice walks. Bundled into layers of winter clothing, I cross through muddy, grayish-tan grass crusted partly by winter’s snow melting into the thawing ground. It is Lent: the season of awakening, of emergence, of spring. I am training my body and spirit for the discipline of pilgrimage, while the body of earth does the tough work of thawing and bursting seeds into new vulnerable life.
Between trees and highway I roam, my glance moving up and down from the soil to the sky. My pace quick, something catches my eye, but I don’t realize what it is until I am several steps ahead. I gasp, pause and slowly step backward. What is this next to my toes? There, poking out of the mud, I see a heart. A heart shaped not from melting snow but stone. Amused by the Lenten call to conversion, I grin and think of…
[This is the beginning of my latest column for the online newspaper, Global Sisters Report. Continue reading here.]
I am not afraid of death. I do not fear death because somehow I am confident that I’ll get to know Jesus better at that point and I really look forward to that. But, I don’t want to die.
I am afraid of grief. Grief can damage faith. It can destroy joy and break people down. The fear I do have about my own death is what it might do to the people who love me. I’m afraid of people I love dying because I don’t know how I would live with the awful taste of grief in my own body, soul and mind. And, I doubt I can live without them.
Plus, tragedy and suffering can be so life changing that the identity of a person can be transformed. Even person-hood and dignity itself can be questioned. When Desmond Tutu was asked what the worst thing about South African Apartheid was he said that the greatest tragedy was how the injustice caused people to doubt that they were children of God.
In addition, when confusion is really thick, doubt can cloud out joy, hope and a sense of purpose. Questions can collide with trust. Why would God let this happen? How could a good God let us suffer? How is a Christian to respond? What are we supposed to say? How are we supposed to be?
I’m learning some answers because I keep living.
I have heard some of my students say that death is their greatest fear. Nearly every day I hear them pray for a safe return home from school and a safe return back tomorrow. I haven’t prodded to find out exactly what they fear about death- whether it’s what it would do to others (like me) or how it would cut their lives short, or something else completely. No matter the reason, their fears are well founded. Violence hurts and kills people in neighborhoods all over Chicago nearly every day.
This weekend our country is commemorating the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Certainly, the nation can do well from pausing to remember how suffering has changed us. It’s valuable to tell our stories and to hear the memories of others. While we listen, let’s build community and bless each other through loving presence.
Here’s the “How To” that I have learned: No matter the cause of death and tragedy, we must respond with love.
Lately, I’ve learned about love in a whole new sort of way. My own experience has convinced me and I’m learning it from how my students are. When tragedy, such as death, breaks us down and contaminates us with pain, the most healing thing that a person can offer is loving presence.
The walls of death can’t clog the power of a loving presence. Through grief, love beyond the material world is real to us. Even beyond death, those whom we love are with us. When we stay awake and listen deeply this Truth gazes back at us through the suffering.
This love bonds and blesses. It’s beautiful how it can’t really break. Thanks be to God for the mystery and wonder. Thanks be to God that love keeps building. Thanks be to God that we’re children of love and at death we don’t really part.
Brothers and sisters: None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For this is why Christ died and came to life, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. -Romans 14:7-9
