Hope and Grief - (with some more Hope-etry)
OnBeing's Hope Portal Week 4
This week, OnBeing shifts to a different side of hope...the connection between grief and hope. But before I get into that, just a few “housekeeping” items. Two short paragraphs and then jumping into the latest Hope reflection.
First, this coming Wednesday at 1pm ET, MaryAnn McKibben Dana and I will be resuming our live conversations on Substack as we do another “Pop Culture Pastors Hour” as we dig deep into a movie from a few decades ago called Stranger than Fiction. It is a dearly loved movie by each of us and so we have each rewatched it and will be jumping deep into our thoughts. We’d love your thoughts as well - so join us in the live chat on Wednesday or you could send us your thoughts/ideas/questions ahead of time.
Second, I recently celebrated my 26th ordiversary (ordinaion anniversary) and I was reminded of what I wrote a year ago on my 25th anniversary of that special day. I wrote two posts reflecting on how I would respond to the PCUSA ordination questions 25 years after first doing so. I wanted to just re-link to those as I think they speak deeply to how I have grown and changed in my faith and how I approach life and ministry today. Here they are:
Ok - onto
‘s latest “Hope Portal”...
This week are clips from a conversation between Krista Tippett and Joanna Macy. Joanna Macy is an activist, a writer, a scholar, and a practicing Buddhist. I have read two books of hers - Pass it On: Five Stories that Can Change the World and Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In Without Going Crazy. Both I highly recommend. But in this week’s Hope Portal, there is a centering on the interaction between grief and hope. There are several other parts of the conversation that I’ll reflect on in the days ahead, but I wanted to start with a piece of “Hope-etry” (hope+poetry - see most recent posts for more of these) that Joanna shares in this conversation. It is part of a longer piece by Rainer Maria Rilke entitled Sonnets to Opheus II. This segment of the longer poem is often entitled, “Let this Darkness Be a Bell Tower.” Here it is, translated by Macy herself.
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.1
This poem (and the conversation) reminded me of so much, but notably a friend named Phil who died several years ago as well as connecting hope to a famous philosophical/scientific question involving a cat (those are coming later next week). But what speaks to start out is how we cannot know true hope without also recognizing the reality of pain, loss, and grief. Just as you cannot know what is light without also knowing darkness. It is hard to know what is evil if you haven’t experienced that which is good. In a world that, at the time, was very clearly set up in a binary (A or B, etc) model, Jesus stepped outside of that in what he taught and even more so in what he did. So much of the Sermon on the Mount is a refutation of the dualism of the day.
It may feel counterintuitive to say that hope and grief can (or must?) exist side by side. Can we know what hope is without knowing what it is to not hope?
So today’s photo is from my Saturday AM walk (surprise - another sunrise!) but it is photographed through the railing on the sides of one of the bridges that crosses Winton Lake. There are these circles all along the top edge and then vertical bars going down. In many of the circles, especially at this time of year, spiderwebs fill them. They must be a nice protected place to make webs! Anyway, through these bars, the bright hopeful light of the morning sun is arising but in these photos, you can’t get there without going through the web. Similarly the bars are clearly in focus but the sunrise is far from it. The hope is out there, but the grief and the struggle is there first and foremost.
And then when I got home, the sun was shining brightly on the flowers my wife planted that are starting to move to full summer bloom...
Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed
PS - Scout felt it was necessary to have her showing some hope and joy in front of the railing too! In fact, after I was done photographing the railing, she sat down and would not move until photographed...She’s quite a doggo...
Thank you for this.as Jesus says in the beatitudes blessed our those who mourn. We must know grief in order to know joy.In the end we find they are intertwined.
Peace and Joy