Acquainted with Grief

LuciusCommons Wikimedia

We suddenly find ourselves living through a time of a collective loss. Until now we never realized how much of our lives are marked in time and space by weekly schedules and commutes. Now that is gone. Every day feels like the next. If we are not looking at a calendar, we might even forget what day it is. My usually cheerful neighbor revealed his unease by saying, “this is crazy”.

We are also living through a collective loss of connection. Streets are empty. You can’t go anywhere except the grocery store. You are greeted by mask-wearing customers and empty shelves. You can’t visit family. You can’t shake hands. You can’t hug. You can’t kiss. You can’t see someone else’s face behind a mask. This is all very hard. This biggest loss for most of us is the sense of safety and control that we thought we had.

To the extent that the government has been a help and not a hindrance, it has prioritized economic relief for big business, limited relief for small business, and one month's living costs for the rest of us. To some degree that may help, but it won't replace a lost job. No government can compensate us for the loss of workplace routine, loss of purpose, the loss of camaraderie, the loss of loved ones, and the loss of milestones that mark and give meaning to our lives. That impact is profound because the reality is:

“We are all dealing with the collective loss of the world we knew. The world we knew is now gone forever” —David Kessler

We are suddenly inundated with this collective grief as we approach Easter and Passover. Normally we would approach this time looking forward to family gatherings. The spiritual meanings would have received a passing thought if indeed they are thought about at all. What is different now is that we can all relate to a collective grief and sorrow that we had not known before. Now we have made some acquaintance with the grief of Isaiah’s “suffering servant:”

“He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him” — Isaiah 53:3

To add to this grief, is the isolation of being “despised and rejected”. We live in a seriously divided country, with starkly different views of reality. If we voice our concerns regarding the nature of the pandemic, the need for social distancing, and the government’s handling of the crisis, we risk being ostracized from our social groups. We cannot hide our face from this grief. Now we know. Viscerally.

The reality of such mass grief and suffering is largely incomprehensible to those of us with some degree of privilege in the “Western” world. But to people of no privilege, few resources, people of marginalized groups, this is familiar territory. For the most part, the Western world does all it can to deny the inevitability of suffering. It is an irony crystallized in the symbol of the Christian faith:

"It is amazing to me that the cross or crucifix became the central Christian logo, when its rather obvious message of inevitable suffering is aggressively disbelieved in most Christian countries, individuals, and churches. We are clearly into ascent, achievement, and accumulation. The cross became a mere totem, a piece of jewelry. We made the Jesus symbol into a mechanical and distant substitutionary atonement theory instead of a very personal and intense at-one-ment process, the very reality of love’s unfolding." —Fr Richard Rohr

At some point in the future this crisis will be over, but the scars, financial and emotional, will remain. We are in shock now and we will be processing grief for the foreseeable future. We will have to turn to others for support.  We may find that support lacking because so many will be struggling with their own grief. It might have to suffice that we can get some emotional support on someone’s “good day” and they will find support from us on our good days. We should be open to the possibility of needing professional help.

When we come back together, it will be tentative. We will have spent so long developing the habits of separation that coming together again will feel strange and unsafe. We will have to go through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We need to be especially careful with the anger stage, that we don’t inflict harm on others. But we also have to be careful that we don’t hide or bury our grief. Instead we must allow our grief to be seen and witnessed, however difficult that may be.

"Each person's grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn't mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining." —David Kessler

We have to develop habits of grace, both receiving it and giving it. We have to develop a receptivity to recognizing the grace all around us that we’ve ignored in the past. The sounds of birds singing, rays of sunshine peeking out from clouds, kind gestures from others, and most importantly, our life itself. We have to allow ourselves to receive grace. From that place we will be able to supply grace to others as they process their grief and try to reassemble their lives.

It is my hope that we will come out of this with a new gratitude towards life. May we gain a new appreciation for the “invisible people” that harvest our food, transport our goods, stock our shelves, collect our garbage, clean our streets, protect us from harm, and treat our sickness. May we learn to love and appreciate members of our families and be truly thankful for the time we have with them. And finally may we expect more of ourselves, more of our society, and more of our government.

Footholds

Most of the time we are preoccupied with the daily tasks of life. We go to work, drop our kids off at school, and think about a myriad of tasks and responsibilities. If we have time to ourselves, we usually find distractions, scrolling through social media, news posts, or watching a show. We long for downtime, but settle for distraction. Why? Why do we fear idle time? Because it is a dangerous time. A time to be totally alone in our thoughts. A time to face ourselves and reflect on who we are (or who we are not). We have an existential angst which comes to the surface when we are alone.

We are living beings, intelligent enough to be self-aware, who are aware of our own agency and actions. Mere survival is not enough. Because we have agency, we have a gift, but it is a double-edge sword. We can spiral into ourselves. To avoid this existential plunge into the abyss, we must grab footholds. What are these footholds?

Thankfulness We must recognize our circumstances and benefactors. We must understand that others have poured into us. Parents, teachers, and mentors. We did not, nor could we have, raised ourselves. The moment we think we are self-made, that the world owes us, is the moment we spiral into narcissism, a gateway to the abyss.

Own Our Decisions  We make decisions that have consequences. Some decisions will further our success, while others will lead to failure. We must own our decisions. The moment we start blaming others for our failures is the moment we begin spiraling into perdition.

Face Our Losses  We will all experience gain and loss in life. We will lose places and people. It is an inevitable part of the human experience. We must face those losses and grieve them. But we must not remain mired in grief. We must again face the world with its risks and joys. If we remain withdrawn from the world, we spiral into darkness.

Be Fully Present  We must be fully present to those around us. If we live in the past or in the future, then we are not here, in the present. As a result the people around us become irrelevant, a void in time. String these empty, distracted moments together and they become a continuous void, a path into the abyss.

"So many people have this idea: I want to achieve something great or be somebody great. And they neglect the step that leads to greatness. They don't honor this step at this moment because they have this idea of some future moment where they are going to be great." -Eckhart Tolle

Service/Care for Others  We must care for those around us. When we care for others, we illuminate our souls. If we harden our hearts, ignoring the needs of those around us, we find another path in the abyss.

“Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person”. -Tennessee Williams

Redemption   Redemption allows us to see and reclaim value in disappointments, bad experiences, human weakness, pain, and grief.

"Nothing [no life experience] is wasted" - Patrick Stewart

A redemptive view reclaims value out of what others consider a loss. The only alternative to a redemptive view is a dark nihilism and that is another path into the abyss.

Faith  Too many of us believe we can live without faith in something (or someone) outside ourselves. It seems fashionable these days to live life with no regard for the infinite or eternal.

 “I realized that no one lives without faith, not even the strictest rationalist”- Tolstoy

As a result, the moral elements of religious teaching have been discarded. The Torah teaches that we were made "Image of God". The Catholic Church teaches that human life is sacred and that the "dignity of the human person" is the foundation of a moral vision for society. A purely materialist view is "survival of the fittest" and as we have seen recently and in history, this is a path into the abyss.

Help  We will need help to find these footholds. Recently, solo climbing of Mt Everest was banned because too many people were dying in the attempt to go it alone. The same is true with us. We need help. We need each other, not just at the beginning of our lives, nor at the end, but all along the way. Let's be humble enough and brave enough to reach out for help when we need it and let's be equally humble and generous to provide the help, to be that foothold that someone else is desperately  looking for.