"Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters, caution and prudence? Fall in! Fall in!"[1] Weaving with words the poets issue urgent invitations, like this one from Mary Oliver. "Fall in! Fall in!" She writes with the passion of a prophet, pointing us toward that which has the power to grow our souls.
It is the work of a lifetime, this business of growing a soul. Though life provides us all with countless chances to fall in, much in our independence prizing culture teaches us to resist that breathtaking tumble. But sometimes we don't or can't, we surrender to the falling in. In those moments we become scripture for each other, revealing with our very selves the truth we have all known, but easily forget. As part of my ministerial preparation I completed a unit of clinical pastoral education by serving as a chaplain in a hospital. Over and over I had the privilege to be with people who gave themselves fully to the experience of being human.
One hot August evening I received a page from a nurse on the oncology unit. She told me that a family had decided to terminate life support for a man dying of cancer. They wanted a chaplain. What I saw when I walked into that room was a man, only 47 years old, though he looked much older, with a frail and ravaged body. I saw a ring of loved ones: a wife, a brother, a sister-in-law. What I felt was the weight of grief that can come only from deep love. I felt the presence of broken hearts.
The family told me they fully understood their choices. They had received good information and support in their decision making process. There had been time to make plans and say goodbye. They were at peace with their decision and the time had arrived. All that was left was the surrendering. And so they called me to be a witness and offer a prayer. These I gave with all my heart. They told me the couple's 8-year-old son was in the waiting room with family friends. He would join them soon. When death came, they wanted me to return and offer one more prayer, one that the child could join.
It was not long before the nurse paged me to return. The family was surrounding the bed of the man. I invited them to hold hands and we joined in a tear-filled litany, a prayer with a repeating line we all said together. In conclusion I asked them if there was anything in their hearts they wanted to add. Through the ache of throats tight with sorrow they began making promises to each other and to the beloved who now lay dead between them. They would support each other. They would help this child remember his dad. They would honor this man's life by claiming his legacy of love. Together we said amen and in due time I left them to their tender love and loss.
I learned something about good grief that night, something about the place of sorrow in human life. "When you are sorrowful," writes the poet Gibran, "look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight."[2] We weep in sorrow because we have known peace and laughter and joy. We weep because we have known the delight of love. Without that common and miraculous gift, we could know nothing of sorrow. If we long to revel in the pleasure of joy, we must keep our hearts open to the pain of sorrow, for "your joy is your sorrow unmasked," writes Gibran. And "the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."[3]
That equation makes sense to me. "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." I think of it kind of like permeability. When we are born there is little distinction between I and world. We are completely open, incapable of denying our experience. As we grow we learn to be selective, to become less permeable to the world around us. Maybe this is part of how we make it possible to live out the details of our days. The trouble though, is that too much exercise can make our resistance muscles over developed. Experiences of deep sorrow and joy usually override our resistance. But in other moments, when resistance remains intact, we compromise our own growth toward wholeness.
The 19th century German theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher, wrote at length about this idea. Schleiermacher made a radical break with his contemporaries when he declared that religion is feeling. And feeling, he explained, consists of all "the experiences of receptivity and the influences upon you of all that lives and moves."[4] In other words, we are constantly inundated with life; and religion is the process of receiving and experiencing life; it is the process of giving ourselves over and opening up to all of life.[5]
I am persuaded by this argument because of my own experience. The more I let myself take in the sorrow of the world, the more I am stopped short by the world's beauty. Each time I let myself fall in to sorrow, my heart is broken open making more room to fall in love with life all over again. There is that time of loss - the divorce, the death, the year of depression and then suddenly there is the sky again with a spectacular sunset that fills you to overflowing. Or maybe it is the kindness of a friend or the arms of a child; but there it comes, trumpeting the good news, and we know in our bones that these too are world. And we know ourselves just a little more whole.
Each of you could tell a story about the time you fell in, or the time you were enveloped by, the sorrow that threatened to drown you. Some of you are even now struggling to tread the waters of grief. I know it is a little out of the ordinary here, but I want to invite you to risk sharing a meditation together this morning. I invite you to sit together for a few moments experiencing or recalling feelings of sorrow from a time in your life. I will ring the chime to signal our beginning and we will sit together for a couple of minutes. Then I will ring the chime again to call us back together and you will be invited, if you wish, to name the experience you have recalled. When we are done I will ring the chime to invite you to remember a moment of love or beauty, an experience of joy that filled up a broken and hurting place inside you. For those brief minutes you are invited to open yourself as much as you wish to that moment when you were filled up by the goodness of life. I will ring the chime once more, and you will be invited if you are moved, to name that experience.
I will guide us through the process and we'll begin with the first chime. Ring chime. I invite you now to open yourself to an experience of sorrow in your life. You be the judge of how much you want to let in. Ring chime. If anyone feels moved to name the experience you meditated upon, please stand and an usher will bring you a microphone.
Several people spoke naming experiences of profound loss and heartbreak.
And now let us turn our attention to our second meditation. Ring chime. With this chime I invite you to meditate upon a moment of love or beauty, an experience of joy that filled up a broken and hurting place inside you. Ring chime. Again, if you feel moved to name the experience you meditated upon, please stand and an usher will bring you a microphone.
Again several people spoke naming experiences of breathtaking love and happiness.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I invited you to join me in this process because I believe being open is the heart of the religious life. When we risk, when we live and speak our truth, we inspire each other to open our hearts wider still. When we embrace our experience, we liberate ourselves and each other.
By our act of naming this morning, we remind each other that we are never alone. By our naming we remind each other of the love that is always there, waiting to fill us again with joy. And we remind each other that we are united in sorrow. When we let it in, we understand, in the words of the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, that "it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say - it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere."[6] For as long as we embrace life, we will be moved, again and again, to grieve and delight. In this all people are together. So let us honor kindness as the only thing that makes any sense. And let us remember that love that can surely guide us through each and every dark night.
May it be so and Amen.
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