After Each Storm

We hardly need reminding that life is precious and fragile.  On Friday I attended the funeral for 43 year old man who died from a staph infection.  He left behind his wife and their three little children.  This family had been members of my church before moving away.  It is hard to imagine the grief his wife and children are feeling.  His widow's storm, her grief is so immense that she can only breathe for now.  Still she is surrounded with love and family and friends.  For now it is enough but not by much. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, Dave Rickard a UUA consultant  and dear friend who was just with my church two weeks ago, died suddenly.  What is it that gives us the strength and peace of mind to weather such storms as these and those so much greater in our own lives? In three words: Time, Imagination and Friends.

For everything there is a season, turn, turn, and we have turned once again.   Those who do choose to stay through real weather storm seem to be of two kinds.  The first are the young adults too young to appreciate nature’s power.  The second are the older ones who think they have the right stuff.  There are times when it is important to stay through the storm.  When what we gain by the trial is greater than the suffering of it.  All of the great saints endured some storms.  There are times when we need to struggle to the other side.  And there are times, most like this one wherein we have little choice.  Time heals but it also calls us on.  It was Hippocrates, that great Greek philosopher of medicine who wrote, “Healing is a matter of time but it is also an opportunity”.  In every memorial service I conduct I make note of the opportunity this passing has for us the living.  For those of us left after the storm has passed, there is an opportunity to share the same compassion that was shown to us during it all.  It’s more than just making us stronger; it’s about stretching our capacity for love through the tragedy itself.

I must admit that as a younger man I had less understanding of aging and death.  I do now.  I understand and I appreciate what a struggle and blessing time in body can be.  As we become older we fuse with time and trouble, Confusion is really just fusion of a body failing with a mind free to wander and remember.  And in that memory we understand the power of just living, and it is enough. (James Hillman The Force of Character)

It’s very freeing really.  Once we accept the fact that we are going to die we can get on with living in the time we have, storms and all. Here I apply what I call my “theology of persistence.”  As the psychologist Albert Ellis put it so poetically “the art of love is largely the art of persistence.”  To understand the place of the Holy in our lives we have to wait until after the storms of life to find the meaning in living.  Meaning is more often found after a storm, at the end of the dark night than before it.  This is why I sign off so often with the paradox of grace and grit; grace for the everyday miracles of being alive, grit for staying alive long enough to make it mean something.

With Grace and Grit,  John