Cherokee Marsh, Madison, WI
Yesterday, we buried our pastor. There is still a tinge of the surreal to it for me. I'd really only known him for fifteen years, but I am a completely different person today than I was fifteen years ago. And so much of that change happened in the context of the community which he lead. It's going to take awhile for me to wrap my mind and heart around the new day that it is.
The last two weeks were intense. They were intense on a social level, because my parish community has been grieving together. Our daily Mass community has been grieving together. Several people randomly spoke to me or got in touch with me to tell me their experiences, and several of us who see each other more often were able to check in with each other, sometimes several times a day as we gathered for our prayer vigil. It struck me how several years ago I would have thought it stupid to ask a grieving person "How are you doing?" because I knew how they were doing -- they were sad. But that was the old me, the person who stood outside, away from my emotions, and observed other people -- with significant awkward discomfort -- experiencing their emotions. Hoping they wouldn't splash up on me. Because I would look at them like they were rocks. Or rather, like I was a rock.
But there was none of that for me in these two weeks. My parish is my family. I was going to say it is more a family than my extended family has ever been, but really, it is just my family. I'm realizing as I write that the only reason I can feel that word at all is because of my parish. I mean, yes, it's because of the grace of God. But the grace of God doesn't come wafting down invisibly as I sit cross-legged and vocalize in an empty room with my eyes closed. It comes through the Incarnation, extended in time and space: the Church. And the Church comes to us through our local parish.
So even though I have been sad, the sadness I feel shows me the measure of the love that is normal to me. Without love, sadness becomes depression, despair, hopelessness. Been there, done that. So one thing these intense weeks have been is a surprise inspection of my heart.
Before all this developed, my primary meditation had been revolving around the Seven Sorrows rosary. This theme came up for me: Do not camp in your sorrow. Now I see this is a coin, and on the other side it says: Do not run from your sorrow. Be with it. Right now there seems incredible peace and wisdom in this, and I see that it means that my life really is not my own. I was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 1:9), and God lives in me. And He is Lord. So when sorrow comes, be with it. When joy comes, be with it. Our Bishop's homily at the funeral made this statement: "Jesus instructs us that to be credible Christians is to have and to express human emotion, not taking a stoic stance." Old me really wasn't a credible Christian, for this reason. I was so stuck, emotionally. Despair and hopelessness froze me. I did not know myself held by one stronger than myself, free to feel things that passed. Free.
To be free, one has to know oneself to be loved. And more than I ever have before, I do.
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