[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Grief

There is going to be an enormous amount of grief around these days. Maybe 
New Orleans wasn't the greatest place to live and raise your children, but 
it was home. Maybe your neighbourhood had pretty severe problems, but it 
was still your neighbourhood. You may have lost loved ones, friends, your 
beloved dog; you've likely lost pretty much everything you owned. Oh, yes, 
there's going to be grief.

So go grieve. No; don't go. Sit right down here, and I'll sit next to you. 
I won't try to cheer you up or make you feel better, and I won't pretend to 
know how you feel -- I don't. I've never been through what you're going 
through now. Here's a glass of water and here's a box of kleenex and 
there's more where they came from.  If you want a hug or an arm around your 
shoulders, I'll do that, but I won't push or intrude.

You're angry? You've got cause. More could have been done and wasn't, not 
just during the flood but before, long, long before, because this disaster 
was set up by decisions reaching back years. It had been predicted time and 
time again, and nobody did anything much. You're angry at the authorities? 
Damn right; their failures increased your suffering. You're angry at God? 
God's big enough to handle that, and God knows where the anger is coming 
from -- that it's a proper and healthy response. Go ahead and be angry; 
you've got lots to be angry about.

But when the anger subsides, the pain rises, and that's hard, so hard. It's 
hard on you and it's hard on me, and I might selfishly try to make the pain 
(or you) go away.  That's what Job's comforters were doing. They thought 
they were arguing about why bad things happen to people, but in fact they 
were trying to shut down Job's suffering.  Don't listen to people who tell 
you that others have it worse than you; your suffering is yours and it's 
real and nobody's taking notes or making comparisons. Don't heed those who 
would urge you to be calm and seemly and under control, not given what 
you're dealing with. People do this because they feel overwhelmed and can't 
stand it, but that makes you feel like you're the problem when you're not. 
The pain is real and reasonable, and you wail just as much as you need to. 
Wails that don't get out of your throat get locked into bone and muscle and 
turn into a terrible buzzing that doesn't let you think straight. Trust me, 
I know this.

Trying to shut down suffering -- that's not the way of Jesus the Christ, 
who wept at Lazarus's tomb, whose mother and friends endured with him 
through the Crucifixion. That's not God's way. God's way is to be with us 
when we suffer. It's not me sitting next to you and struggling with the 
pain; it's the God who lives in me.  These hands are Jesus' hands, and they 
will hold your hands, if you want, and do for you as best they can.

Take your time. It's going to take time -- time to get through the terrible 
first confusion, time to deal with the afterwash of fear and grief, time to 
clear up all the devastation, physical and emotional. You need people to be 
neighbours to you, where you are now; I'll do my best to do that for 
you.  The one lesson we should have listened to is the one we can heed now: 
it's not everyone for themselves and devil take the hindmost and I'm in it 
for Number One; it's that we need community, we need to be responsible one 
for another, we need to care enough to make some genuine sacrifices for 
each other.

You can say, and rightly, that a nation that claims to be Christian should 
have paid 'way more attention to the Gospel message.  Jesus said that we'd 
be judged on how we treat the poor, the imprisoned, the hungry and naked -- 
and in that case, the nation does have some judging to face. If Katrina 
turns the national attitude around, maybe good can come out of her.

But that's not your problem, and don't give it any attention, not now. What 
matters right now is the grieving. It's okay; you can't make any sound that 
would make me go away. Just let it go. Just let it go.

******************

I'm about to hit some sacred cows, and they moo so badly. -- Phyllis 
Tickle, aka The Divine Miz T.