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Blessed Beloveds,
For so many in our church family, this day in the days surrounding it join to become a season of loss. We are journeying through three funerals in three weeks time, have received knowledge brought and pain revisited in our recent wonderful training by the diocese on suicide, and members in our parish suffering the death of loved ones far away…. One of my EYC kids (now in his twenties of course) was found by his roommate yesterday morning, having died by suicide (yes, from the same church which lost a clergy member through suicide a few years ago).
It’s almost too much, especially in our culture which is largely death denying, and grief averse. We're encouraged to keep busy and deny rather than offer one another or ourselves tenderness and time to cry. We're encouraged to make other people comfortable, sometimes faking a peace we don't feel rather than entering into a holy season, however long it takes, of living with heartbreak.
But we are called to be real, called to follow a Christ who wept and sweated blood in the garden, and cried out in agony on the cross. We are sheep in the care of a Good Shepherd who knows what it is to face death and pain, head on and then journey through the valley. We, as Episcopalians, are the people of learning to live ‘both/and.’ We sorrow, but not without hope (BCP Burial Rite quoting 1st Thessalonians), knowing that life is changed and not ended, (BCP Burial Rite). We are a Resurrection people who are forever discovering deep Divine joy can be known even as hearts are breaking and tests stream down our faces.
And in that discovery,
Let us pray:
“O Lord of Life, weep with us now,
For we grieve a life interrupted. Almost wounded God, bear these are wounds
And be at work within them.
Take the shattered shards and raw materials
Of our individual and corporate grief
And fashion them into a mosaic
Of weeping grace; a pattern worked of pain
But also comfort in the pain.
Comfort your people, oh Christ!
Teach us what it means to grieve well
amidst this confusion. Teach us how to
love despite this anguish. By your spirit,
Both today and in the days and years to come Sustain our souls and our hopes period.
Now into our grief, speak grace, O Father and Nurturer.
Into our chaos and questions, speak comfort, O Christ.
Into our pain speak peace, O Spirit.
Shield and cradle us now and forever
in your undying love, O Lord,
Our rock and our Redeemer.
Amen.
Great love,
Mo. Nikki+
(Adapted from the book, Every Holy Moment, Vol. 2: Death, Grief and Hope, by Douglas Kaine McKelvey, pgs. 222-228)
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