Grief is a Poetic Love

This piece of Mary Oliver's The Fourth Sign of The Zodiac might be familiar to some of us. As a person who loves poetry, Mary Oliver's poems are some of my favorites. However, this particular piece gave me a longer pause than usual. When Mary Oliver tells the reader, "I know, you never intended to be in this world..." It feels deeply empathetic for some of us. 

We might relate to this feeling of not wanting to be in this world or might have heard someone telling us that they did not intend to be in this world and do not want to stay in this world. What I found interesting about this piece is that Mary Oliver shows the same attitude toward admiring the world as much as weeping the world. She writes, there is so much to admire, to weep over.”

As a non-native American English speaker, I learned some English words related to grief:  sadness is not enough to depict the complexity of grieving. There is sorrow, suffering, pain, crying, mourning, lament, and so on and so forth.

As a diverse and complex grieving experience, grief is a universal experience. It is part of our mortal experience. And people grieve in different ways: some grieve by writing poetry, some grieve by looking at loved ones’ photos, some grieve by waiting for the sunset, some grieve by helping others, some grieve by crying, some grieve by working harder, and some grieve in silence.  

Although people tend to avoid grief or even talking about grief, grief is a mundane experience. For example, suppose the peak of grief is when we lose someone to death. Our church graveyard is actually the final resting place for nearly 1,700 people.  How many times has our graveyard dealt with grief? Some of you might park your car in the social center’s parking lot, and you walk through the graveyard weekly. How many of you think about grief whenever you walk through the graveyard?

Anyway, you can find more about this graveyard story in Pete Bellisano, Jr.’s book Graveyard Tales: Voices from The First Presbyterian Church of Metuchen Cemetery or in our latest Parish News.

Some people might think that grief is not efficient. It is slowing the pace of our life. It is not productive. But, grief is actually a normal and natural internal response when we experience loss and change. Grief is not limited to when someone we love dies. Our human life is constantly changing in flux, and many kinds of change affect us.[i]

We grieve because we lost the relationship that we used to have,

we grieve because someone from our family has been diagnosed with a terminal illness,

we grieve because we need to sacrifice our dreams for some reasons/conditions in our lives,

we grieve because we lose the abilities that we used to have,

and for some of us who identify with a marginalized group,

we grieve because of the oppression and discrimination that we experience.

July is Disability Pride Month.

If you are familiar with the disability pride flag, the background is faded black. The faded black background in the flag represents the mourning and rage for victims of ableist violence and abuse. The communities of People with Disabilities mourn through their flag. I believe this similar experience of mourning is also shared with other marginalized communities. We can imagine that the psalmist also shared this feeling of mourning and rage, the psalmist asks God?

1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?

    How long will you hide your face from me?

2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

    and day after day have sorrow in my heart?

    How long will my enemy triumph over me?

This petition is also reflected by poets weeping for a broken world. As the prophets angered over oppression, as the psalmist lamented injustice, as Job mourned his losses, Scripture repeatedly grieves for all that goes wrong. In poetry, we weep with those who weep.[ii] Judith Skretney, in the “Top Seven Things to Know About Grief,” mentioned that the most helpful thing for grieving people is to process their feelings, for example, by talking, writing, composing, and creating.

Do you know that poiesis is etymologically derived from the ancient Greek term ποιεῖν, which means "to make?" It is related to the word poetry, which shares the same root. The making of a poem is the reaching for another, even in the isolation of grief. Poetry presses on through its construction. And in each new elegy and expression of mourning and rage, we learn to weep with those who weep.[iii]  Speaking about the root of language, “The word goodbye—originally “God-be-with-ye” or “Go-with-God”—was a recognition that God was a significant part of the going.”[iv] In every goodbye, there is God. So when we sing this song by John L. Bell:

Go, silent friend, your life has found its ending:

To dust returns your weary mortal frame.

God, who before birth called you into being,

Now calls you; hence, his accent still the same.

Whenever we sing this song to say goodbye, we are reminded that God, who called our loved ones into being, is the same God with them.

Grieving is painful, yet it is a sign of the presence of love.

Love to our loved ones who make us love life

Love to the relationship that we used to have

Love of the dreams that have inspired us to be a better person

Love to our home, our space that gave us comfort and safe

Love for our jobs that have defined our identities

Love to our community that has supported us in our lowest

Love to the willingness to be alive and to look forward to every morning

Love to our fellow humans and other God’s creation

Grieving is also an act of love.

An act of loving God

An act of loving our fellow human beings and God’s creation

And an act of loving ourselves

Grieving is a poetic love.

As the poets grieve with their poetry,

And the psalmist lament with their petition

In grieving, we are called to make something out of love

As much as there are many shades of love,

you are allowed to grieve in ways you choose

As a church community, we mourn together when you grieve

We can grieve without being consumed

Because grief and love are deeply connected

Grief and hope can exist together

And now, to end this sermon, let me reread Mary Oliver’s piece:

I know you never intended to be in this world.

But you’re in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.

There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

References

[i] Jennifer A. McBride , “What Do We Do with All This Grief?”

[ii] Abram Van Engen: Word Made Flesh: An Invitation to Poetry for the church, 221

[iii] Abram Van Engen: Word Made Flesh: An Invitation to Poetry for the church, 233

[iv] Praying Our Goodbyes by Joyce Rupp.