On Love & Grief ~ Garden Encounters

There can be no peace without reconciliation,
no reconciliation without forgiveness,
no forgiveness without giving up all hope for a better past.
from Bishop Desmond Tutu



ON LOVE AND GRIEF

What do we do with all that is wrong in our world?

My personal strategy over many years has been to focus on what is right, and put my energy toward helping it grow. This has certainly made my life better--and probably the lives of others as well. Yet an exclusive focus on the good and the possible is feeling a little tight and frayed these days. In a way, it has always been a protection. I can't quite bear to really take in all that is not right. I know a great deal about it, and care deeply. My choices have been framed by that knowledge, but I've kept it at arm's length. I've been unwilling to have a life shaped by rage and despair; unwilling to join in charges of evil that seem to just stereotype, blame, and separate; unwilling to carry the burden of the world. I haven't known another way to interact with, to contain, the depth of what is wrong.

Yet a voice inside me is getting louder and more insistent--we need to grieve. As a parent I've championed children's right to grieve. Though we want to step in and make everything better, there are some things we just can't fix. If, at these times, we can wrench our attention away from solutions and just help them grieve, they have an incredible capacity to bounce back to face life's next challenge.

After all, no one can heal without grieving their loss. The search for easier or more comfortable alternatives just seems to lead to more pain--payback, vengeance, the death penalty, bombs. How can our world heal without a much larger outpouring of grief--not just the sum of many individuals grieving individual loss, but grief for the world as a whole?

This poor old world is getting lots of action fueled by anger and outrage--and lots of inaction held in place by despair. Yet what are anger and despair but indicators of aborted grieving? Anger makes us quick to find enemies, and its fires burn us as well. Despair knocks us out of the public arena, sends us looking for personal happiness, makes us vulnerable to consumerism, addictions, the need for entertainment, belief systems that hold us separate or uninvolved. Seeking a life of individual purity, to minimize or make amends for personal complicity, may be laudable but it doesn't get at the whole. There is certainly lots of action based in love as well--and we need all of it that we can get--but there is not much big open-hearted grief.

Somehow, with attention on the need to grieve (and with a faith that I am supported by a force for good alive and moving in this world), I find myself more willing to engage with the evil that I've refused to focus on all my life.

There is some intimate connection between evil-doing, oppression and grief. What if hardness of heart is an indication of the need for tears of grief to soften that hard shell? Does the end of oppression require the grief of those who oppress? While I do not do much evil directly (I hope!) we are all caught in the coils of oppression. Just being citizens of a rich nation ensures that. None of us are free, none are uninvolved.

We can work to change the forces of evil and domination and oppression--there are hundreds of ways, all valid, all important. Maintaining hope, and acting in line with our truest beliefs is part of what makes our lives complete. But we need more than work. We need to be present to all that is wrong, to love what could be, and be overwhelmed with open-hearted grief, turned toward healing and change. If those who traffic most directly in injustice cannot yet grieve, then perhaps I can. Perhaps my tears, the tears of all of us, can help in the healing of weary evil doers as well as those who suffer under their hands.

A young man who shares our house has been looking for older African American men, steeped in the tradition of nonviolent change, who can be his mentors. Yet he can't find ones who aren't burned out. This has triggered an enormous outpouring of grief--not just for himself, but for them, for generations of people who have been oppressed then hurt again in their struggle to be free. This grieving is important work. It needs to be done, on our own behalf, on behalf of those who cannot do it for themselves, on behalf of the world, by whoever is willing do it. While we can't track the linear consequences and don't know exactly who will benefit or in what way, there will be ripples.

We don't have to turn from the work we are doing in the world (though we might, if the fuel has been anger). But I could imagine finding ourselves doing whatever we choose with less angst, less pretense--and perhaps doing more. Being willing to grieve, aligning ourselves with this power of healing, gives us a way to share our love for the world that may have been blocked for many of us. Though it is not something that most of us are used to or good at, it can give us a new voice. As we find ways to grieve--and grieve together--for this precious world, I believe that new paths, perhaps ones we had never imagined, will open before us.




In the garden--encounters

The woman hailed me from the sidewalk
was the president of the garden here?
they had spoken about a vegetable plot
she was from Africa
brightly clothed
I was covered in dirt
she waited a while
then wrote her number
on a tiny slip of paper
I took a corner
hands encrusted
shoved it in my pocket
that night I called the garden president
Later the woman saw me
gave thanks for my help
she now had her piece of earth

A young woman asked
would I be working out front for a while?
If a taxi came for her and her mother
could I say they would be right there?
A taxi from a vegetable garden
seemed an oddity
but I watched
hailed him when he came
and went to find them amidst the plots
hurrying as the meter ticked
She thanked me
her mother was old
I was glad for the taxi

A man called out from a roofing truck across the street
was it for me?
did he need help?
I put down my shovel and went over to ask
No, he said
He would never have whistled that way for me
but he knew me
had seen me working there often
it was a neighborly exchange

A woman came by with three children in tow
together we admired the bees
busy in the echinacea blooms
Had they ever seen honey bees before?
Maybe not

The mailman stopped to chat
We need this kind of beauty in the neighborhood
he said