How are We an Instrument of the Divine in Loss and Grief?
I drove back to Westminster with relative ease, though the packing up for the season is always a heavier duty than I anticipated. Wouldn't you know it would turn hot just as I was leaving the edge of the water and the breeze that cools with comfort. Coming back reminds me of parts of my life that I let slip for the weeks I was in Lewes. I am more responsible when I'm here: I plan more, worry more, fill my life with more. I love returning to the comfort of being with Joanna and Chris. I feel so happy to have family living together. When I was growing up, my Aunt Katharine always lived with my grandmother. I never knew anything different.
Jo and I have lived together before -- of course when she was born and it was just us in the house when she was an infant and I was a new mother. Ruthie came two years later, and the three of us had our lives together until they were 12 and 14, when I married. The following years had changes in who was home at different times. Jo left, had a baby, and came back. Then she married and moved away, then came back. Ruthie moved out and back, went away to college, then back, then married and stayed here with her sweet husband for a while, and then they moved. The door is always open to my beautiful girls and those whom they love.
Right now Christian is at his first overnight camp for two weeks and we miss him. Jo is very sad. I try to keep her spirits up by reminding her how good Quaker camp was for her and Ruthie, that it's a wonderful experience for Chris, and that he will be back full of stories.
I think of those who won't be back. I am broken with sadness for those who are mourning their loss from the apartment collapse in Florida. I feel, as I'm sure many of you also feel, a helplessness and hurt that gets stuck and won't budge. Yesterday, my pastor told us of a beloved child of 33 who died of an apparent overdose of drugs. My pastor was once his stepfather. My pastor's former wife has lost her long term significant relationship, her father, and now her son in less than two years. I have that same helplessness and hurt stuckness about the agony my friends are experiencing.
How can I be an instrument of the Divine when I'm so sad and at a standstill? How can I channel love and comfort, or help? I wonder if God also feels that way? Is it enough to care deeply, to long to magically heal the pain, to write a note of condolence so the grieving know others are present and care? Is that what being an instrument of the Divine compels us to do -- to care deeply, to connect, and to hurt along with our friends known and unknown?
