Grief

January 15, 2008 · by Christine

I want to reflect here on two deaths that happened at the beginning of the year–within four days of each other–of two people whom I have never met. 

One is the great Irish poet and contemporary mystical writer John O’Donohue who died peacefully in his sleep on January 3, 2008.  He was only 53 years old and had already offered so much to the world, who knows what might have been birthed in these next 50 years. There is a beautiful memorial written for him at his website by poet David Whyte.  The work, witness, and wisdom of both of these men have been a great gift to me over the years.  Both stunning poets and lovers of Celtic spirituality.  I am saddened at his sudden death, and comforted to know he lived such a full life, spreading his gifts far and wide. To die peacefully is a tremendous blessing.

The other person who died was a 31-year old woman named Shannon Harps under very different circumstances.  She was stabbed to death right outside her home on New Year’s Eve at 7:00 p.m.  I did not know her, but she lived in my neighborhood and the stabbing occurred half a mile from my own home.  This death was everything that O’Donohue’s wasn’t.  She died in a brutal and violent way far too young and they still do not know her murderer.  

Shannon worked for the Sierra Club and they have a link to a very moving memorial slideshow of her life (click on her photo to begin).  I found myself weeping over the images of a life I never knew, heartbroken over the loss and violence that is woven through our world, desolate for her family and friends who had her torn away from them.

It brought to mind another senseless murder that happened in our neighborhood almost two years ago where six young lives were snatched away in a few moments of time.  Again, I did not know any of the victims personally. There was a community memorial service organized by the Church Council of Greater Seattle outside the house where it happened three days later.  I attended alongside hundreds of people who gathered in the street that evening to honor and mourn and help reclaim the space for healing.

The first speaker at that service was Rabbi Anson Laytner of the American Jewish Committee. He began with these words that I am still grateful for: “The world is awash in bad rationalizations for suffering.  I don’t accept that God had anything to do with it. There is no rhyme or reason to this.”  So often we hear well-meaning people claim that “everything happens for a reason.”  And yet the implications of that statement are so profound in terms of what kind of God it speaks of, as well as the way it subtly removes responsibility for horrible acts from the perpetrator and gives us all an illusion of control.  It was meant to be, you see, and so I don’t really have to wrestle with a world in which people make profoundly destructive choices that ripple across entire communities of people.

When I began this post, I wasn’t sure what it was I was trying to say, other than I knew I had been very moved by these losses of two persons I had never met.  I wrestle a lot with the question of suffering and loss. I think that is why Parker Palmer’s words about God resonated with me so much the other day, because he said so clearly and succinctly what it is I believe about God’s power and our own.  If God acts only incarnationally, and we must be the embodiment of that power of love in the world, then people can choose–and often do–to act apart from this presence and power.

In David Whyte’s memorial reflection these words especially move me: “John was a love-letter to humanity from some address in the firmament we have yet to find and locate, though we may wander many a year looking or listening for it. He has gone home to that original address and cannot be spoken with except in the quiet cradle of the imagination that he dared to visit so often himself.”  To be a “love-letter to humanity” — a life so well-lived.  From what I have read about Shannon, she was as well.

On the Death of the Beloved

Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,
Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.

Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of colour.

The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being;
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart.
Your mind always sparkled
With wonder at things.

Though your days here were brief,
Your spirit was live, awake, complete.

We look towards each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
As close to us as we are to ourselves.

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face,
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.

Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us:

To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.

- John O’Donohue

Poetry has a way of holding the extraordinary tension of the world we live in, offering us an experience of ache and delight in its spaces.  I’m not sure even how to end this post, which has gone on longer than I expected.  Perhaps it is because I somehow hoped in the writing of it I would come to some sort of wise conclusion, and yet I think the wisdom is to be discovered in embracing the unfinished nature of the world that every day offers us this choice between life and death. To think our answer doesn’t matter is to make a grave error.  To say yes to life is to enter into our own love letter to humanity.

-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts

Posted in Poetry, Grief |