How are we doing?
Grief can be a powerfully cohesive emotion … even though we all grieve differently.
And yet in tragic circumstances, anger can be the most powerful aspect of grief.
Anger comes from the frustration of believing that we are not seen, not heard, and not understood.
“Civic grief” is a special type of grief. It too can be both cohesive and divisive. If our civic grief is to be shared and used constructively, it must recognize, realize, and manage our justified impulse to be angry.
We cannot manage our civic anger if we do not come to believe that we care for each other, even with … and perhaps most powerfully together with … an accepting knowledge of our differences.
The barrier that blinds us to the lived presence of each other is our sense of justice.
Justice is not simply the correction of things that have gone wrong.
Justice is the recognition that fortune and misfortune are eventually balanced, and the least that we can do is to discover this balance … realizing that we will discover it either with grace or with rage.
Grace and rage are not as contrary as we might like to comfortably think.
Righteousness and self-righteousness are kindred passions.
Knowling that we don’t know is the key that unlocks the door.
But we place that key on the very top shelf of belief where it is too often out of reach.
In some religions we teach that doubt is the devil’s work. We teach that certainty is a grace. And when this happens, grace can become a weapon for self-inflicted wounds.
Do we feel that we should doubt the certainty that we would like to have about the way that the world is and should be?
Or do we long for a lost wholeness that somehow feels like a dream …. An ancient and long-unfulfilled wish?
If we share a longing for a time when compassionate closeness held us in long quiet moments, then we share a grief for its absence.
This grief is “civic-grief.” It is a grief for the sense of loss for a hope for a happier future – a sense of anxiety for what might come ahead – a sense of fear for what we may be capable of doing to each other.
There is a darkness in the heart of mankind. But there is a light too. One does not live without the other. It is folly to trust in a balance that we do not create together – a balance that we cannot feel – a balance that we cannot see when we take up tasks together.
The task before us at the moment is to recognize that we are all only heartbeats away from sharing our civic grief compassionately or turning our children’s futures into fires of our own rage.
Shall we come together and acknowledge our civic grief and discuss balancing the flow of fortune and misfortune?
The trust that we need to move us forward together is buried within each and every hearth. Where does the new conversation begin? Where is the new sacred ground? Who are our civic shepherds?
We are our shepherds. This place is our sacred ground. And now is the moment to begin.
Let us begin not by asking “How are you doing” but by asking “How are we doing.” Try it. The answer just might surprise you with a spark of hope.
BlueSkiesRIGrief@gmail.com
