[Disclaimer: Technically, this isn't a haiku. It has the right number of syllables all together but not per line. I tried shifting things to make the poem adhere to the structure, but I couldn't quite do it--so I decided to break the rules for the sake of the poem, which makes me sound far more knowledgable about poetry than I actually am.]
Know the names of trees.
Shake hands with grief. Gather
every fallen leaf. Weep.
Early on in the pandemic, before the hospitals in NYC and L.A. were overrun and doctors and nurses had to source their own PPE, we watched as the virus spread across Europe, stunned by the devastating toll it took on the people of Italy and France.
It was springtime in Northern Virginia and all the trees were in leaf--the delicate blades of the dogwood unfurling beneath their pink and white flowers like a kaleidoscope of butterflies, the waxy green leaves of the magnolia tree hiding their soft underbellies, the sycamores' rapidly growing to the size of dinner plates.
Any other day I would have found the neighborhood trees comforting. There's something anchoring about being able to look at the elements of a tree--the texture of the bark, the shape of the leaves, the structure of the seeds--and know its name.
It gives me a sense of rootedness in my own being--that if these trees have names and we can know them, then perhaps God really can know me--my small life among so many other lives across time and space.
But when I saw the trees that spring with their thousands of new leaves, all I could think of were the thousands of people who had died and the thousands of people feeling their loss. The sheer magnitude of suffering cut the roots right out from under me.
How could God possibly know the grief of so many people? How could he tend to them all? How could he comfort them? Can he possibly know each of us so intimately? And, in light of all this, what can we possibly do for each other?
I was overwhelmed. I've been in that place before. I've wrestled with these same questions. In the spring of 2018, I was recovering from a deep depression, and as I tried to process it, I wrote these words in my journal:
March 11, 2018
From Psalm 34: “If your heart is broken, you’ll find God right there; If you’re kicked in the gut, he’ll help you catch your breath.”
This thought has been helpful to me as I think about Four Winds and all the suffering people I encountered there. Group therapy felt like an overwhelming assault on my heart and mind—to be helpless in the face of so much hurt, to feel as though Christ asks us to bear witness to each other’s sorrows, and then to feel my utter lack of ability to do anything to alleviate the pain—I couldn’t understand why you, Father, would ask that of us.
I distinctly felt you saying through your word—wake up to the suffering of those near you, don’t be afraid to enter into it, don’t feel you have to hide from the messiness of life. And I felt like I took that step of faith, but without enough context. I took it thinking I was meant to bear others’ burdens by lifting them entirely off of their shoulders, that somehow doing so would instantly alleviate the suffering, and that you would supernaturally enable me to do such work.
But instead I encountered my own humanity and weakness and limitations. I came face-to-face with my own sorrows and sufferings and sinfulness. And by encountering my limitations and not being able to overcome them, I felt I’d failed. And then I felt betrayed by you because it seemed like you rigged the deck for failure, and I never stood a chance.
But in your grace, you've continued this conversation with me. Humility and weakness are always an invitation into your presence. Can it be true that all the suffering in the world is not too great for you to bear; it does not overwhelm you; it does not even come as a surprise to you? How do you bear it? How do we bear it?
And then it occurred to me that perhaps the reason you ask us to bear one another’s burdens is not solely to multiply our strength and somehow overcome them, but also so we come together in mutual weakness, bearing witness to each other’s need for you.
Like Wendell Berry’s short story “A Desirable Woman” when the narrator observes that a pastor’s calling is to be with a person in their suffering and that somehow just being present makes the suffering real. It does not alleviate it. In fact, in some ways, it deepens it.
Maybe that’s what happens when we are awake to each other’s heartaches and move toward each other in that suffering. For the sufferer it makes her suffering significant and makes real her weakness and need; for the one reaching out, he encounters his own limited capacity, his own weakness.
As they face it, they must also face their need for help and healing that lies beyond what they can do for themselves and beyond what any other human can do for them. Together they see their mutual need for God magnified, so they cry out for his help, and where two or three are gathered, He is there.
I needed to remember this, but I still struggled. What happens when the suffering we encounter engulfs entire countries full of people?
Verses like 2 Corinthians 4:17 seem like they ought to provide some kind of response--For our light and momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. But this can feel dismissive. Paul's words to the Corinthians, whose suffering was significant, seem to elevate the immaterial over the material, the unrealized future over the present reality that presses in on them.
But Jesus never belittles the suffering of others. When Lazarus dies, he weeps in anger at the death that cut short his friend's life and brought sorrow to those he loved; he suffered with them. He looks on those he encounters with compassion; he both alleviates their physical suffering and bears witness to their heartache--"he healed their diseased bodies, healed their bruised and hurt lives. When he looked out over the crowds, his heart broke. So confused and aimless they were, like sheep with no shepherd" (Matthew 9:35-36). He's a man of sorrow acquainted with grief and he holds all our tears.
So if Jesus does not minimize human grief, then what are we to make of Paul, an apostle of Christ, calling the Corinthians' suffering light and momentary? Maybe instead of dismissing their grief, Paul is giving the Corinthians an invitation to expand their imagination and understanding of who God is. As if he's saying--consider all the suffering you've endured, the depth and breadth of it, and then consider how big our God must be if his future for us is so great that even this will seem light and momentary in comparison.
This thought stretches my imagination uncomfortably--to think that God is big enough to hold all our suffering and compassionate enough to bear witness to it all; that the Jesus we see in the New Testament who weeps with us is the very same God we cannot see; and that if this unseen Reality undergirds all that we do see--all the pain and suffering we witness or experience--then perhaps we can hold each other's suffering without being undone by it.
Know the names of trees.
Shake hands with grief. Gather
every fallen leaf. Weep.
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