Mourning Reorients our Wings

• TODAY: INC Picnic on the Lawn on July 26th at 1pm
• Village Fair and 5K is on August 15th this year (third Saturday of August); mark your calendars. Please message Charlotte to register for the Race (you may also request a t-shirt, we may have extras, but only a very few).
• TODAY: Discussion Circle is on the last Sunday of the month after Church. These discussions are here to to inspire, teach, guide, and challenge us–all are welcome to join us (we often explore sacred passages, poetry, and other words to inspire us toward freshness, surprise, and wonder).

Visit our Calendar of Events to explore our upcoming dates and times

All are Welcome. If you are uncomfortable with the word God, please feel welcome to insert your own word for the divine or Mystery in your life (Universe/Grace/Spirit/Divine).

These Reflections are written to be read aloud, please forgive any writing errors. You can find the recording HERE (usually late Sunday morning).

SUNDAY REFLECTION:

Blessed are those who Mourn, for they shall be comforted.

When we are confronted with the troubles of the world, we mourn. Perhaps this is the deepest type of mourning. To realize, or feel, that the world is not what it should be. To not understand.  To question.  To be lost and confused. To grieve. To mourn for the world.

Perhaps this deep mourning for all people, all communities, all nations, the whole of the earth, and the more than human world is our greatest mourning.  Perhaps these are markers on the way, pointers pointing us in the right direction.   

We have our personal mournings.  Mourning is valid and real.  Grief is incredibly painful. Moving through grief is hard and sometimes feels impossible. Perhaps all our little and big griefs are practice grounds for understanding the world and our place in it. In mourning, we question. How is this possible? And what can I do?

We don’t know how it is possible and often there’s not much more we can do than to move through it. 

Perhaps this is part of the greater Mystery that is so much bigger than ourselves. It is impossible to understand. And yet at the same time, we are part of it.  We’re a part of the problems.  We’re a part of the solutions.  We are the hands of Grace in this world.  We can work for greater Goodness or let the ugliness grow by our actions and our inactions.  

One wouldn’t think that mourning would, or could, save the world.  Or that in mourning we shall be comforted is of such import that it’s listed as one of the Blessing.  But it can save the world.  

It is in times of our mourning that we are opened to comfort. No, we don’t want to hurt or suffer.  No, we don’t ask to mourn.  No, we don’t want to be witness to terrible suffering, but mourning is the doorway opening to comfort.  Comfort is one of the greatest treasures.  It reminds us of our common humanity. It is when we are hurting that the lines of our differences fade away.

We can be comforted by one another. We can be comforted by the more than human world. We can be comforted by a sense of safety. We are comforted when we surrender to the Great Mystery. Something bigger than ourselves.  We are comforted when we surrender to Grace.

We mourn for our nation and the world and the Earth.  This messy world can feel like an entanglement of chaos that makes no sense. There’s no sense to made of senseless death, senseless destruction, senseless hate, senseless anger, senseless fear, senseless war. These are the times we grieve on a deep level.  Collectively. Grief rocks us as people to our core and as individuals to our core.  It’s deeply painful and raw.  But with that…is an opening.  

We can be comforted by one another. We can be comforted by Grace. 

Comfort means With Strength.

It’s in these times that we need the greatest strength. To get through our personal griefs, so that we can begin to return and do what it is we are meant to do and be in this world.  Our work sometimes feels so insignificant in our grief.  We wonder: why bother?  What is the point?  It’s hopeless.  

With strength is what we need so deeply, not strength alone, but with strength. We need the strength of those around us–all those around us. And the strength of Grace. We need that so that we can return to our work as the hands of Goodness in this world.  When our small lives get rocked with grief, we turn in, but then we must be open to comfort. That is the way through and it is grief with comfort that reorients our Compass toward our Way.  

When the world gets rocked and shaken by these terrible things that have always happened and seem to keep happening, and seem impossible to fix, we find ourselves mixed in the collective heaviness of grief. And it is heavy.  As much we want to fix the world, we can’t.  We never could.  In some ways grief reminds us of how small and insignificant we are. We realize how little control we have. That our acts are so small we don’t even know where to begin.    

This is where we begin: we begin in comfort.  We can be comforted by one another, which reminds us of the bigger groups that we are part of, the bigger communities.  It’s in those groups that we find hope. Without comfort, grief becomes despair.  With comfort and strength, we find hope and purpose.  

With comfort, we have the strength to look within and change. To love. That is always our greatest calling. To love when it’s the hardest. When we’re grieving. When we’re hurting. When “other people” seem so awful. When everything feels unfair. When the world seems like it’s falling apart. We can still love. We can still change ourselves and we can choose to lean into Goodness.  We can bring ourselves closer to grace and closer to the call that our faith asks us to answer. To do our good work as small and insignificant as it seems. 

With comfort, strength and grace, our small works become something bigger. Maybe we don’t see it. Maybe it’s tiny incremental changes that feel too slow. But it’s there: those incremental changes. Our small acts, the shift in ourselves, our way of being present, our loving ways, it begins to change those around us. And when we come together as like-minded communities working toward change together, to be comforted, to be strengthened, we can be beacons of light and hope and love that begins to ripple.  Ripple beyond these doorsteps, beyond our country roads, beyond our towns and cities.  

They meet other ripples and more ripples.  They grow and they grow.  One tiny wave at a time.  And together they are making waves.

Truly. They are.

Think of the power of hate and division.  That too starts as small, individuals hurts and griefs and fears. Misunderstandings.  Frustrations. Angers. All of that also ripples and we feel it. It’s what feeds the hopelessness.. It’s what feeds the inaction.  We begin to feel lost, forgotten, weak. 

We can use our grief to divide and isolate or we can use our grief to bring us together. Grief can lead us to mourning and that mourning can lead us to comfort.  Mourning can lead to strength.  We must let it in!  We must say yes to comfort.  We must allow it to strengthen our hearts and our hands for the hard work to make those Good ripples.

We see how easy the ugly ripples can flow on the waves of fear, but the good ripples move just as far and fast.  We simply need to begin to make ripples.  Ripples of comfort.  Ripples of strength.  Ripples of Love.  Ripples of Goodness.  Rippling examples.  Reaching outward toward the world and the work we are called to do.  Reaching out to Grace.  And when we reach out, that mourning is answered in the blessings of strength.  

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. It’s okay to feel. It’s okay to hurt. It is okay to mourn.  But be open to Comfort when we finish Sermon on Mount, we’ll explore Job and talk about the messy ways comfort arrives…)…But, again, be open to Comfort (in all the messy and annoying ways that comfort seems to arrive), because when we are comforted, we are given strength. And that strength can be used to bring love and hope and light into this world that needs our Love and Comfort so very, very much.

Blessings to you and yours in all your trials, hurts, and mourning. We send you Comfort and we send you Love. We ask that you are held in the palm of Grace and find Great Comfort.