Shaft of morning light opens to a forest cathedral: McKenzie River Trail (Mary Sharon Moore, 2021)

Approx. read time: 1:45 min.

Today a friend looks into my eyes. “Even with daily self care,” she laments, “I feel exhausted.”

I feel her exhaustion. I hear her cry.

“I race from one rally to the next,” she continues. “I attend Zoom conferences, make calls, send emails, write to my state and federal congressional teams. I’m completely spent.”

She searches my eyes, waiting for a word.

“You’re grieving,” I say gently. My words linger in the silence. “But we seldom receive permission for the slow work of grief.”

The truth is: Grieving is inconvenient. It interrupts the flow of action. Even talking about grief, risking its exposure to the light, can throw us off our game.

Grief is often the dark loamy soil beneath individual or collective anger.

Even the smallest step from situational anger toward deeply felt Grief is a pivot, an invitation to get your heart ripped open—by Love, by Justice—as prophets of old experienced. 

Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a surrender. It’s a sign of profound connection to suffering humanity, the suffering of both those who are oppressed and those who do the oppressing. 

Jesus’ brief yet passionate public ministry was fully given to building what is new, just, and beautiful, in the shell of the old, unjust, and brittle. He was condemned for rattling the status quo. And on his way to his execution he pauses and weeps a prophet’s last tears.

Grief affirms your deepest knowing: Things were not meant to be this way. Grief sharpens your vision of a better way: Creation flourishing, humanity at peace.

If you feel the prophet’s exhaustion and bear the prophet’s lament, give yourself to the worthy work of Grief. Allow the anger that has held strong within you to shake down, fall apart, and pivot you toward a beckoning Peace.

Now, sigh toward the sacred silence that precedes the “something new.”

Watch my free 8-part YouTube series in my Peacemaking Playlist. And fortify yourself with my book Gospel Vulnerability: The Key to Costly Love. It delivers insight and strength for our times.

Be well. Live in peace. Love one another. And please, forward this post!