Yesterday, I started my day be reading the following news headline. A local high school, a name I know, within an hour of driving distance. Yes, there in that place, there was an act of massive violence against humans.
So while I have been playing with this new blog and perfecting all the details and thinking and waiting for the right moment, I feel I cannot be silent anymore.
This is a blog about feelings. For the past 10 years, this is what I've been told:
"Don't let your emotions control your ability to do ministry."
"Set your emotions aside."
"Being emotional is a sign of weakness."
"When trying to understand God, you need to put your emotions aside. We need to consider God rationally and spiritually; we cannot let our emotions influence those spheres."
"If you show your emotions to the congregation, they will take advantage of you."
As an emotionally driven person, I have kept silent on the matter, and this blog is my emotional response to these statements. And after a headline like yesterday's, it seems only appropriate that I should begin now, when emotions are raw and exposed.
My emotions are some combination of: disappointment, disgust, pain, compassion, frustration, and grief.
I don't know what it says about me that my first reactions to major news events are to absolutely loathe other Christians on facebook. I'll probably get some slack for this, but I really hate it when we all respond to tragedy with public facebook statuses and tweets saying, "Praying for so and so. May God grant you peace in this devastating time." or "Thoughts and prayers for whosie-whatsit. Lord have mercy."
I get the sentiment, and I'm not bashing my dear friends who put this up on their public profiles. I definitely understand feeling the need to say something but having no words to respond. But it makes me mad at the same time. What exactly do we think we are praying for?
Are our prayers a sentiment of wishing that reality were not so?
Why do we pray for peace for a family who has experienced loss - because we are afraid of chaos, afraid of mourning, afraid of pain?
If bad things happen, is it because we weren't "blessed" enough or because God didn't have "mercy" on us?
When we say things like this, we turn Christianity into a Hallmark card. I'm not sure what to say, so I will toss some catchphrases at an open and gaping wound. It's like blowing your nose when you have a cold: saying something gives you momentary relief, but 2 minutes later you're emotionally clogged again. We are good at blotting wounds until the bleeding is under control and we can ignore it for a time, but the ignoring it is part of the problem.
It struck me yesterday morning as I pulled into work that I have become incredibly numb to disaster. An armed police officer stood at the entrance to the church in which I work, monitoring the people entering the preschool area. I greeted him warmly and went to my desk. The headline news about Franklin Regional was the 5th or 6th prayer request at Bible study, and very little was spoken about it. And although our church had an already scheduled healing service for that evening, not once was the the tragedy in our backyard mentioned. My newsfeed was so devoid of mourning that many people skipped sadness, mourning, and even the Hallmark necessary prayer response and moved straight to debates on gun control. Even when the Newton shootings occurred over a year ago, Facebook greeted me with numerous photos of Mr. Rogers, commanding me to seek out the "helpers" and look to the positive.
What kind of society fears grief?
What kind of children are we raising when they are afraid to mourn?
I'm not going to engage in any kind of debate about mental health, gun violence or God's will. I refuse to give out answers or substitute words for healing. What I will say is this:
We need to feel pain. We were made to mourn loss. We can no longer afford to hide from suffering or to stick on bandaids when stitches are necessary. Being in pain does not make you weak but it make you real, honest.
Jesus himself was not afraid to mourn, to feel pain. In the beatitudes, in fact, Jesus blesses those who mourn, and when he finds out that his pal Lazarus had died, he weeps aloud. Jesus took on the cross, in reality, as a human, feeling thirst and pain at every moment. To be human means to feel pain. Although our society tells us that we should feel happy and joyous all the time, I believe that as humans we should embrace pain and mourning and suffering so that we can see ourselves as we are, so that we can truly know the dark night we are up against. And to do that, we need to stop feeding ourselves easy fix-it lines and using Christianity as a self-help book. Ann Weems wrote these words:
There are no dances for dark days,
There is no music to bellow the pain.
The best we can do is to remain still and silent,
and try to remember the face of God...
Weems ends her poem with prayer, but I prefer to leave it here. There are no words, ointments, or prayers that will prevent us fully from feeling pain, but in honest suffering there is God. A God who did not pretend suffering didn't exist or answer pain with Hallmark prayers, but a God who suffered, and who suffers alongside of us. Let us on days like this remain silent and still, not attempting to bring peace where mourning is warranted. But embracing the pain as a part of life.
