Americans go. We go fast, or if we live in LA we drive fast cars and go slow in traffic up to our elbows. We talk fast. Even those drawl-ers from the South can talk up a hurricane. We eat fast. Good grief who invented fast food and then globalized it? Both Ronald and Mr. Kentucky Fried Chicken look American to me. We drink fast. Have you ever had an European expresso in a European country at the pace of the locals? We do life fast in America.
And yet when it comes to grief it is as though a deathly pale hush falls over the ground like new snow but without the awe and the delight and the release and slowing down. Instead of snow the silence is like dead wet leaves that fester on the ground refusing to let winter and then spring grow up and out. Grief is slow. We are fast. It needs time, and noise. Stuff it into a little black outfit and a whispered comment with a wiped away tear and move on with platitudes tucked in right places. Now I know there are plenty who take meals to the mourning, who bless the widow and love widower, orphan or bereaved family member but do they sit and weep. In Pakistan, they sit and they weep.
Pakistan taught me to sit with the mourning and weep. Really weep. Yesterday a boy died. My friend went and sat all day at their house. She did not eat. She sat and she wept. She sat and sat and sat with the mother and wept. Time stopped, or at least slowed. I learned to weep with those who were weeping. To sit and enter into the silent space of grief to feel the loss, the death, the hurt, and fear and to weep. Death is a sad thing. God hates death, He is not overcome with it but calls His from life to life. Death can come fast but the mourning cannot be sped, it cannot be silent, it begs us to weep.
They took Him to the place where Lazarus had been buried. And Jesus wept.
And yet when it comes to grief it is as though a deathly pale hush falls over the ground like new snow but without the awe and the delight and the release and slowing down. Instead of snow the silence is like dead wet leaves that fester on the ground refusing to let winter and then spring grow up and out. Grief is slow. We are fast. It needs time, and noise. Stuff it into a little black outfit and a whispered comment with a wiped away tear and move on with platitudes tucked in right places. Now I know there are plenty who take meals to the mourning, who bless the widow and love widower, orphan or bereaved family member but do they sit and weep. In Pakistan, they sit and they weep.
Pakistan taught me to sit with the mourning and weep. Really weep. Yesterday a boy died. My friend went and sat all day at their house. She did not eat. She sat and she wept. She sat and sat and sat with the mother and wept. Time stopped, or at least slowed. I learned to weep with those who were weeping. To sit and enter into the silent space of grief to feel the loss, the death, the hurt, and fear and to weep. Death is a sad thing. God hates death, He is not overcome with it but calls His from life to life. Death can come fast but the mourning cannot be sped, it cannot be silent, it begs us to weep.
They took Him to the place where Lazarus had been buried. And Jesus wept.
I love this, thanks for writing and being honest. I can relate, especially to your friend going and sitting and weeping and simply being there.
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