No Shortcuts

“I find humans dull except in grief.”

These are the words of a crow in Max Porter's Grief Is the Thing With Feathers. These words, spoken to a grieving family, are an invitation into the devastation, mystery, and wonder of grief -- the peculiar places in which we find healing and liberation. We are uncomfortable with this kind of weight because it slows us down and challenges our safer impulses. While we look around for shortcuts, we fail to pay attention to the slow and beautiful change happening in and around us. These shortcuts -- these failures to grieve -- distract us with the sentimentality of scarless beauty.

But beauty should never have to hide its scars.

We cheapen our imaginations with quick fixes and trite statements when better things are uncovered in the tears, the anger, the cussing, and the kicking. We pretend to know a better way through because the aimlessness of the valley scares us. But, what seems aimless is perhaps a path of discovery. When we go through and not around, we experience the reality of resurrection. The promise of new life is not a disembodied philosophy but something active, fleshly, and persistent -- the mystery and glory of incarnation happening in the places we tend to avoid.

We better understand hope when we slow down, when we pay attention. We better understand hope when we grieve well.

A while back, a friend of mine and I were talking about the disciplines of stillness and silence, of creating more space in our lives to listen, to be attentive. She then said, "I can't do that. I'm afraid of what I'll find there." I imagine we all carry such fears, that, when we examine our hearts, we will see too much and quickly throw it back into the vault and throw away the key. We are not sure we can trust our impulses, our ability to steward our pain.

But what is the alternative?

Eventually the things we hide come to light.

Hope is not a passive endeavor but something cultivated with hands stained with blood, mud, and sweat. We stumble forward, entrusting our fear and our doubt to a savior who is well-acquainted with grief. Who weeps with Mary at the grave of Lazarus. Who bears an unimaginable burden so that we would experience a lighter burden, an easier yoke.

His tears invite us to slow down, to pay attention. To see that every tear, every inch of the world is "charged with the grandeur of God" (Gerard Manley Hopkins).

Let us pursue beauty with tear-soaked ambition, not "dulling" our imaginations with sterile religiosity.

"I find humans dull except in grief."

I find humans dull except in hope.