Sometimes, I am keenly aware that my writing, processing, thinking, and speaking tends towards the dark, the haggard, and the grief-slog of day-in-day-out challenges. Often the things that speak to me the most are those things that put words to the heartbreak. There is purpose in this, a reason that this hopeful onetime-positive Baptist boy from the Midwest now refuses to be pinned down in too much hope and an over-positivity with “what may be.” Western culture is not sane in its stance towards that which is natural and good… terror, trauma, and narcissism has been made into entertainment so that the news becomes Hollywood while adolescence, youth, and denial are celebrated as salvation. Ironically, I was always told we’d get new bodies when we get to heaven, ones that don’t get sick, old, or feel pain. I think if heaven is full of young-bodied youths, I’m not sure I want to be there. Let me enjoy getting old, for God’s sake!

This is why I put words to the trouble, why I try to name the grief in such a way that others feel it in their gut, or their throats close up and they can’t speak. I want to let it hang there for a while and not jump off the hook too early. Someone’s got to do this… and I am so grateful for those who continue to hold us up to the edge of the abyss with a trust that we will not be forsaken, that we may come out the other side. It is also important for me to remember that there are those who have had such bad luck in their lives, who have faced such tragedy that anyone really listening in would wonder if it truly is real. Or else what was in the water they have been drinking?!? Families completely riddled by cancer, trauma, death, tragedy. There are so many in the world feeling worthless and completely cast out of a society glorifying the glitz and glamour of success, money, health, and youthfulness. So many in the world… no, so many in my neighborhood! If I can’t honor the pain they have experienced in their lives and put words to it, how can I possibly get close enough to walk with them in this?

I really am a positive person. I am not lost in depression and unable to see the light. I won’t get pinned down too easily on hope and heaven and miracles… but there is redemption and there is salvation. Watch the birds and the bunnies and know that they are finding food without stockpiles of nuts and grass that are growing compound interest at the best rates. For every winter there is a spring coming, no matter how cold, barren, or buried by snow it has been for the last 3 months… or years. Every time the sun goes down, it comes back up again. Life Force moves through the universe, down into the smallest atom, infusing it all with the buzz of life. Synchronicities and wonders happen to those who pay attention, reminding us that we are not alone and that in some sense, we will be ok. The wild, the world, is not an unfriendly place in its design. As Gerald Manley Hopkins writes, “Christ plays in ten-thousand places, lovely in eyes and in limbs not his.”

There is incredible joy to be found in allowing life to be what it is going to be. This includes death, pain, and grief. This includes praising said life and all that comes our way, praising it all with words and exclamations – sometimes with tears and screams – affirming the life that we see and the life that is given. It is all a gift, after all. We are in debt to life, so let us live like it, speak like it, and love like it.