Although We Are Weeping
/Although we are weeping, Lord, help us keep sowing.
I’m weeping tonight, or more accurately, I’m sobbing and heaving.
We are mourning, as several of our friends’ journeys on this earth are coming to an end, or have recently come to an end.
They are not my stories to tell, but they are indeed, losses to grieve.
Every Autumn, after the trees have emptied themselves of their leaves, the temperature has dropped from warm to crisp to cold, and the earth has settled into it’s Winter rest, we plant these bulbs.
Even as we say goodbye with sadness to the life of Summer, and as we anticipate the cold and darkness of Winter, we plant these bulbs.
Although we are weeping, Lord, help us keep sowing.
These bulbs, they sit in the hard, frozen ground, all winter long, waiting. Waiting in the dark. Waiting in the stillness.
And, that cold, dark earth, even with all its uncertainties, transforms into a sacred space. Because after they’ve endured, after they’ve let go, after they’ve waited, when they are ready, they crack open. And the tenderest of shoots begins to rise up, pushing and fighting and hoping, stretching up toward the light.
And one day, even with the remnants of Winter still present, the ground still cold, and the days not yet warm, a new bulb appears. And then it bursts open, as life emerges once more. Pain that leads to growth.
In this season of great uncertainty and pain, when we don’t know what to do with it or how to be in it, may we simply hold on, in the stillness, in the darkness, holding on - that one day we will find ourselves no longer stuck in it, but having gone through it, standing tall, and basking in the light.
Right now, all of our hard, is hard.
Although we are weeping, Lord, help us keep sowing.
It strikes me in a profound way that all of this is hitting me on the Thursday of Holy week, a day in which we remember events steeped in relationship, love, humility, betrayal, uncertainty, and impending sorrow, and accompanied by a new and lasting word, to love one another.
As wobbly as my faith may be right now, filled with more questions than answers, I know this to be true, we must keep loving, even when it means losing.
Although we are weeping, Lord, help us keep sowing, and hoping, and loving.
Love deeply, hold loosely.
