The Gathering Storm

Humans find it easier to gather their energy around death, pain and problems than around joy.

I know I do.

-Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond

July 22 has a sort of ominous feel for me.  If I try really hard I can kind of remember what it felt like to live life without a big hole in the middle of it.  On this day particularly, I remember that losing a brother once seemed like a ridiculous idea.  Even with addiction and struggles, I always kind of bought the idea that it would all work out in the end.  I allowed myself to trust that there would be a new dawn and turning around.  And as of July 22, 2005, I still had that illusion.

So here's something peculiar that I have found about the last nine years: the tragedy, the loss and the grief that beset my family on July 23rd have been an immense source of creative energy.  Things that I have written, sermons I have preached, things that I have done in life, have been imbued with a certain power and significance because of what was about to happen nine years ago today.

The most joyful moments in life do not seem to have that kind of energy.  Joy is fleeting, it can come with immense power and set your life on fire, it can have the rush of excitement like a thunderstorm or a tornado, but it is usually gone as quickly as it arrived.

Grief is more like that perpetual spring rain that seems like it has been going for days and also seems like it just will not end.  But grief is a teacher, where joy is a playmate.  Both the work of learning and the joy of play can be generative, but learning has that air of seriousness and power that play, by it's very nature, is lacking.

The funny thing about it all is that, over the years, I think I have come to feel joy more easily and more deeply than I did before, and I'm fairly certain that grief has caused that sensitivity.

Don't get me wrong, it can be cussedly uncomfortable.  So uncomfortable, in fact, that I find myself wanting avoid certain things.  The beach, for instance.  The beach is a place that I will always profoundly connect with my brother. It's not that I don't like the beach, I do, I always have, but I am also profoundly emotional at the beach.  I can be moved to tears, or frustrated to anger, or just slammed into a state that I'm not entirely able to name without being paradoxical.  The paradoxical label would be, I suppose, joyous sorrow.

It's not entirely unpleasant, if you are on a beach at sunrise, or in winter, and you are alone with your thoughts.  It is practically intolerable on a crowded beach full of blissfully thoughtless rest and relaxation.  Because one thing I can no longer be on a beach is blissfully thoughtless the way I could nine years ago.

I suppose, this is all part of living with the "presence of an absence."

There is a scene in the movie The Crow, where Eric Draven uses the pain and anguish that has basically allowed him to return from the dead, as an actual weapon.  He transfers it all in a moment into his nemesis, "I have something to give you, I don't want it anymore." And the bad guy is destroyed by the power of that pain and suffering.

I was given something nine years ago, something I didn't really want, but it is something that has been profoundly useful.  This is perhaps the most difficult thing to admit: I do not wish it wasn't mine, and I would not give it back.  Sure, I would like to have my brother around, I can imagine so many ways that his absence has changed my life for the worse, but I know that what I have gained through losing is ultimately a better appreciation of life and how precious it is.

I am now a more compassionate person, a more thoughtful person, a more self-aware person than I was then.  And while I wish these results had come via a different route, I am thankful for the road I have traveled.