Send in the Poets

After the shock of confronting reality and responding with the instincts for survival, belonging and meaning, grief can hit us. Grief, says Walter Brueggemann, is the counter to denial. (51)

“Grief, the feeling of loss, has a thousand dimensions in this time of doom – grief for the simplicity of the old life before doom moved in, grief for the old normal when we assumed that our economy was innocent, benevolent, and sustainable, grief for the loss of confidence in politicians, institutions, technology, or even democracy being able to protect us…grief for paradises paved to put up parking lots, grief for beautiful creatures becoming endangered or extinct, grief for the loss of wild and green places, grief for our children because of the unstable climate we are leaving them…grief for what we could have done but didn’t…grief for all the beauty that will be desecrated between this point and the end point of any one of the four scenarios we have considered. So much grief.” (51)

McLaren’s grief at the passing of his parents over a period of seven years exposed him to what he calls “the sweetness of grief – the purity, meaning and love…found in grief”. (51)

When we take reality seriously and even welcome it, especially when it heralds doom, we can move past – or through – the instinctual responses to our loss(es) and “drop down into the sweet current of deep grief that helps us appreciate – to know, to praise, and more fully to love – all that we are losing, all that soon will be lost.” (54)

“This bittersweetness in the grief experience, I knew, was humanizing me, deepening me, making my life better and fuller than it would have been without it. If I shut grief down, I would also shut love down.” (52)

The depth of grief reflects the depth of love. When we deeply grieve any loss, we know that we deeply love. When we deeply grieve the loss of our world we know that we deeply love our world.

To get to the sweetness of grief requires practice, intentionality and a desire to get there. It won’t happen on its own. That’s where “poetry” comes in. Not just the poetry of a poem, but a “painter and photographer and filmmaker and sculptor and potter and landscape architect and novelist and dancer and playwright and architect to sit at your table and share your bread and tears.” (57)

“Poetry and the arts – like the right kind of prayer – can help us to stay with grief long enough to feel its sweetness, long enough for the sweetness and grief to deepen our sensitivity to the exquisite agony and ecstasy that we call appreciation, praise, love…and life. We will find or write and recite the poems and prayers that resonate most deeply within us. We will revere and honor the beauty that has already been lost or is being lost at this moment. We will find poetic ways to lovingly describe it and lament it so it does not pass away unpraised.” (58)

The “poets” that most accompany and speak to me in my grief are those of classic rock ‘n’ roll. The combination of throbbing, wailing or quiet music with meaningful lyrics touches a place in me where no one else can go. This has everything to do with my personal history, of course. Because the era in which I grew up was a time of multiple crises, the music of that era spoke to and engaged the crises of that time, building, for me, a bridge to the crises of this time.

These “poets” are very personal – each person will experience, connect with and be led into “sweet grief” by different poets, most often rooted in past autobiographical experiences.

What (or who) are your poets?