Grief-stricken—and Graced
David R. Weiss – October 7, 2023

If you follow my blog, you’ve likely noticed I mention grief a lot. My writing can be witty, even humorous. Touchingly poignant. Powerfully insightful. But sooner or later the thread of my words wends its way back to grief. Most often, to Earth grief. Yes, the ecological news is bad these days, but no one is eager to sign up for sadness. So why do I persist in hawking a ware no one wants? Because I’m convinced it’s the only “cure” for what ails us—whether we realize it or not.

A couple opening vignettes.

1. Grief, it seems, is best (maybe truly only) communicated in first-person language. I can speak my grief. Not yours. And the moment I try to discuss grief in general, well, whatever words hit the page are but distant echoes of the reality itself. There is no “objective” grief; no grief in the abstract. Patterns, to be sure. But ultimately, each of us navigates grief for ourself. With a knot in our gut. Tears on our cheeks. Words caught in our throat. And yet, there is grace, because nothing says we cannot meet grief … individually-together. And, of Earth grief, this much is true: if we meet it entirely alone, we are lost.

2. I know more than I can tell. Brilliant thinker (yes), eloquent writer (yes), and passionate lover of Earth from nearest family to distant desert (yes!). And still I have not yet found the fullness of my own words around Earth grief. I sense that what reaches the page barely skirts the surface of that knot, those tears, the words still caught in my throat. I’ve barely begun to speak my truth. Some of this is because my own journey into genuine Earth grief is relatively young—a few years at most. More of this is because even these past years, I’ve stepped carefully along the edges, not quite ready to leap. Most of this is because what I know even faintly(!) threatens to undo me if I allow it to know me in return. Which is where the other grace lies—on the far side of undone.

3. Sunday night Margaret and I attended the “In a Lifetime” farewell tour concert by Clannad, an Irish Celtic band that’s been a favorite of hers for years. The music—both instrumental and vocal—was hauntingly beautiful. I found myself deeply moved. I wrote in my notebook, “How do I make my words on grief soar like Clannad’s music?”

After the concert, I posted on Facebook:

Well. How do you make words like those, soar? Overstated? I’m afraid not. I’ve read too many papers with similar perspectives. There are reasons they don’t make the evening news. How much do YOU feel like buying a new car after learning that?

One last vignette.

4. My friend S. has cancer. A lot of cancer. A boatload. More cancer than you can count on your fingers and toes. He has Fanconi Anemia, a rare genetic condition that makes him a cancer magnet. He’s had over 150 skin cancers removed. As well as two on his lips; two on his tongue; two in his throat; four on his gums; one on his inner cheek; one in a lymph node. He’s lost his entire bladder to cancer, and his prostate as well. He’s awaiting surgery for a new cancer in his esophagus. Just last week, because of pre-cancerous spots on both of his lower eyelids, each one had about a half-inch length cauterized. You probably can’t imagine cancer on this scale. I can’t.

Not yet 45 years old, married, and father to a daughter in her senior year of high school, S. has no room for “hope” in his life. It’s not “in stock” at ANY of the stores, clinics, hospitals he goes to. And yet S. hasn’t given in to despair either, though I know there are days he comes close. But somehow, he still laughs and cries. He loves. He savors moments of joy even as he’s hit far too often with episodes of pain, fear, terror, grief.

What is the word for life on the far side of any realistic hope that nevertheless stalwartly-stubbornly-wearily-faithfully refuses despair? I don’t know that word yet. Grit? Resolve? I wrote an entire ten-essay series under the heading “dark hope.” Maybe that’s the word. I’m still unsure what word names this best. (I’d love to hear your thoughts!)

But this is what I do know: human “civilization” has no more reason to be hopeful than S. My friend’s body is a stark metaphor for the multiple planetary systems that support life on Earth. They’re failing. Though not the result of a genetic mutation—unless you count Western humanity as a mutation. Which might be fair. But this is the point: we must find a path forward that is not built on unrealistic hope nor hemmed in by overwhelming despair.

And that path, I believe, is grief-stricken—and graced.

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First the grief. This is not about treating yourself to a mind-numbing litany of planetary woes. Believe me, it’s there if you go looking. But that knowledge will only get you as far as despair. To go further, you need in-your-gut feeling. And in our current state the feeling you need is grief.

It is absolutely, critically, crucially true: you need gratitude as well. But even though the busyness of our lives makes bathing ourselves in gratitude a challenge, we do not run from gratitude the way we run from grief. We find a thousand reasons to avoid grief, minimize it, or get over it because there’s “real work” to be done. I’m telling you, grief is the real work of this moment.

Specifically, Earth grief. Which is, to be clear, grief for all that is being lost right now. It is not devoid of grief for us, but it is perhaps least of all grief for us. It is most of all grief for all that is other-than-human which is being lost because of human choices.

Grief, not guilt. Are we guilty? Sure, in some ways, and to some extents. In particular, the wealthy and the powerful. Also, those scientists, technology innovators, and religious leaders who act without moral regard for the whole Earth community. Most of us, though, alongside whatever guilt is ours, are also entirely caught up in systems that render innocence impossible. Without dismissing it altogether, guilt is a distraction from what is needed right now: grief. And that grief will be immense. It will threaten to undo us. Because our collective systemic cultural multi-generational choices have undone so much. Our grief will be near limitless. Because the damage to Earth is near limitless. We will need to steady one another, or this grief will be too much.

It would be so much easier NOT to embrace Earth grief. To count on green technology instead. To delude ourselves that “the people in charge” will figure it out. To distract ourselves with pleasures. To lose ourselves in spiritual journeys. Except then, I swear, EVERYTHING IS LOST—including our humanity.

Now, the grace.

It is unfortunately possible that so much damage has been done by now that everything is lost no matter what we do. This is a real and bitter possibility. But if we dare to do this—take a deep dive together into Earth grief—we will at the very least preserve our humanity. At the very most, we might preserve humanity itself (as a species—“might”!), as well as preserve a biosphere able to support some multitude of other living creatures.

Here is the grace. Life is one. We have lived all our lives against this simple truth. We were born into a world (a society-culture-religion) that severed us from the unity of all life in the name of making us “special,” uniquely situated above-outside and other-than nature. I’ll write more about that great lie another time. Grief is its healing. And grace is the deep cosmic truth that even our arrogance cannot undo the unity from which we came and to which we still belong. And if we dare—though it will cost us nearly everything we have believed!—if we dare even to try to grieve for all that has been and is being lost, we will discover that the unity beneath us has never fractured. And we will rekindle the embers of an all-inclusive empathy for life itself.

We will weep! And weep some more. And then some more. And yet, those very tears will be the opening of our hearts toward the kinship with nature that has always been our birthright and continues to be so. And that kinship, held now in grief (because how else to hold kinship with a wounded, dying world?)—that kinship is the only power capable of holding us while the world unravels. Tendered through tears, that kinship is alone able to ground our spirit and guide our actions on the far side of hope. That kinship, (re)claiming us unconditionally—as grace—is all that is sufficient to stave off despair. Likely, only just barely, and only as we hold onto each other. But sufficient is enough. And enough is that word we have never really known. Until. Maybe. Now.

As I near the end of this piece, I will confess, I have sensed some (many!) of you shifting uneasily as you’ve been reading. “Hunter-gatherer descendants?! He can’t be serious. And if he is, I can’t take him seriously!”

I am serious. It is this bad. I hope you do take me seriously. And while I won’t pretend to know exactly how quickly or how entirely our world will unravel, I will claim to know that of all the things we must do today, opening ourselves fully and irrevocably to Earth grief is of singular importance. Everything else is negotiable. Everything else “matters” … in that it will make our future better or worse. But Earth grief alone will make our future … possible. Apart from it, there is no better or worse. There is only a slow slide (or precipitous plunge) into inhuman brutality and then … nothing. It is that stark.

I know these are hard words. But I didn’t shift gears in my writing to “lighten things up.” I did not frame my next work as “Writing in the Breeze.” I framed it as “Writing into the Whirlwind.” I shifted gears to become more fully honest. We have limited time to prepare ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren for what’s coming our way. And polite conversation won’t cut it.

Yes, there is a bunch of “practical” things that need doing. But to the extent that we busy ourselves with all those “important” practical things—as though the grieving can wait, that impulse is rooted in the very othering of Earth that brought us to this point. It betokens despair because that inward attitude and outward frenzy of activity is the ongoing denial that any other paradigm is possible.

Listen, we have limited time. But limited time is not no time. I promise, if we dare to be grief-stricken, we will be graced. And whatever we do once we are grief-stricken—and graced—that just might be … enough.

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David Weiss is a theologian, writer, poet and hymnist, “writing into the whirlwind” of contemporary challenges, joys, and sorrows around climate crisis, sexuality, justice, peace, and family. Reach him at drw59mn@gmail.com. Read more at www.davidrweiss.com where he blogs under the theme, “Full Frontal Faith: Erring on the Edge of Honest.” Support him in Writing into the Whirlwind at www.patreon.com/fullfrontalfaith.