A broken tulip

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Of course we run from what Christ calls blessed: meekness, gentleness, hunger and thirst, mourning, poor in spirit, persecuted, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers…. how many men, how many women do you know who honestly take these as measures of blessing in their lives? We claim his blessing in a myriad other ways, yet he offers it here.

We are sitting angry and grieving here and there is a blessing here.

Maybe the blessing drops into your hands, dry and testy. Not enough to feed you, but enough for your fingers to feel. However fragmented, the blessing is here. It will continue to be here for you. We are following a breadcrumb trail of blessing through anger and grief and hurt and confusion.

Men—if you are brave enough, humble enough to sit here with your sisters and to mourn, you shall be comforted. Women—take courage. You are seen, heard, witnessed. Blessed. Gravel in our mouths, breadcrumbs in our hands.

Each time I post I’m not entirely sure what I will say next. I know there is a certain amount that I need to say, and when it has run its course I will know. I have a torn piece of paper, a recipe for lentil soup, which I smothered with tight words, squeezed in every direction, with all the thoughts I want to share. I don’t know, though, how to proceed. So I pray and stumble along, post by post, entering again the process of walking towards the light that I’ve lived in the last years.

It is uncomfortable. It is unsettling.

There is no clear correlation spelled out for us between “Blessed are those who mourn” and “they shall be comforted”. How does that change happen – or is it not a change but a paradox, a layering of opposites? Will the comfort spread and overtake our mourning?

Will comfort come when there is justice—then what does it mean, blessed are the merciful?

Give us our daily bread, daily “what is this?” — manna — to carpet the earth we have participated in cursing, to daily feed us.

Give us daily mercy, daily comfort, thick and heavy on our palms like fresh baked loaves. Loaves to split, to share. Give us mercy to fill our mouths, a comfort we can sink our teeth into and chew, the relief of satisfaction.

I don’t know what your experiences are, each of you reading this, to lead you to comment and say, “yes, yes, I know this.” But your saying it tells me that I’m not crazy. Thank you. It’s comforting to me that you have responded with empathy and relief. Wherever you’re coming from, whatever your story is, I hope you don’t feel crazy either. Maybe part of the comfort comes from each other. It wouldn’t be a surprise. God is a God who shares, and we are made in His image.

We are not told how the flickers of light and the crumbs in our hand will one day become loaves of bread, full daylight. Yet in your mourning, you are blessed. Trust it.

---

Featured image by Austin Ban.