WHY SADNESS? MARY OLIVER KNOWS.

I mentioned the other evening that I thought that sadness has its benefits.  Someone who heard me may have looked doubtful, if not put off.  I phrased it badly. I didn't mean to minimize our tragedies.  Sad, worried, concerned, even afraid.  Times we aren't happy.  When we are something else, something that tightens us and pushes us down.  Not the hurt that accompanies fresh grief--that far more physical response to loss.  But sadness.  

Sadness is so common, so part of the fabric of everyday, that it becomes part of the old question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"  But since they do, I wonder if perhaps God gives us sadness so that we can respond.   We can comfort ourselves by a feeling that draws in and lets go, a feeling that often, maybe even always, brings us closer to God.  

Some of the saddest (and most romantic) music touches our hearts. Somehow the directors of the movies Platoon and The Elephant Man knew that Barber's (1910-1981) "Adagio for Strings" would anchor their movies in heartbreak. Play this for yourself, if you will, and test your response.  

We are meant to catch our breath on those anniversaries that are embedded in mystery.  Those anniversaries where someone is given to God's care for all eternity.  

Mary Oliver writes,

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

Of course.  Everything is mortal.  My flowers die, my avocados rot, my hair turns gray, my old cat wanders off and our bones grow brittle.  Worse, the young are as mortal as we. Our species death rate is 100%; our survival rate, zero.   

Mary Oliver also writes, 

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.  

Meanwhile the world goes on.

. . . 

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

I think that sadness may be a bridge.  It may catch our attention to life as it is, then once caught, we note what lives beyond our sadness.  We ready for the next round.  The round where new flowers bloom, romantics listen to music and babies are conceived.  

Sadness is never the end.  There is always something after, high in the clean blue air as we living beings are heading home again.  

The psalmist writes, "He heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds."  Psalm 147:3  This we believe. 

Thanks be to God.  AMEN