Good Morning dearly beloved and kindred souls:
We're going to take a look at one Beatitude a day for the next few days. Today, I want to focus on this:
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." (Matthew 5:4).
The Message put it this way for us: "You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you."
I am thinking most of us are getting a deeper sense of all there is to mourn, all there is we've lost, and all we can lament. If you take a close look at this, I invite you to take a Personal Inventory of what you are already aware of you've lost and are losing. Think it through for a few moments (this will not kill you and it will not make you suicidal--stay with me).
-What have I lost relationally? Who am I deeply missing?
-What have I lost emotionally? (Do you feel stable, grounded and anchored? Are you flooded with seeing your sense of joy erode and dissipate?
-What have I lost in my vocation, work and purpose in life?
-What have I lost financially?
-What have I lost with God in these days?
The acclaimed poet Mary Oliver writes: " Tell me about despair and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on." Mary's poem and Jesus' own words invite us to sit a while and allow our feelings to catch up with the rapid changes and the news which changes every 2-3 hours. To mourn is to give ourselves simple time to simply connect the dots in our soul and close the gap between our heads and our hearts.
When I do this... I realize and am aware that my life now is far, far different from the life I envisioned for myself a few months ago. It is as if I have lost the life I dreamed about and am forced to embrace the life that has interrupted all my dreams, longings and plans. How about you?
I am thinking of the plight and mournful and haunting song of Fantine in Les Miserables when she pines as she sings:
I dreamed a dream in times gone by
When hope was high and life worth living
I dreamed, that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dream to shame
He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came
And still I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream
I dreamed.
( See the video and listen to the song here but skip the ads please)
The pandemic is a tiger who has indeed come at night. Your job was perhaps ripped apart in the jaws of a failing economy. Things are tense at home because we are simply not equipped to deal with some much aloneness yet isolation or because men are stressed by so much Daddy time. What are you aware of that the tiger has taken from you?
Contemplative Question: In no more than three words what feelings are stirring in you now as you sit with what I have tried to express here?