Holy Saturday Heartbreaking Grief

News of Death

Last night they came with news of death,
not knowing what I would say.

I wanted to say,
“The green wind is running through the fields,
making the grass lie flat.”

I wanted to say,
“The apple blossom flakes like ash,
covering the orchard wall.” 

I wanted to say,
“The fish floats belly up in the slow stream,
stepping stones to the dead.”  

They asked if I would sleep that night,
I said I did not know.

For this loss I could not speak,
the tongue lay idle in a great darkness,
the heart was strangely open,
the moon had gone,
and it was then
when I said, “He is no longer here,”
that the night put its arm around me
and all the white stars turned bitter with grief.

David Whyte, River Flow (Many Rivers Press: 2007), 313 published today in Richard Rohr’s meditations.

I’ve been asking myself why so few movements, presidential candidates, justice organizations like the Church Council or Faith Action Network or Earth Ministry–to name a few local to Seattle–have put the banning of nuclear weapons first and foremost on their agenda? I think we are in deep denial. We speed past Holy Saturday, that awful presence of death counting on the truth of resurrection.

The Trident submarines proliferated since the first one steamed into Puget Sound in 1981 and scared many of us into action against it. When I tell my Open Borders audiences that there are eight of those submarines over there, just twenty miles away, their eyes open, then glaze over, then drop to their lap or the floor; their shoulders drop. Some may shake it off. Anyone under fifty has lived their whole life under the potential cloud of nuclear winter.

We can not find true resurrection unless we acknowledge the death that is happening to our planet right now and the threat of death hanging over us. 

Can we grieve together? Knash our teeth, beat our breasts, weep harsh, wet, unstopable tears of grief for the state we are all, everyone of us, from here to North Korea, to Pakistan, to Iran, to Russia, to India, all of us? Standing in the darkness, let the night put its arm around us, comfort us, so that through our grief we can open our eyes to the steps we can each take, however small and seemingly insignificant, to bring life back into our future.

Join me with Washington Against Nuclear Weapons. Together we can awake from denial and change the future.

Act II of the Great Tridium of Easter

Betsy