It Comes in Waves

October 17, 2020

Is anyone else really struggling with holiday planning/thinking? I'm feeling that in a deep way today. I'm feeling grief for all the dear ones I know I won't be able to see or hug or encounter in the same ways because things are so different. It's hitting me in a way I hadn't let it yet. A season that is already hard for so many people I know & love is compounded by ongoing uncertainty and risk.
I'm sure so many of you can relate to the weird waves I notice myself continue to ride in this pandemic season. There are days when a semblance of routine and a "new normal" feel grounding. I can sense how so many "old" individual & collective ways of being--both pre- and present-pandemic--must be shed, exposed, reconfigured, reimagined (e.g. how we use time, how we worship, how we care for one another, our relationships with the earth, and the many layers of systems of oppression that show up in our lives, relationships, and world). What beautiful and transformative opportunities can emerge from that shedding. For all of the ways we talk about "when this is over" or "when we go back to normal," maybe there are some things that we need NOT return to or will not be able to return to--and while that can be scary, maybe it can be joy-filled.
That feels very Advent-y to this Christian pastor, and very in tune with the seasons to this dirt lover: that the darkness lends way to a new reality. That the invitation to linger in that space and do some real work on multiple levels can help make us the people we're deeply called to be.
And yet the days of confusion and of such deep grief (at so much death & loss, loss of connection to people we love, anger & exhaustion at the whole darn thing and all the systems) just cling so tightly sometimes.
It's both. It's the messy, complex, unsexy, hidden-opportunity-filled, we-better-ground-our-actions-in-deep-questions-and- reflection...both.
We are creatures who want to belong & create belonging.
How are we doing this, friends? How are you both acknowledging the grief and making way for creative/renewed ways to be in these lingering weird times (I'm really curious... not just rhetorical)? I don't think I've ever been more convinced of the need for both of these held together.