How Can There Be Such Wrong?

Renewal Happens, part 2 of 2

Opportunities for renewal, for starting over, are ever-present. But there's a price for renewal. New beginnings come with loss.

All the things that religion is – the ethics and values we live by, the community bonds and the rituals, the experiences of transcendent wonder – all of that: it’s nothing if it doesn’t make us more alive, if it doesn’t open us to the fullness of everything, if it doesn’t prepare us to say YES to all of life, even the hard parts, even the loss. And renewal does include loss of what was before – just as loss of what was opens the space for renewal.

We have to say good-bye in order to say hello -- that's the cost of renewal. Novelist Daniel Abraham points out:

“The flower that wilted last year is gone. Petals once fallen are fallen forever. Flowers do not return in the spring, rather they are replaced. It is in this difference between returned and replaced that the price of renewal is paid. And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us.”

Even as our hearts are lifted by new births and babies among us, we carry, too, the grief of absent loved-ones. Edna St. Vincent Millay captures this poignant ambivalence in her poem, “Spring”:

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

“It’s not enough,” says Millay. The bloodroot blossoms now sprinkled across our congregation’s property are so lovely – and far too delicate to bear the weight of the world’s grief.

Sara Teasdale feels the overwhelming inadequacy of spring as she writes in 1917, in the midst of the carnage of World War I. Her poem is called “Spring in War Time.”

I feel the spring far off, far off,
     The faint, far scent of bud and leaf—
Oh, how can spring take heart to come
     To a world in grief,
     Deep grief?

The sun turns north, the days grow long,
     Later the evening star grows bright—
How can the daylight linger on
     For men to fight,
     Still fight?

The grass is waking in the ground,
     Soon it will rise and blow in waves—
How can it have the heart to sway
     Over the graves,
     New graves?

Under the boughs where lovers walked
     The apple-blooms will shed their breath—
But what of all the lovers now
     Parted by Death,
     Grey Death?

In war time – and it is always war time somewhere on this weary world, and tragic loss is never very far away – it can seem a wonder that the grass would have the heart to sway over graves. How can the daffodil and bloodroot blossoms around us dare to shine forth? Do they not know my mother is no more? Have I not told them of my father’s death? Did they not hear of the Parkland shooting? Do the names Michael Brown and Eric Garner mean nothing to them? Have they no inkling of the refugee crisis, or what is happening at our country’s southern border, or in Yemen? Do they not read the paper? How dare the flowers stand there in small and silent beauty?

And yet, they do. There they are – matched in their shameless impudence by the boughs above them budding with fresh leaves, and, above them, the sun that has the effrontery to shine so brightly.

Do none of them know that animals, including human animals, died and are dying – horribly, tragically, and much too soon? Do they not know how much we loved those taken from us?

No. They don’t know. Life, heedless of calamity, refuses to be stopped, though its continuation only means more death.

In the book of Job, Job cries out “Why do I suffer?” After his friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar have offered their trite moral simplifications, Job is still left crying, "Why do I suffer?"

Finally, God Godself appears in a whirlwind to answer the charge that Job’s suffering is unfair and without basis. It’s not clear, however, that what God proceeds to say can be accurately called an “answer.” God unleashes four chapters of rhetorical questions that invoke the wonders and grandeur of creation. Here’s a sampling from chapters 38 and 39.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?...
Or who shut in the sea,... made the clouds its garment...
Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place...
Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?...
Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew?...
Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion?...
Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?...
Do you give the horse its might?...
Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and spreads its wings toward the south?
Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes its nest on high?”

Does this answer Job’s question? Does this explain why Job suffers? No. It does not. It is, as Millay said, “not enough.” Yet, confronted with the marvel of creation in this way, Job’s complaint is stilled. Job says, "I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” Humbled and speechless, Job abandons his plea.

But the plea returns. It returns recurrently in our lives as it returned to Sara Teasdale in 1917: how can there be such wrong?

If the wonders of creation seemed to Job to dwarf his own suffering, there are also times when the immensity of the world’s pain dwarfs the green grass of spring, the new leaves, the little flowers. And so it is, and so it is, and so it shall be.

Ours is to be open and present to both sides when they come – the death and the renewal alike -- for, in truth, both sides are always come.

So, yes, stop and smell the flowers, now that it is spring. Work hard and take breaks. Strive to get that hit -- and don’t forget to touch every base.

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See also Part 1: Start Over 'Cause It's Never Over