Comfort and Challenge
The World’s Pain
I was awake before dawn today, as I often am, holding still on the sacred threshold between day and night, listening for the world’s hope, for its beauty, for its pain. As I’m sure you well know, the world’s pain was enormous this morning, radiating out from an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas in excruciating waves.
As I tried to sit with these waves of collective anguish, an image came to my mind. The image is an ancient icon of the Eastern Church: Christ Pantocrator of Sinai. This particular icon is thought to date from the 6th century CE and resides today at St. Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai desert:
Christ Pantocrator of Sinai
Before I go any further, I want to say that for me, this image, like all icons, is a tool. It’s a way for our human minds to try and grapple with a profound mystery that we will never fully comprehend: our deep intuition that even (and especially) in the face of so much suffering, the Divine Presence is right here with us.
The very Source of Life, right here among us, even in the midst of our most unbearable confusion and pain.
This icon, like every icon, is an image of the Divine Presence made visible and tangible, so that our human minds might begin to comprehend and access an infinite, eternal, and healing love. Sometimes we call this Presence the Christ; sometimes we call it Emmanuel or God-with-Us. And some days, this is the one thing we most desperately need to know: that we are not alone. That the very Source of Life is available to help us find a way through the pain and into a new way of living. That the Divine Presence is offering, always, to help us imagine and then create a world in which all children are safe at school and assured of a future on this good, green Earth. Sometimes, we need an image to help us remember this.
As I sat with this ancient image this morning, I remembered that many years ago, a friend told me that this is her favorite icon of all. “It’s his eyes,” she said. Yes, those very eyes. Those unmatched eyes with their penetrating gaze. “One eye offers comfort,” she said. “The other eye offers challenge. And I am pretty sure the Divine Presence is always offering both.”
Aching Hearts
Comfort and challenge. Comfort to our aching hearts this day. Comfort to all those who are walking through unbearable grief. Comfort to parents and children and teachers whose hearts are broken and whose lives will never be the same. To all these, the Divine Presence extends the promise of comfort beyond our human comprehension as it gathers every shattered heart into its wordless and healing love.
But that’s not all. The other eye, always, issues a most urgent challenge to us:
Make a change. For the sake of all that is holy, make. a. change.
What we are challenged to remember this day is that we must not accept mass shootings in schools or grocery stores or anywhere else as inevitable. We must not continue to live in a country where parents are afraid to send their children to school, where teachers are asked to bear arms, where 18-year-old boys fall so far through the gaping holes in our social safety nets that they reach for weapons and easily find firearms within reach. Do not accept this, says eye of challenge. Find a new way.
I wish I could tell you that I know the precise contours of that way. All I know is that we are called to both comfort the grieving in the face of unspeakable pain and also to challenge ourselves, our leaders, and our communities to find a new way. To put a stop to this insanity. Because it need not continue.
Resources
Here’s are a couple of resources I can offer:
Tips for talking with children about difficult events
If you have children in your life, I offer you these ideas about how to talk with them regarding painful events in our own lives and in the world. I offered this resource a few months ago, but I think it’s worth linking it again here, on the blog, so that you can more easily find it again when you need it.
Healing with the World: A Guided Meditation
This, too, is a resource I offered a few months ago. I include it again here, in hopes that it will support you as you listen for what work of healing and policy change you yourself might be called to undertake in the weeks and months ahead.
May the Source of Peace send comfort to all who mourn.
And may we rise to the great challenge of a fierce and transformative love,
Yael
