Dear Westwood Family,

I started reading Richard Rohr’s latest book, The Tears in Things, but haven’t gotten past the poem epigraph. Written by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, it’s titled “For When People Ask,” and it begins this way:

I want a word that means
  okay and not okay
     more than that: a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.
  I want the word that says
     I feel it all at once.
The heart is not like a songbird
  singing only one note at a time,
     more like a Tuvan throat singer
able to sing both a drone
  and simultaneously
     two or three harmonics high above it–
a sound, the Tuvans say,
  that gives the impression
     of wind swirling among rocks.

This weekend, we will celebrate All Saints Day at church; it’s an occasion for holding opposing feelings together: for grief and celebration, for lament and praise, for (as the poet says) devastation and joy.

Especially in seasons when there are so many things that are at risk, and so much devastation that we are aware of (44 million people set to lose federal food assistance in a few days, for example) our faith gives us courage to not just go numb. Instead, our faith calls us to grieve, and to claim joy.

This Sunday, in particular, we remember those who have died in the past year. We will speak the names of members of our community who have died, and honor our grief for others we know and love and have lost. We remember their stories, their gifts, the life we shared together.

We also hold space for those we may not know personally: for lives lost in Hurricane Melissa, for people who died in custody of immigration enforcement, for those killed in overnight attacks on Gaza even during a “ceasefire,” for unhoused neighbors who died on the streets of our city.

We are called to make space in our hearts to hold the humanity of all our neighbors here on planet Earth, as we grieve and honor and remember.

The liturgy for memorial services in our United Methodist Book of Worship is formally titled a “Service of Death and Resurrection.” Built into the fabric of our worship life is a reminder that death is not the final word. We claim resurrection through Jesus Christ, with all its hope and joy. I love this prayer that comes near the beginning of our funerals and memorial services:

“Give to us now your grace, that as we shrink before the mystery of death, we may see the light of eternity.”

We are invited to put our lives into the mystery of divine love. There, we find space for both devastation and joy, as we trust in the wondrous capacity for both to be true. Not diminished by each other, but deepened by being held together. In Christ, death is not the end, but a doorway to transformation. Resurrection life reminds us of all the things that cannot be taken away, sold, bought, or traded: joy, peace, hope, love.

I pray that you find space for feeling it all at once. May you hold compassionate grief and unstoppable joy.

grace and peace,

Pastor Molly