God Grief

this was not written by me (which i'm sure you'll figure out shortly), but the thoughts david crowder creates are amazing. read, contemplate, apply if desired...

"there are some deaths, which upon occurance, arrest the considerations of the public at large. there is something concerning them - be it the public visibility of the individual, or the curiously unusual or wholly universal circumstances surrounding the death - that coerces our eyes and empathies in their general direction.

for me, the first cognitive recognition of this phenomenon was while sitting at the bar with my wife at the red lobster in waco, texas. we were waiting on a table. it was september 1, 1997. the televisions scattered around us announced that an english princess had died. grief ignited. a planet wept. and i cried right along. sitting there with cheese sticks and a dr pepper, i cried. which was weird; i didn't even know the princess.

the new york times reported that the posture of the massive crowds of mourners appeared to hold "something more latin than british... the intensity of people's words and actions; a largely protestant culture that epitomizes restrain and values privacy was galvanized by a need to display its powerful emotions publicly"1

as a funeral procession advanced through the corridor of overt grief that lined kensington high street winding toward westminster abbey, we joined the crowd through television sets and radio broadcasts, newspapers and magazines. physical distance overcome by empathetic proximity, or the transferable nearness of emotional presence. our conversations became occupied with the grieving of a stranger. death bringing unity. uniting us. pulling us together. if only to bewail someone we did not really know. in excess of a million bouquets, garlands, sprays of flowers, cards, and signs bearing our sentiments lay resting in front of royal palaces. questions came from the mourners: how could someone attempting such good die so dreadfully in twisted metal and concrete? did it have to come so unforeseen and immediate? was this real? was she really gone? how can she be gone?2 their princess who would never be their queen.

within minutes of four pistol shots being fired outside a new york city apartment located at the corner of seventy-second street and central park west, crowds gathered outside the historic dakota residence and the roosevelt hospital mourning the death of john lennon. there was columbine. there was oklahoma city. there was another new york day, in another september of a more recent year - more twisted metal and concrete. more crowds. more collective tears.

there are these moments when we all cry at once.

you know how sometimes in the middle of the summer when rain has been scarce and the sun has been hot, the ground dry and cracked, and a storm hits? the water comes fast and in torrents, sounding its arrival with claps of thunder and cracks in the sky. it's all too much for the soil to hold, and then suddenly, violently there is a flood. grief arrives with this force. it is itself a force, coming on unstoppable, leaving no one safe from it. once upon a time, we almost drowned from the grief of God.3

1 the new york times, september 7, 1997, internalt. ed.: 1.
2 kurt fosso, buried communities, p. ix.
3 Genesis 6:6-7