Those Who Mourn

This week on the blog, I'd like to bring you the sermon I preached on July 15 as a part of a sermon series on the Beatitudes, the opening verses of the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5-7. This sermon is the second in the series, based around the verse, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." The other scriptures for the morning were from Genesis 16, Psalm 42, and Revelation 21. 

I love the Beatitudes, and I especially love them given the role they play in Jesus' teaching. The Sermon on the Mount is presented in Matthew like Jesus just sat down and spoke it, but it’s more likely that the author of the gospel of Matthew was collecting together common teachings of Jesus, things he always used to say. Jesus was always saying things like, 

“Blessed are the peacemakers.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Blessed are those who mourn.

You are the salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world.

A city on a hill cannot be hidden.”

I think it’s especially important that these were things that Jesus was always saying given that our beatitude for this morning is, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” and I think remembering what people always used to say is a way that we comfort ourselves and mourn all at the same time. My friend Jessica, who died earlier this year, she was always saying, “It’s never too late to follow your dreams.” She had left a career and gone back to school to major in voice because she her dream was to be an opera singer. I believe she would have done it too, if she had been given more time. 

So as we focus ourselves for the sermon, I want you to think of something that someone who is no longer with us was always saying, some story that you tell to your friends or your children or your grandchildren. Hold that memory of who that person was in your mind and your heart for just a moment.

And would you pray with me?

God, you have told us that we are blessed. Help us see that. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Now, what I usually like to do in a sermon is give some historical context, look at where the passage we’re focused on is in respect to the verses before and after it, maybe throw some Greek in there, all so that we have a better understanding of this book that is sacred to us.

I don’t feel the need to do that with the beatitude for today. I don't feel the need to do that because grief is a universal human experience. We come into this world crying and our pain only gets deeper from there. I know many people in this room have experience deep grief in their lives, and so have deep experience with both mourning and comfort. There are many places in the Bible where Jesus's lived experience differs from ours. Grief is not one of them.

We know that Jesus mourns. We see him mourning over Jerusalem. We see him try to take time for himself after the death of John the Baptist. We see him crying at the death of his friend Lazarus.

In fact, the Bible itself is no stranger to mourning. It is full of stories of people who are mourning and who are seen by God. Take this psalm for this morning for example, or the story of Hagar, Sarai's handmaiden, her slave. Hagar is so moved that God comes to her in her time of deep pain and grief that changes what she calls God. She calls God the one who sees me. The Bible tells us that God sees grief.

And that is what this beatitude is telling us as well. Jesus sees the mourning that is happening all around him, that still happens today. He sees the pain. And he turns to those in pain and he says, you are blessed. I see you. I have not forgotten about you. You are blessed.

It is a miraculous thing that Jesus says here, because we do not think that those who mourn are blessed. I would offer up to you the fact that the world around us thinks that those who mourn are weak. We see this in the amount of time we allow people to mourn, the time they are allowed to take away from work in order to mourn, and the services that are available to those who have suffered a great loss. It is insufficient. And so many of us walk around wounded, limping for so long that it becomes part of our gait. We tell ourselves that we have to be OK, we tell others that we're fine, we allow everyone to tell us how strong we are, and all the while there is an ache inside us that is never really going to go away.

Because we think that those who mourn are weak, we walk around unhealed, uncomforted. We see that this is true when we look at those who suffered a loss early in life. Those who had a traumatic event in childhood, such as abuse, an illness, or losing or being separated from a parent or parents, bear the marks of that trauma for the rest of their lives. The brain struggles to develop, the immune system flounders, and the body fails to become all that it could be, all because the body is trying to handle the stress that the child has encountered.

We see similar effects in adults too. The stress associated with grief can literally break your heart, causing a condition that makes it more difficult for your heart to function. Stress, when left untreated and unchecked, can cause your body to become less able to heal itself. As we hold in our pain, our muscles react, tensing up and knotting themselves together until it can become difficult to move. Pain and loss put a weight on us that can be too much to bear, and we so often go about our days as if we have already set it down.

But that is not what Jesus tells us to do here. Jesus tells us to mourn, because those who mourn are blessed. If Jesus sees our pain, we should too. Why should we mourn? Because those who mourn will be comforted.

I think many of us have experienced that comfort after a loss, when our family and friends and community and church come together and wrap us up in support. We get this beatitude intuitively because we know that when grief visits our doorstep and we cry out to those around us, we will be comforted. This is a great and good thing that we as members of the body of Christ try to do for each other, and it is a great and good grace when it happens in the world.

But what about when we mourn and are not comforted? What about the people around the world who mourn the loss of their loved ones because of war or famine or poverty? What about the people who mourn the loss of the lives they once had before disaster rolled into town? What about those who have suffered a tragedy that left a wound no amount of comfort could heal? How long are we to wait for comfort? How long does anyone have to live with this blessed mourning?

Thankfully, not forever. We might be blessed when we mourn now, but we have been promised that in whatever world comes after this one, there will be no more mourning. There will be no more pain. All things will be made new and every tear will be wiped away by the God who loved us too much to stay apart from us. This is the picture painted by the end of Revelation, when there is a new heaven and a new earth. I'm not one to spend time lingering on eschatological fantasies, but I think one of the most beautiful promises in the Bible is that the tears of grief that are beyond comfort in this world will be wiped away in the next. Jesus has promised us that. He has blessed us with it.

So, what do we take away from our beatitude for this week? Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted? Well, I think the first thing we have to remember is that we are blessed when we mourn. Life brings pain to each of us and we need to allow ourselves to feel it, to mourn all our loses whenever they come, to be open to mourning whenever it comes to us again. Blessed are those who mourn does not apply to only those living in the space between death and burial.

The second takeaway is those who mourn will be comforted, but that comfort may not come in the ways we expect. It may be the comfort of our loved ones or our community surrounding us. It may be the comfort of our faith, as the psalmist writes. It may be comfort that comes to us straight from God in this life, as Hagar experienced. Or it may be the comfort that can only be given when deep no longer has to call to deep but when we are reunited with the great Love of the universe which made us and longs to hold us, to wipe away each unconsoled tear from our eyes, and to offer us the comfort that will last for all eternity. Blessed are those who mourn, our Lord tells us, because they will be comforted. Amen. 

Using My Voice

At orientation for seminary, they had us go around the room and say our names, however much of our faith background we were comfortable sharing, and one thing we're sure we'll never do, like skydiving or holding a tarantula. I said that I would never be able to take a vow of silence. I don't do well without my voice.

And I've been having trouble finding it lately. See, every time I go to write, I end up distracted. Here, it looks something like this:

I want to describe for you the wonderful feeling of community that I had while singing the two encores at the homecoming concert, how for those ten minutes, I remembered what it was like to feel wrapped up in love, whole and holy, safe and they lost 1,500 migrant children last year.

The kid I nanny thinks my name is Go-go. He's trying to say Jo-jo, which is not my favorite of nicknames, but he's not great at the J sound yet and so Go-go it is. I marvel every time I smile at it, unaware that my heart could melt like this when they're taking babies from their mothers.

You know, I'm not sure that I really understood what the word "triggered" meant until I was watching Obama's immigration policy didn't welcome the stranger either but it's so much worse now. 

There are glorious summer days, you know. They're sandwiched in between the days of oppressive humidity and heat and some of these are asylum seekers. It's an international human right.

As I watched the blue dye wash out of my hair, I thought they have no plan for reuniting these families.

I woke up this morning and THEY ARE KEEPING CHILDREN IN CAGES.

I— these CHILDREN will be damaged for life. This is terrorism.

Now, listen, I know I need to be taking care of myself and starting today, I'm going to be doing just that, but the reason that we take care of ourselves is so we can be loud in times like these. Don't forget about these children just because it's not in the news this week. Don't imagine that the policy is better just because a toothless executive order was signed. Don't get distracted by whatever new scandal is popping up. 

I don't know how to solve all of our problems but I do know that ICE under this zero tolerance policy is functioning as a terrorist organization and we already have other immigration security in place. I do know that you should call your representative and your senators and tell them to defund and abolish ICE. Do it daily. This policy does not make us safer, kinder, or better. This is not the United States of America we want to be. Use your voice. 

Stay This Way

It is very important for me to continue to feel this way. 

At least, that's what I think, every single day of my life. 

I visualize my feelings as a house that I walk into, one that it would be rude to leave before I've had a proper visit. Sadness is a comfortable cottage where I can see and be seen, a place secluded from the world but with the clearest view I could ever imagine. I settle into the window seat and accept whatever drink I'm offered. I stay so long that I forget I have lived anywhere else. 

Eventually, though, I flit about to other places. Anger is a third-floor apartment right above the space that Guilt and Resentment share, a space of hard corners and no money for rugs so you cannot help but alert everyone to your presence through stamps and swears. Exhaustion rents out the basement suite and Loneliness has the top floor. You can get the key to the roof if you ask the super.

Contentment and Self-assurance always have a guestroom set up for me and bananas and coffee in the morning. They don't mind when I invite people over to sit on their wraparound front porch and put hours of use on their wooden porch swing with the comfortable creak. Their kitchen is huge, their dining room larger, and there is somehow always enough seating around the TV or the coffee table or anywhere you want to set up a game. I don't mind looking in the mirrors at their house. All the same, I'm always surprised to wake up there. 

There are others. Excitement has a townhouse whose walls are covered with bright colors and books. Happiness has the most comfortable pillows. Worry has an entire lake house, complete with a dock where Fear can tether its boat. Resilience keeps a garden outback and grows herbs in her kitchen. Everyone has music playing. 

I probably spend most of my time on the road between Sadness and Contentment, but wherever I go, I feel the need to take off my shoes and stay a while. This feeling, whatever it is, it's something real. It needs to be experienced, lived, not just visited or, worse, ignored. 

But there are places we don't need to linger in life. We are predisposed to it I guess, but there are homes that we were only meant to pass through. 

I'm finding that that's the trick. Don't eschew the company of your feelings, but be wary of taking up residence in any given place. Follow the hand-drawn map from Anger's building to Determination's house. Answer the phone when Excitement calls you up at Sadness'. Let Happiness take you by the hand, even if you can't stay long. 

Because this thing that we're doing, this living, it takes every bit of us. Our outrage and our sorrow and our joy and our love and everything in between and beyond. Feel everything. Be wonderfully, delightfully human. And then carry on doing the good works set out before you. 

Tired and Angry

I have been so angry.

I have been so exhausted.

I have been so exhausted that when I see posts from friends who talk about how tough this second year of seminary was but how we all made it through anyway, I just laugh at them. I laugh at them the way I laugh at the self-evaluation question that asks whether I feel prepared for the realistic demands of ministry. Sure. Whatever. I feel prepared. It can't be worse than this.

I mean, it can. I'm sure that being a full-time pastor will bring with it more stress than I feel right now, and more despair, and more complications. I'm sure that I'll feel pulled in ten thousand different directions and that it will sometimes be unmanageable and that I'll have to make decisions that seem unfair to everyone involved (because they are) and that there will be days I will never want to revisit again. I'm certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that working three jobs while taking a full load of classes and an internship while trying to maintain a new relationship, after having gone through the all the rigamarole of becoming a certified candidate, has in no way truly prepared me for the trials and travails of ministry. Ministry, I'm sure, will be overwhelming in ways I could never have imagined. If this past semester has felt like treading water in an ocean with the tide perpetually coming in, I'm sure that ministry will feel like a never-ending series of tsunamis. There's just no way I can be ready.

God, it makes me want to scream.

Contrary to the assumption built into the question of whether I feel prepared for the "realistic demands of ministry," I am not some sweet summer child who has never dealt with anything of import. I am not naïve, I am not unaware, and I am not self-absorbed. I am not a stranger to hard work, to complicated work, to delicate work. I have weathered this storm and I will weather others. Like most of the women I know, I learned how to endure long ago. I learned how to endure the world and I learned how to endure your inaccurate expectations of me, so you know what? You can step off.

But you know what drives me nuts? You know what sends me over the edge? It's not these suggestions that I can't handle what will be put in front of me. No, I can endure and I will endure and I will put up with all the challenges thrown my way and you can bet that I will be here shifting the world towards better as long as there is breath in my lungs, but the thing that knocks the breath out of me is when the people who should be standing strong by my side are the ones who I have to turn my efforts against.

I love Rudy Francisco. I'm a sucker for Button Poetry and spoken word in general and I know this about myself, but what I appreciate about Rudy Francisco is that his vulnerability happens for a reason. He is willing to name difficulties by the names we'd actually recognize and he is willing to pop off about things that matter, things that we should be angry about. 

More than one of my friends has said that they were warned about going to seminary because in seminary, "they take away your Jesus." Which is fine, I guess. I get it. We all misunderstand who God is, who Jesus really is. We forget that if Jesus showed up in America today, he'd for sure get stopped for a "random security screening" at the airport. The Son of the Heavenly Father came down to Earth and lived and died and rose again for us and for our salvation and a whole bunch of the people who claim to follow him likely wouldn't give him the time of day if they saw him on the street because Jesus, you see, was brown.

See, seminary didn't take my Jesus away from me. I am set on following this Arab Jewish carpenter rabbi from the backroads of Palestine. I'm just glad that the salvation he won extends to me. No, seminary didn't take my Jesus from me. It took my church.

Because the church I knew would never have doubted my ability to lead. The church I knew would not have questioned someone's call because of who they love. The church I knew didn't struggle with integration. The church I knew would have lived into its polity and its principles in the prophetic way. The church I knew could have sang In Christ There Is No East or West and They'll Know We Are Christians without a shred of cognitive dissonance. The church I knew was guided by the Holy Spirit who is Love.

And it exhausts me to have lost my church. It exhausts me to have lost my songs and my worship and my surest connection to God. There is death and new life in abundance in the world and the everlasting purgatory of the inbetween that this past year has been was electrified with it, but I have no idea how to ground it. All the electricity of new events has shocked me and then dissipated into the air. I have offered more hugs of condolences and congratulations than I care to count, sought out more hugs of comfort while in stasis than I care to admit. And all the while I have sought out every empty piano in every quiet room with a hymnal that I could find because God has been difficult to locate here in the inbetween and my spirit has noticed the absence.

It is tiring to not know where you belong.

It is enraging to realize that your home was taken over by someone else.

But I have found that the quietness of tomorrow offers you the chance to try again, to sweep clear the room and invite a new spirit in. I don't know how to fix our problems. I don't understand why faithfulness looks so different in so many different hands. But I can pray that the God of love will fill me and you with an everlasting Spirit so that we can dream dreams that are unheard of in this age, and I can pray for the Spirit of strength and patience to dwell deep in our hearts so that we endure until the day when the kingdom comes and the will of a good God is done on this earth as it is in heaven.

Until then, though, we have work to do.

Tension

Readings for Palm/Passion Sunday: Mark 11:1-11, Philippians 2:5-11, Mark 14:1-15:47. 

Image from theycantalk.com

Sometimes, in my Christian journey, I have been this donkey, blissfully unaware that I am not at all what the people are paying attention to. I carry Jesus all the same, but I have a skewed perception of what's really going on here. At the same time, I see this, and I tense up a little. Jesus knows what's going to happen this week. The donkey doesn't. The crowd doesn't. Smile and laugh all you want, but we smile and laugh here in the face of sadness and hurt. Maybe out of nervousness, maybe out of discomfort, maybe out of ignorance, but always for me with a bundle of tension growing at the back of my neck.

So, would you pray with me?

God, you are God when we are at peace and you are God when we are tense. You are God when we are near and God when we are far. You are God on Palm Sunday. You are God always. Be with us today and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

There is always some tension in Palm/Passion Sunday. At the beginning of the service, we’re up here waving our palm branches to celebrate Jesus, but at the end of the service, we’re going to crucify him.

And it’s frustrating because Palm Sunday feels right. It feels right to wave palm branches in praise, to recognize Jesus as king, to put our lives and our faith in the hands of this man who we trust to save us. We as Christians know who Jesus is. We know that Jesus is God’s Love made flesh, powerful enough to make every wrong in this world right. We trust in the saving grace he brings and so we show up with our branches and our coats and we climb trees and we jump up and down and we shout hosannas until our throats are sore. Palm Sunday feels right, so how could we crucify him on Friday?

Well, maybe we aren’t seeing Jesus the way Rome saw him. We see our peaceful king, riding into town on a donkey; Rome sees a worrying protest. We see a rabbi with his faithful disciples; Rome sees teacher and a bunch of teenagers talking too loud. We see the man who can set us free; Rome sees a threat to law and order. When we step back, we can see that Jesus means to change things, and change is not comfortable when you’re the one in power. Jesus means to change each of us, and that is not exactly what we want to hear.

We’ve been talking during Lent about Being and Doing, about who we are in Christ and the things we do because of it. If Jesus wants to change us, I think we’ll find that there’s a tension between being and doing too. We know who we are, that we are beloved by God, but the entire rest of the Christian lifetime is figuring out what that means. We know we’re forgiven, but what does it mean to live without the things that needed forgiving? We know we’ve been set free so that we can love and serve God, but how do we love and serve God when it feels less like freedom and more like a burden? We know we should be more like Jesus, should “have the mind that was in Christ Jesus,” but what do humility and obedience really look like for us? We know we should grow closer to God, but how should we pray? How should we worship? How should we love?

It’s hard enough to know how to be. Now we have to know how to do too?

Well, of course we do. Because Jesus did.

There’s a tension for us in Palm/Passion Sunday, there’s a tension for us in our being and doing, and it seems like there’s a tension in Jesus too. The Gospel writers all notice it. Jesus is fully God, but he cries for his friend Lazarus. Jesus is fully human, but he raises people up from the dead. There is a tension, from our perspective anyway, between the humanity and the divinity of Jesus and we see it all throughout his ministry. He’s baptized and called the Beloved Son of God, but then he goes into the desert to be tempted just like us. He preaches words of wisdom to the crowds, but he also needs some alone time. He rides into town the picture of peace, but then goes into the temple and starts flipping tables. He knows Judas is going to betray him for blood money and he lets it happen, but as soon as he goes to pray after, he starts sweating bullets. If we ever have any questions about how human Jesus is, they’re answered as soon as nails hit skin on Good Friday. If we ever have any questions about how godly Jesus is, they’re answered by the fact that he knew the cross was coming, and he went anyway.  

Jesus, knowing who he was, knew what he had to do. His doing came out of his being. Being the Son of God born of Mary in first century Palestine meant that he would end up at Golgotha, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves, making us right before God and bringing us back to God. He did this for us, and he did this because he is what he was and always will be, what God always is: Love. And love can’t just be. Love does.

There is tension all around us. We live in a tense world that is getting more tense by the day. There is tension between our being and our doing. There is tension between the crowd that cries Hosanna on Sunday and crucify early Friday morning. But when it comes down to it, when the road that leads to Jerusalem also leads to the Place of the Skull, there is no tension in Jesus. There is only love because God is love. Wonderful, miraculous, life-changing, heart-breakingly deep love. Love unknown, as the song writer says: 

My song is love unknown,

My savior’s love to me,

Love to the loveless shown

that they might lovely be.

Oh who am I that for my sake

My Lord should take

frail flesh and die?

Beloved of God, reflect on this love, this love that was shown to us while we were yet loveless, that we might be lovely. Amen. 

Flying Out

Listen, I am a life-long believer in the Location Cure. Get out of town. Go see or stand in some place your eyes haven’t seen before, or haven’t seen in a long time. I guarantee you that, for a minimum of ten seconds, everything you’re running from will be gone. When you travel, projects, people, enduring circumstantial pain, all of that stays on the platform and you, free from hateful burdens, get to be somewhere, anywhere, else. I deeply believe this to be true. 

Now, all those things you left behind don’t go away entirely. Some find a way to follow you into the next big city, or down the highway, or into the next state, or across an ocean. Taxes, usually. They follow you everywhere. And your anger and your hate and your frustrations. Those are inside you and so you never really leave them until you deal with them. They're just easier to ignore when you’re in a new postal code. But given the enduring nature of the things that grieve our hearts, the Location Cure provides you a necessary, invigorating, momentary reprieve. 

But what do you do when you’re not in need of a cure? Because it’s happened, friends. I have arrived at the moment when I am bored at an airport. The ride to airport was a chance to have a fun conversation with a roommate that I hardly ever get to have a real chat with, rather than a stomach-turning half hour of enthusiastic nerves. Check-in and security were old hoops I’ve long since mastered jumping through. I almost checked my metro map while waiting for the train to my gate because this all felt mind-dullingly routine. I wandered past the shiny bright airport shops and took in the dozen languages being spoken around me without so much as a blink, answering a couple of texts from my friends as if this were any average Sunday, as if I weren’t going to get into a deformed metal cylinder with wings and engines attached and be hurtled from one continent to another as the world below me turned into night. 

The airport muzak was playing Hall and Oates when I found my seat in the waiting area. So that was nice. 

And it’s not that I’m not excited for where I’m going. My friends and I planned this trip in January of 2017, when tickets for Hamilton on the West End went on sale, and I’ve been waiting for it since, fourteen-ish months of checking countdowns and making plans and updating budgets. I’m ready to see everyone again. I’m very excited to be in Edinburgh and to see it decked out in snow. I’m delighted to be going back to London for a bit. I’m ready to spend a couple of day traipsing around parts of the UK I haven’t been to before. I’m going to take a thousand pictures and live aggressive amounts of life. (I’m also going to have multiple study sessions with my friends because we’re all grad students, but let’s not talk about that.) I should be pumped right now. This is the beginning of an adventure! 

And I am. And it is. And I know what a privilege it is to be able to be blasé about it, and how weird it is that international flights are a fact of my life. But for maybe the first time in my life, going somewhere different has felt like an interruption of the adventure already in progress, rather than the adventure itself.

My heart is settled where I've been. I’ve got a pile of classes to attend to in pursuit of a degree I’m incredibly suited for. I’m really happy with where I’m living and my roommates. I’ve got two good jobs that I enjoy doing and don’t enjoy leaving. I’ve got an internship that I had to pry myself away from. And I have relationships that I don’t necessarily want to put on hold for ten days. I’ve been enjoying being me of late. I kinda don't want to leave. 

But I’ll enjoy being me on the other side of the ocean as well, I’m sure. 

I’ve just got to get there first. 

Love and Roses

Traffic doesn't move any faster because you're grieving.

On the day when you found it difficult to get out of bed, difficult to convince yourself that it would be better for everyone for you were at work and chapel and class, the traffic lights will still turn red at inconvenient times. On the day when you had to remind yourself that when your body is still, your spirit is still, your mind is still, and that if you stay here, you will only end up immersed in thoughts that are not good for you, the drivers will still make unnecessary lane changes without signaling. On the day when you just needed to catch a break because things are hard enough as it is, you will instead get caught between a bus and someone trying to make an illegal left-hand turn and you will end up jogging into work with a cloud of aggravation around you and a soreness in your throat from all of the screaming you did at the beltway, at the universe, at your feelings.

The weather won't change because you're grieving.

You might hate clomping around in boots and fumbling with scarves and digging gloves out of bags and purses and corners of car seats, but the temperature will not rise just because it would make things easier for you. Your skin will continue to crack in the dryness and you will forget your lotion and your chapstick at home and you will sit with the uncomfortable weight of winter clothes in the uncomfortable greyness of a bland winter day and stare uncomfortably at the deadness of winter around you because nothing has told the bulbs it's time to bloom yet. In all likelihood, the forecast will promise snow and deliver freezing rain instead, all the misery without any of the beauty.

The world won't stop because you're grieving.

On the morning that comes after the night of poor sleep brought to you by the feelings death has swirled up in you, the guilt and anger and fear and disbelief and lostness, there will still be news about stocks and politics and systematic injustice. There will be meals cooked and meals consumed, somewhere around the world. There will be fights and arguments and love and agreements and ideas and doubts and laughter and tears and boredom and apathy and immense amounts of inertia and mind-boggling amounts of passion. There will be collections for flowers, maybe, or donations to organizations, and cards sent and support offered, and hugs and phone calls and messages, and we will do all of these things because we're alive. We're still alive. Today, this day, the world didn't stop for us, for any of us who are still here, not yet.

It has been beautiful to see the way my Sigma Alpha Iota sisters have come together to remember the sister we've lost. I know that many of us are still in shock over how such a genuinely beautiful person could be fine on Friday and gone on Monday, but it has been heartwarming to see the remembrances and words of kindness and comfort which have so quickly turned into concrete actions. I know facebook is much, and rightly, maligned, but it was a godsend yesterday, connecting those of us who have gone so many different places in the years since graduation. It was a deeply lovely thing to see all the comments and love poured out to each other and in support of another sister in her loss and grief. In these moments of sharing, we offer a testimony to the love that binds us now and promise of the love that we'll bring to each other when tragedy comes for any of us. Take a breath. Take a moment. Be kind. Receive kindness in return. Be loved.

Remember, love didn't stop because we're grieving.