Sinsinawa
Spectrum
A Congregation News Magazine
To Lead with Loss
by Mary Howard Johnstone, OP
It was just hours after Carol Artery’s dance into eternal life that I received a call reminding me of “my turn” for this “Sake of Our Life & Mission” article. At that moment, the reality of loss weighed heavily on my heart. That sense of loss is certainly a communal experience―the realization that living and dying is something we do together. What transforms that loss into “insurgent hope” is our recognition that to suffer and to love is what we do best together, for each other, and in honor of each other (Safe Passages, Molly Fumia).
This past spring, Network Executive Director Simone Campbell, SSS, presented at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) Wisconsin regional. She spoke of Walter Brueggmann’s five characteristics of community that nourish the prophetic. In the second edition of his book, The Prophetic Imagination, he wrote of the importance that
- there is a long and available memory that sinks the present generation deep into an identifiable past that is available in song and story;
- there is a desire and ability to touch the pain of the world as real;
- there is an active experience of hope;
- there is an effective mode of discourse that is cherished across the generations; and
- there is a capacity to sustain long-term tension with the dominant culture.
Simone was quick to point out the fact that all of these characteristics require a deep, profound, contemplative stance. In her words, “a willing heart and a letting go, a letting go, a letting go.”
In focusing on the second characteristic, embracing the pain of the world, she spoke of the necessity of knowing and experiencing our own losses. Those losses give voice to sorrow and transform the heartache of loss to hope and possibility. We move from being sadly aware, to profoundly affected, to deeply changed. We find ourselves living in a larger world, sharing in the profound sufferings of our times. Headlines confront us daily with disasters, violence, starvation, racism, a legion of cancers, AIDS, abuse, poverty, etc. Our human connection fuels our ability to identify with the anguish of the world as our own experience of loss tells us something about how the other feels. With a willing and broken heart, in the process, we are changed.
So it is fitting that we focus on our commitment to contemplation and community during our upcoming Community Days. It is embracing the pain of loss that creates an energy and amazement based on the new way God may be working in our lives together. It provides us with a sense of gratitude, excitement, and confidence in what we are becoming. It may require a walk through the halls of the east wing of the 1964 building and some laughter or tears of the memories stored there. It may be a walk down the Green Road or a time to stand with the deep loss, memories, and stories of a loved one in our cemetery. It may be a conversation or a silence of reconnection. Mary Oliver says it best in her poem entitled “Lead.” She begins with an invitation.
Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
Her poem then continues with the story of the loons coming to the harbor to die and the one loon who, although it plans to fly home, is found dead on the shore the next day. Her closing words of the poem are our challenge.
I tell you this to break your heart,
by which I mean only that it break
open and never close again
to the rest of the world.
To read the poem in its entirety, visit www.panhala.net/Archive/Lead.html on the Internet.