This is where the tree was. No sign of it anymore. It’s like it never existed.
So many things can break your heart.
There was the sign I saw on a telephone pole near the park this week with the picture of a beloved cat. “Papa misses him,” it said, with a picture of the cat’s elderly owner holding him in his arms.
And then there was that empty place at the park where they cut down a giant oak tree. It was big enough for children to climb into it, to curl up in its massive branches, all spreading out from its trunk. I loved that tree, said hello to it every time I passed it on the half-mile walking path that circles the park. There are lots of trees at the park, but this one was special. Until one day they had the trail blocked off, and the tree came down. They completely removed its giant stump the other day. You would never know that there had been a beautiful tree there. I remember it, though. It feels important to remember it.
What else is breaking my heart these days? Little things. The last of the falling leaves. Barren trees. The deserted swimming pool. My dying perennial flowers. Stupid Christmas songs.
The news will also break your heart, of course.
Maybe all our hearts are breaking a little now.
Which isn’t the best timing, it being December and weeks until Christmas and isn’t this supposed to be the “most wonderful time of the year” and all?
My favorite priest Richard Rohr says that God comes to us in great love and also (unfortunately, if you ask me) in great suffering. Rohr adds that if you find great love, then sorrow and suffering will surely trail along behind it and tap you on the shoulder to introduce themselves at some point, that it’s inevitable.
I woke up one morning this week and my neck hurt. I had a centering prayer session, but it seemed like a waste of time, since I was mostly wrapped up in my very many not so helpful thoughts. I also think I am getting a cold. So my throat is sore and I took a Covid test and it was negative, but my mind is a little fuzzy and my neck still isn’t quite right.
Oh! And it’s almost Christmas! And what am I doing about that?
As it turns out, I am not doing much.
I am trying to be OK with that.
So I will let my heart break over all the things that are heartbreaking in our world right now: lost cats, fallen trees, dying flowers. These may seem like small things compared to all that is happening on a global scale, but that doesn’t make them any less significant. I can hold that pain and also, maybe a little (because it is almost Christmas, after all), remember the point of all of this Christmas hubbub in the first place. That a long time ago there was a baby who was an actual baby who grew up and walked around on the planet in real time and was basically murdered for loving everyone. But then (as the story goes), he didn’t stay dead. There was resurrection. Which is where my hope comes from, if there is any hope at all. Because otherwise? I tell you, friends, it’s looking pretty grim out there.
Resurrection hope means that all the things that we’ve loved and lost will somehow, someday, be restored. This includes forests that have been clear cut for profit and single oak trees at the local park that were probably cut for a good reason but whose absence wrecks me. Missing cats will come home, and extinct dodo birds and passenger pigeons will take to the sky again. All the invasive plants will go back to where they belong; California will be star thistle and Himalayan blackberry free. The plastic will disappear from the oceans. Leatherback turtles will flourish. The lion will lay down with the lamb. Swords will be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks.
Sure wish I knew how that was going to happen.
One thing I know, though? However it happens, it will surely be in a way that I would never expect. Just like nobody ever expected that the divine would come to us as a baby who would be born in a stable and die on a cross. That death? You would have thought that was the end. Surely it was the end! Except it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all.
It’s the kind of thing that brings hope to a broken heart at Christmas.
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