Thanksgiving and healing

A time of grieving and rejoicing

One of the wisest and most beautiful to say of a virus that nearly undid us, that brutalized us, that robbed lessons I learned came from a priest I us, that killed so many of us. It has been a “nightmare,” except that love and is about the difference between a nightmare is over quickly and, on waking, nearly forgotten. a Hebrew way of knowing and a Greek way of knowing. We are primarily The Greek way in us might look at data and evidence: at numbers, inheritors of the Greek way, he told me; risings and fallings, rates and ratios. The Greek way in us is we are measurers, analyzers, answerers, interested in cells and transmissions and vaccines and variants. And probers, provers of things. We have this matters deeply, for it is the difference in life and death. subjects and objects. We prefer certainty. By Allison Seay But in the Hebrew way, knowing is But this way alone leaves out that important other way of Knowing, more emotional and invisible, probably deeper and more profound which is perhaps more difficult, more inarticulate, more nuanced though less explainable. When a Hebrew talked about “knowing” and also, I am sure of it, a matter of life and death, too. The lifting another person, there was a depth about that knowledge: “Abraham of restrictions does not perfectly equate to the lifting of a pandemic knew Sarah,” the priest reminds me, but that is about much more fog, thick as cloud cover and heavy as steel. than Abraham simply having information about Sarah. I was once a long-distance runner and I am thinking of the way If you asked a Greek, for example, “How high is that high diving recovery from a marathon takes time well beyond the moment the board over there?” the Greek might measure angles and distances race is over; there is an immediate relief when one can stop running— and respond practically, “It is 18 feet, 6 inches high.” But, if you the breath returns, water and rest, the people congratulate one asked the Hebrew person the same question, he might respond, “If another—but there is a much longer time in which the invisible work you really want to know how high it is, stand at the base of the of recovery goes at its own pace deep in the body: residual soreness, ladder, close your eyes, and climb the rungs, slowly and in silence. unquenchable thirst, exhaustion and dull ache. Make your way by feel alone, without seeing, make your way to the end of the board until your toes curl over the edge. Then, look When the pandemic is declared “over” it will be a relief in every down. That feeling? … that is how high the high diving board is.” direction and the Greek ways in us will rejoice at the proof we are given of our survival and triumph. But it will not be the full story, Truly, by the Greek standard, I assure you I know little. Or, I know and in the Hebrew way of knowing we will know enough to know some things about some things—literature, poetry, a garden— the work is not yet finished, or may even start anew. After all, grief and they matter deeply to me. I certainly do not have “Greek” does not end with the burial of the dead but, in a way, only begins. knowledge about theology, doctrine, whatever they might have Exhaustion and hunger are not cured with a nap and snack, but taught me had I gone to school properly. I am very much a child of with extended rest, a depth of care and patience and tenderness, religion, a child of the world. days of good, long meals, and nights of deep and peaceful sleep. And yet, somehow, dare I say it, I like to think I know enough to And it is here where I think the Church has an important role to Know some things in that other way, things I know are true though play. She rejoices in the chorus of thanksgivings that resound as the I cannot prove them. I heard the poet Li-Young Lee say a beautiful world emerges into a post-pandemic world. But she is also a listener thing I try to remember each morning like a prayer: “The kingdom for the prayers of the desperate, home for the winded and weary, for of God is coming,” he says, “and the kingdom of God is here. The the hungry, the poor, the defeated, the conflicted, the bereaved. The task of the poet and the task of the faithful is to name it.” Church is in the business of healing and endurance, however long it takes, however long we need, the Church says: come, rest, stay. If I have one task, that feels like a good one. Or, Ernest Hemingway says it similarly, that “all we have to do is write one true sentence… We at St. Stephen’s Church of course value science and safety the truest sentence that you know.” Maybe by “know” he means the and data and protocol; we value knowledge and expertise and Hebrew kind of Know. The unprovable but surer, deeper, harder research and evidence. We also value the invisible, the incalculable, way. And maybe the work is to say what we can, as carefully as we the unspeakable, the kind of knowledge that surpasses our can, to live as harmlessly as we can, to understand what we are able to understanding. understand and to appreciate the mystery of what is not ours to claim. And there is room here for all of it—for the multitudes we each carry I find myself in a peculiar time along with the rest of the world. inside of us, for all that we carry and all we cannot keep holding. What is there to say of a pandemic almost over? What true thing There is room here for our Greek and our Hebrew ways, room here might be said that has not yet been uttered? What else to say of for rejoicing and for grieving, for the new and for the old, for all that masks and distance and lockdown and loneliness and fatigue. What we know and all that we do not. We say: come, rest, stay.