If you’re just waking up to the reality that loss is central to the human condition, you must be in dreadful shock. If you’ve experienced two such shocks within a year, you may be thinking your world is ending. Where is God? Isn’t “He” supposed to protect you from pain? Sorry, but death is a part of life. “If we live long enough,” James Hollis writes, “we will lose everyone for whom we care. If we do not live long enough, they will have lost us. As Rilke puts it, ‘So we live, forever saying farewell.’” [Swamplands of the Soul]

If this is your first season of loss, of your peers and their young spouses or children, vanishing summers and beloved homes, it may become only practice for more of the same. We live with sadness and grief among our seasons of joy.

There are means, however, to walk through even these seasons. Sitting at dusk in a comfortable chair, or in a patch of noon sun, may allow the tears to flow, pause, and taper off. Tears have an end of their own. Tears are in charge of how much they need to flow and when to stop. Taking an aimless drive may let the mind wander forth and back over a reverie that will never end. You can visit it at will.

Begin watching PBS Masterpiece Theater. Read a gripping best seller. Walk–rain or shine. Work out. Nap. Feel the empathy of other people’s losses and the world’s pain, and weep. It takes only hearing a song two of you loved to be transported immediately to the scene where you first heard it together. Eat a favorite meal, sense a familiar fragrance. We can cherish these gifts, these pain and joy-filled flashbacks, even though they ended too soon.

Singer Diana Krall’s latest album, “Turn Up the Quiet,” is her last album with her champion, the producer Tommy LiPuma, who died in March. “Though the shock hasn’t worn off, Ms. Krall has come to see ‘Quiet’ …as a testament to the values Mr. LiPuma embodied for her….‘He took such joy in life,’ she said. ‘He had a tremendous sense of humor, and he taught me the importance of taking the time to be with my family.’ As Ms. Krall has dealt with the losses in her life, she comments that “’It gets to the point where you need to laugh….we had so much fun making this record; that’s what I hope comes through.’”

Have I said, laughing? What to do while living through great loss is also to laugh, to continue a life that seems to, but does not stop. Of course we must laugh. A good wake includes laughter and tears, so closely related that we cannot tell when the laughter so easily turned to tears.

Be among good friends. See a therapist. Forget reaching anything like “closure.” We can’t shut doors on our losses. The experience of the whole person will always be with us, and our relationships continue. Back in the day my mother thought that flying saucers were angels flying in close to watch over us. Although she died in 2002, she still makes flybys today. My dad, who died in 2005, is less talkative, but he is a presence to me regardless, shyly smiling from his favorite chair.

Follow Wendell Barry’s advice: “Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.” [Emphasis mine] Don’t worry about making a beeline to some politically correct goal. Nor about knowing where you’re going. Or what other people expect you to do, except this: …create life in the midst of grief, create love in the midst of loss, create faith in the midst of despair. Resurrect us from our big and little deaths….The only road to Easter morning runs smack through Good Friday.                                                                                                                                            [Barbara Brown Taylor]

Cathy Fransson

I had forgotten how tall the firs were as I plunge deep into the forest conveniently close to the highway and very near Stevens Pass. Once out of the car and down the trail, I could not see the tops of the trees without sitting, leaning against the granite to steady myself to see back that far. The canopy is bright green against the blue sky. How quiet the forest is next to the river as it pretends to be ferocious and yet no doubt, in this drought, is only a fraction of its strength. Still it pours clear then rippling, frothing through the bed against which it sands and smooths the rock in its path.

As I draw closer to the bottom of this glen a pause in the density of trees reveals a deep pool quietly lapping the surrounding boulders it has already beaten to apparent silkiness. Stillness here. Ageless duff under my feet, worn branches worked into rails and seats for short gazes into the water and across it to forest on the other side, occasionally a bridge that leads over and back if one doesn’t prefer to stop in the center and imagine floating down in the icy, constant flow.

What a relief this is, to walk into the woods, the rough places, sudden drops of the trail, and then rising again, my footsteps balance between fir, hemlock and alder, and then toward the river. It’s been at least two years, maybe more, that I have waited, wondering how long healing a knee replacement would take before I could take to the woods again. Sun streams onto the river, splashing into the trees and my slow, steady gait balanced between two trekking poles. A big smile on my face.

The moss! Strings, shreds and draperies of it from tree to tree, bright and green. Lichen, small black knobs and then shells of white studding the blunt and torn ends of trees that have fallen and been cut to make way. A huge, wide cedar stump with cuts left by the springboards of foresters bent on laying the forest low sports a very tall, very thin hemlock that, in this muted light, may never grow to more than fragility.

I take in the light, the trees I can name, the trail, the bridges, soaking in the rich detail that simply doesn’t exist in neighborhoods like mine where at least a number of cedars still stand, six of them in my own back yard, and one Douglas fir. What a gift to be alive on the earth. Not that many years ago I would have been consigned to my home, if not to my room, with a branch cut to fit for hobbling through the house.

Now I am returning to the trails, beaches, and woods I have so missed in my convalescence that, at my age, takes longer than expected. Seize the day! Lest you let it pass without the wonder and respect it deserves.  “And we shall be like trees planted by streams of water, that bring forth fruit in its season, and whose leaf does not wither; and in whatsoever we do, we shall prosper.” Psalm 1:3

“Courage and optimism are your best traits,” reads a fortune from a Chinese restaurant years ago. I’ve kept it so long because it speaks to my best self. Even so, on my dark days, I despair. I know you don’t need me to list everything that sends me to the depths because I think you feel them as well as I do. They’re like tall ghouls laughing at our puny hopes and futile attempts to bring order to the chaos in the world.

Be still. Stop. Breathe. Look out the window. Remember whose world this is, and how you came to be in it. We have been in a near constant state of war for years now, so imagining a different approach to global problems seems impossible. But that’s what God calls us to do: imagine a different way for events to unfold, for people to engage with others. What is the faith that makes this possible? Waiting and walking with God. When we wait upon God, God draws near to us.

Clarissa P. Estes emboldened many with her 2004 essay. She said, “We were made for these times….do not lose hope….Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul…will help immensely.”

While the talk of walls and hate preys on our fears, I watch a robin’s nest outside my window with three hardy babies straining to fly. The strongest one is jumping and trying to flex his wings while his siblings still sit with their mouths wide open for the parent’s next visit. Yesterday a murder of crows was flying about, gathering strength and calling for others to join forces. I went out with a broom to ward off any attack that might come to this nest tucked on the joist beneath our deck. Only one or two robbers flew over the house, but I was at the ready to wave them off.

This is a time for the courage to imagine different ways to engage with the world far beyond us, or right in our back yard, with our friends and allies. This is soul work. Soul work requires that we rely on God’s promises. If we wait upon the Lord, we will renew our strength, even fly like eagles. [Isaiah 40:31] How can we resist? It may be our only way to refrain from spreading the gloom.

Like shooting fish in a barrel. Music so loud dancers couldn’t distinguish gunshots from base notes. No one could be heard if they tried to speak. So dark splashes of blood seemed at first like roses or swirls of color on white shirts or bare backs. Slowly, knowing and horror dawned together in the dark pre-dawn hours. Then the blast of the beat lessened, shouts must have been heard, people rushed to aid those who had fallen, and still the ghastly scene ran on for two or three more hours until the law was able to overpower the shooter.

Who would do such a thing? Intentional, well armed and well timed. Alone—without friends. Others so different from him, he believed they were wrong and he was right. They did not befriend him, so he rejected them. His religion empowered him. Strangers ought to be more like he was. But he wasn’t recruiting. This scenario blossomed in his brain. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. So cool. So chilling.

What is it that causes a person to hate so intensely he or she builds anger into fervor. Hatred so pure nothing modifies or lessens it. It has to explode. The perpetrator sees nothing but death for those so free they’re dancing mindlessly and drinking and enjoying themselves, something he doesn’t allow himself. Or she has buried her own attraction to just this thing so deeply she hates those who can freely choose it. Hates to the point of murder.

In the aftermath, stunned, we eagerly need to know who the perp was. We know now he declared he had pledged to ISIS. He killed everyone he could to disrupt our ways and thus—this is the part that puzzles me—raise the flag of his religion. Really? His “religion” demands he kill? How unlike the major religions of the world, at whose heart is a law of love—especially for the stranger in our midst. How vulnerable we are to such ghoulish motives. How can laws ever protect us? We see ourselves in school rooms, theaters, dance halls, and malls, even churches, now vulnerable, now fearful.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. This is a human problem—the work of an angry man, a bully to his former wife. Any political or cultural or race group convinced it is right may force its “faith” on everyone. Even if it is part of such a group, no one is to blame. All are to blame for fomenting hate over love. For not welcoming the stranger, as all ancient faiths believed. It is a desert commitment.

In this world there are many reasons to hate and many reasons to love. It’s a choice. We who don’t shoot—even if we hate—have made choices. All of us share normal feelings that range from love to rage, wrath to laughter. Emotions move through us every moment as we interact with others and share our lives. Feelings move through us. And we recognize, evaluate, and express them as we can in safe places, or seek out safe people to share them with. We need to try to understand them, and to understand ourselves.

Pick up a stone to throw at an enemy. Or resolve to wait, to withdraw to think about why you’ve made an enemy. St. Paul writes, Every marvelous thing you may do with your life, if you do it without love, you’ve gained nothing. [1^st Corinthians 13.]

Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always ‘me first,’ doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep scores of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end. [The Message 1 Cor. 13]

The Orlando shooter knew nothing of love, knew nothing of a death that is not the last word, but an opening of the gates to greater love. In fact I believe that a movement—not of death—but of love and solidarity can rise out of Orlando, out of Florida, out of states as well as cities, and out of rich and poor, young and old, GLBTQ, religious or spiritual and everything in between. We who love need to be smart, strong, and vigilant. The world is too wonderful for us to shrink to being so afraid we build walls instead of bridges. To work toward the sister and brotherhood we all crave, to do Tikkun olam (repair the world), we need to trust steadily in the Holy One, hope without ceasing, and love extravagantly. The greatest of these, is love.   [1 Cor. 13.13]

I was just 12 when my beloved piano teacher Bernice died of brain cancer. Since the fifties were years when children were kept from the traumas of life, I felt shut off from telling her I loved her, even saying goodbye. I remember one rainy Sunday afternoon waiting in our parked car in Seattle at Virginia Mason while my parents left my brothers and me to visit Bernice. When they returned sober-faced, we stopped at St. James Cathedral to pray—unusual practice for us American Baptists. Awed by the space, the silence, the candles, I was drawn to prayer. I missed Bernice at our lessons and was frightened for her. And when she did lose her life, my parents would not take me to her memorial.

In a family much given to seriousness and not a little fear of doing the wrong thing, Bernice brought me laughter and joy, not to mention piano technique. Her vivaciousness prompted smiles even in my dad. When she and her husband Jim visited our home, making an uproarious entrance, it was usually Saturday night. We shared our pancakes. Mom scrounged for the coffee pot (my parents drank only tea) so that the fragrance of coffee accompanied the boisterous laughter in our kitchen—a wondrous visitation.

One of the four great truths is that there is suffering in life. And since most of us at my age are dealing with this reality every day, we need to help one another cope with the losses that come, rather than feeling singled out or badly treated, or that God is looking the other way. Quaker Parker Palmer comments, “The good news is that suffering can be transformed into something that brings life, not death.” Jesus said, “I come that you may have life, and have it to the full.” Jn 10.10

 For years after I had become a competent pianist and organist, each time I began to play I dedicated my music to Bernice, not so much to my mother, a soloist whom I spent hours accompanying as she sang at memorials and teas and worship services. I had not heard all of Bernice’s music. Her song was cut off. I felt more bonded with her who championed my growing musicianship and my inner need for appreciation. Of course my talents were to be offered to God through others. But my parents saw to it that the gifts were given without having acknowledged the musician.

Whenever I remember Bernice, she is perched at my right hand on a small chair with one hand on the page of my music. I was eight then, warmed by her joy and inspired by her faith to live with hope in spite of the losses to come. In place of the darkness of her absence, she brought me delight that lasts to this day.

I was ready to write when I came home from lunch last week. I had a great opening line and confidence that more would follow; my mind was alive with images. Not something a writer ignores. On the way to the house I wondered if aphids were still after the perennial hellebores. I’ve been spraying them with dish soap and water, but I saw aphids still ruled. I’d also forgotten to clean out last year’s old leaves lying dyspeptically on the ground underneath the new, moldy with rot and now covered with the insects. I was dressed casually enough that I didn’t need to change clothes, so I dropped my purse inside the study, grabbed the spray from the garage, and headed out front.

Writing could wait a few minutes. This exercise would be good—as well as a fresh break from staying indoors too long with good books.

I sprayed, noticing the various developmental stages of the tiny white nits, light green eggs (maggots?) and winged predators. Some of the darker leaves were so sticky with aphid poop I had to wash them by hand. That took longer than I thought, but there were essentially only three plants to focus on, so I kept at it. These hellebores and two newer hosta spent so much time in the shade of the coral bark maple and dogwood, not to mention the neighbor’s huge camellia, that surely other shade-loving plants were not as infested as these. Blended chartreuse, lime and celery-green leaves nestled along the stone walk that wound its way to the front door. They were fine.

Who knew a hellebore could grow so large! I had to hunt for an old bamboo stake and pound it in with the back of a hatchet to prop up a mature, tall branch. Some of the wilted bottom leaves refused to be pulled out and crumpled by hand, so I went back to the garage for a pair of clippers, the kind with gears that protect my joints—not that these juicy stems needed that much strength. As an afterthought, I grabbed the white 5-gallon bucket I use for yard waste to stow what I pulled out from under and within the plants.

I had a line or two in mind for the article I planned, but for a moment I let it drift. It would come back to me. Scoping out the larger area where I was working revealed that the pebbled slab where the birdbath stands was three-quarters covered with dirt. I would need the rake and then a whisk broom to spiff it up. While I was at it, it would help if I raked over the mulch after everything else was done.

Back to the garage for the rake and whisk broom and then, pleased by the fragrance of freshly-turned earth, I surveyed this half of the front yard, pulling out several more dying leaves, shaking off the wilted blossoms of the crabapple tree that had fallen on the plants below. As I had suspected, more sun kept those hellebores freer of aphids.

Finally I stood up, straightening my tired back. Following the sounds of calling crows, I looked up to see a murder of them harrying a young eagle who led them on a chase around the east side of the adjacent cemetery behind fir and cedar, his white tail gleaming against the azure sky.

What time was it? I had started this project before sitting down to write. It was not yet two. Now it was four. Satisfied, I had still to finish the overall raking, toss my clippers, gloves, spray bottle and whisk broom into the bucket with the detritus of hellebore and hosta, bundle up the rake and a stake I had not used, and head for the garage.

Now, what was that line I had in mind?