Reflections on Holy Week (featuring some T.S. Eliot)

"April is the cruellest month." 

T.S. Eliot's infamous opening line has been ringing through my head this month--and this week.

For Eliot (at least, how I interpret the beginning of the poem), April was the cruelest month because of the way it brought the past back to the present--memory and desire, lilacs out of dead land--and the pain of realizing that his friends, his generation, his understanding of the way the world worked--were gone. Spring would never be the same again. The loss was too great for spring to ever look, smell, sound, or be the same again.

 This Holy Week, I've been thinking about loss. I've been thinking of loss in connection to the fire that devastated Notre Dame Cathedral on Monday. And beyond that, I've thought of the myriad losses of stone, art, beauty, faith, knowledge, and memory that have been lost throughout centuries, that are being lost right now. Losses unacknowledged by social media. Losses that are, perhaps, more devastating because no one remembers.

Loss is real. And not just of beautiful stone cathedrals, but of people. The people who have been lost and whose names we don't know is soul-shattering. The amount of people who have disappeared, whose names have vanished into the dust, or whose only records is of violence done to them. The human magnitude of loss is so cosmic and so personal.

The magnitude of this loss takes my breath away sometimes--not from the beauty or sublimity of it, but more in a punch-in-the-gut kind of way. It is staggering. As I've been preparing for my comprehensive exams, I've read and re-read account of the horrors humans have, through time, space, and medium, inflicted upon each other out of greed, fear, ambition, power, neglect. Genocides. Slavery. Purges. The pages of world history are soaked with blood.

But loss affects us on personal, deep, intimate levels as well. It is hard to remember that statistics are personal to someone--often, they are personal to us. Who among us hasn't lost someone dear to us? Even if we haven't experienced the death of a family member or friend yet, losses come in other forms: the loss of trust, the loss of confidence, the loss of hope.

Personal loss struck home this week as I heard that an acquaintance from Salt Lake tragically fell to his death while hiking in southern Utah. His death has reverberated across the community I know there and the church congregation where I attended. Accidents like that are shocking reminders of how fragile life is.

April is the cruellest month.

As I continue to grow up (perhaps "grow older" is a better term), I realize more and more that no one is spared being broken. No one is spared the loss that living in this world brings. NO one is spared the second law of thermodynamics. We go the way of all the earth. Broken bodies, broken minds, broken hearts, broken spirits all around us--perhaps that is us. Loss of peace, loss of hope, loss of direction, loss of job, loss of security, loss of loved ones, loss of life.

How do we stand it? How do you stand it?

We each find our ways, I suppose.

For me, and for the Christian world, that hope is found through Christ. And for me, hope doesn't mean a fleeting wish. Hope is a stronger word than that. I think that, too often (at least as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), we are afraid of what the darkness means that we paint pain in shades of "everything will work out in the end." And, it will. Ultimately, because of Christ, everything will work out. But some of my fellow Saints don't seem to deal with the concept of tragedy very well. I understand that is a hard ask, especially at different times in our lives. But I also think that there is a reason that we covenant at baptism to "mourn with those who mourn," just as much as we covenant to "comfort those who stand in need of comfort." Mourning has its purpose. And I think that there is understanding to be gained from those times in the abyss. Understanding that makes us more empathetic, softer, loving, and patient. Understanding that there must be opposition in all things. Understanding for just a taste of Christ's sacrifice for all of us.

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope of the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. [. . .]
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. [. . .]
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth." --T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"

So yes, I have a hope. It is a hope that comes from the waiting, and a hope that recognizes the "agony of death and birth," since both remind us of loss and possibility. A hope that is centered in Christ--from a hope and belief that He descended into that abyss, and then triumphantly conquered death, hell, pain, abuse, and suffering. that He rose from the dead. That He has a resurrected, tangible body. That He lives.

"Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God." (Ether 12:4)

So if we have that hope--what do we do with that? How do we make this world a better place?

I do not take that hope lightly. I think that, perhaps, sometimes we forget that Friday and Saturday for Christ's disciples were absolutely tragedies for them. That Sunday came and when Mary told the apostles that she had seen the resurrected Lord, they were dumbfounded and didn't believe her (and as a side note: that is a post for another day--how much it means to me that Jesus first appeared after His resurrection to a woman). When the miracle came on Sunday, it surprised them. He surprised them. They couldn't believe it. When our resurrection, miracle Sundays come to us--whether after three days, three weeks, three years, or longer--sometimes it is hard to accept the joy, as we are still trying to cope with tragedy.

[J. Kirk Richards, "Woman, Why Weepest Thou?" 

But I believe in a God who understands that it can be hard to believe good things can come. I believe that because I believe Christ really did take on our individual pains and sins when He suffered for us in Gethsemane and on the cross at Calvary. So He knows the doubt, anguish, and disbelief we feel  at times. That He knows our pains and our names personally, no matter how lost we feel.

One of my favorite quotes of all time (and I mean this here--I say that everything is "my favorite" too often, but this one really is one of my absolute favorites), is by Chieko M. Okazaki. She was a leader in the Church during the 1990s and her talks and teachings speak to my soul. This quote in particular touches me, and touches me in different ways each time I read it. It was addressed specifically to women, but the message is universal:

"We know that Jesus experienced the totality of mortal existence in Gethsemane. It's our faith that he experienced everything- absolutely everything. Sometimes we don't think through the implications of that belief. We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don't experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually. That means he knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer- how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau. He experienced Napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism.

"Let me go further. There is nothing you have experienced as a woman [or a man] that he does not also know and recognize. On a profound level, he understands the hunger to hold your baby that sustains you through pregnancy. He understands both the physical pain of giving birth and the immense joy. He knows about PMS and cramps and menopause. He understands about rape and infertility and abortion. 

"His last recorded words to his disciples were, "And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." (Matthew 28:20) He understands your mother-pain when your five-year-old leaves for kindergarten, when a bully picks on your fifth-grader, when your daughter calls to say that the new baby has Down syndrome. He knows your mother-rage when a trusted babysitter sexually abuses your two-year-old, when someone gives your thirteen-year-old drugs, when someone seduces your seventeen-year-old. He knows the pain you live with when you come home to a quiet apartment where the only children are visitors, when you hear that your former husband and his new wife were sealed in the temple last week, when your fiftieth wedding anniversary rolls around and your husband has been dead for two years. He knows all that. He's been there. He's been lower than all that. 

"He's not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don't need a Savior. He came to save his people in their imperfections. He is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He's not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief.

You know that people who live above a certain latitude and experience very long winter nights can become depressed and even suicidal, because something in our bodies requires whole spectrum light for a certain number of hours a day. Our spiritual requirement for light is just as desperate and as deep as our physical need for light. Jesus is the light of the world. We know that this world is a dark place sometimes, but we need not walk in darkness. The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, and the people who walk in darkness can have a bright companion. We need him, and He is ready to come to us, if we'll open the door and let him."

The cosmic and the intimate. To me, they are forever connected. It is the intimate that makes the cosmic possible.

If April has been a cruel month to you, I wish you peace and courage, regardless of your beliefs or devotions.

And for those who might need to read my words, know that I believe in Jesus Christ. I know He lives and that His love is real.

Christ is risen. In truth, He is risen.

And that makes it all possible.