November 9, 2006 If you want to dis someone seriously and immediately, just describe them as mournful. It is hardly ever considered a compliment. Mournfulness is almost by definition the opposite of happiness. And so we encounter once again the paradoxical words of Jesus: Happy are those who mourn - or blessed are those who mourn. How can this be? How can mournfulness ever be considered blessed, or a mournful person happy?In a culture that seems to value very highly the outward manifestation of happiness - smiles, laughter, good times, cheerfulness, high fives, Matthew's rendition of the beatitude makes little sense. Luke's is only slightly better: "happy are those who weep now, for you will laugh",. .. but "Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep."How are we to make sense of these words? Well, we might start by admitting that there are many things to be sad about, and we don't get a chance to talk about most of them. War, wherever it occurs, is sad. The killing and wounding of people is sad. Losing limbs and hope is sad. Watching children learn to hate is sad. Having your loved ones be very sick or die is sad. Losing people you love because of broken relationships or changes in circumstances is sad. Wanting very much to accomplish a goal in your life and failing is sad. Feeling helpless to change what you know is wrong is sad. Knowing that women and children are raped - sometimes as a matter of policy, as is apparently the case in Darfur, sometimes, as on many campuses, as a matter of intoxication - is sad. But feeling sad is not often allowed - especially during the years that our culture often calls the happiest years of our lives.One of the things I have sometimes done at colleges is form grief groups, where people who have experienced a loss can meet and talk about their loss. The experience of loss in college is often very difficult to voice. When you encounter someone at the salad bar and they ask how you are, it is very difficult to say that a loved one has lost a job or is seriously ill or has died. Only good times are allowed in college. And even in our nation, we are no longer allowed to see the coffins arriving from Iraq, nor do we acknowledge at all the devastation and death caused to Iraqis, of whom, some say, 600, 000 have died. I think that I have established that there are many reasons to be sad, and I have certainly not named them all. But in our culture, we are so afraid of depression - so afraid that we will become stuck in unhappiness - that we are sometimes reluctant to go near the subject. Yet none of us, if we are honest, can escape it. There is a Buddhist story told in the book, The Art of Happiness, by the Dalai Lama. It goes like this:In the time of the Buddha, a woman named Kisagotami suffered the death of her only child. Unable to accept it, she ran from person to person, seeking a medicine to restore her child to life. The Buddha was said to have such a medicine.
Kisagotami went to the Buddha, paid homage, and asked, "Can you make a medicine that will restore my child?"
"I know of such a medicine," the Buddha replied. "But in order to make it, I must have certain ingredients."
Relieved, the woman asked, "What ingredients do you require?"
"Bring me a handful of mustard seed," said the Buddha.
The woman promised to procure it for him, but as she was leaving, he added, "I require the mustard seed to be taken from a household where no child, spouse, parent, or servant has died."
The woman agreed and began going from house to house in search of the mustard seed. At each house the people agreed to give her the seed, but when she asked them if anyone had died in that household, she could find no home where death had not visited - in one house a daughter, in another a servant, in others a husband or parent had died. Kisagotami was not able to find a home free from the suffering of death. Seeing she was not alone in her grief, the mother let go of her child's lifeless body and returned to the Buddha, who said with great compassion, "You thought that you alone had lost a son; the law of death is that among all living creatures there is no permanence."[1]This is a human story. It is told in a Buddhist context, but it applies to all of us. Now some people will say that the Christian story is different. After all, we have in scripture stories of Jesus restoring to life the dead children of grieving mothers. (Luke 7:11ff for example). And those stories do point to a Christian belief in resurrection, which is quite different from the Buddhist teaching of nirvana. Certainly, as Christians, we believe in the power of God to do anything. Every relief from suffering, every restoration of loss, every renewal of hope comes to us as a sign of an ultimate reality that transcends death, suffering, and sadness. But such signs can not even be appreciated until grief is fully known.This is what I believe Jesus may have meant when he said that the mournful are happy because they will be comforted. Comfort can only be known after suffering. And of course Jesus was drawing on the Hebrew scriptures when he spoke - reminding us of the puzzling passage from Ecclesiastes: "Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of countenance the heart is made glad." (Ecclesiastes 7:3) What does that mean? By sorrow of countenance the heart is made glad? Just this, I think: there is a depth of joy, of happiness, of blessedness, of compassion that can only be attained by sharing in the world's suffering and experiencing the strength that becomes available in such situations. It is a depth that most of us fear and try to avoid. But it is the testimony of so many that when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, there IS someone with us. This does not mean that it is easy. But we do arrive at a different place. And that different place is not the place of mirth, but the house of mourning, of true happiness, of blessedness. Happiness is at last not the product of good fortune which insulates us from reality, but the product of faith that enables us to embrace reality, in its depth, in its pain, in its beautiful, fragile, transcending, enduring joy. Amen.
Copyright©2006
Richard R. Crocker
[1] Dalai Lama and Cutler, Howard C., The Art of Happiness, New York: Penguin Books, 1998, p. 133
