Holding Grief, Flowing into Love

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM     November 10, 2024

Last weekend, I spent time in silence and reflection. I was bone tired after seven consecutive months of offering both guided and directed retreats. That fatigue was no surprise after such an investment of deep listening and of emotional energy. But my exhaustion was also a weariness of spirit and I hoped for a few days to remove myself from the constant barrage of political ads filled with messages of fear rather than inspiration. I was hoping for nothing other than to drink in stillness, to replenish my spent spirit, and to be renewed. And I was.

I devoted the better part of last weekend to simply gazing at the Hudson River Estuary. As I imagined what has unfolded within it and on its banks over the centuries, I sat and gazed in remembrance of the Indigenous Peoples who settled the area some 10,000 years ago, the Mohicans and Mohawks along the Upper Hudson and the Lenape making a home along the Lower Hudson. I held their hopes and their dreams in reverence and wondered at the challenges they had encountered in their lives. I reflected on the rich diversity of life, the more than two hundred species of fish, blue crab, and waterfowl that live peacefully in habitats along the estuary. I recalled how, closer to our own time, our human family’s impact on the river included sewage discharge, quarrying, water intakes, and toxic chemicals, but that it was also members of our same human family who grieved that damage and came together in tenderness and care, successfully demanding change and working to protect and preserve what is now an American Heritage River.

All of this sitting, gazing, and reflecting braced me for my return to a post-election country. Here, I am not only profoundly disappointed; I am deeply grieving. I will not rush my grief, but I will also not wallow in it. Instead, I will listen to my grief and invite my mourning to guide me. I will grieve and act for my undocumented neighbors, especially those whom I know by name and story. May they be comforted, may they know many friends are standing with them in the waiting room. I will grieve and act for Earth, our Common Home. As once we banded together to protect and preserve the Hudson Estuary and other threatened ecosystems, may we now stand firm in our deep knowing that what we do to the Web of Life, we do to ourselves, to all of creation. May that knowing guide us.

I am grieving but also grateful for the many who share both their wisdom and their light with me these days. As we move forward together, may we pledge our lives to the common good of our fractured country and our wounded world. May we walk in the company and witness of our ancestors, the holy ones who companion us. May we keep stretching worldviews, keep welcoming in the other. May we choose tenderness and audacious hope rather than hardness of heart and despair. With the grace of the Holy One, may we recognize and claim our shared vulnerability, act out of our common kinship, and become more fully, more completely agents of healing in this moment and far, far beyond.

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Name what you hold in your heart in this moment.
Where is your hope?
To what might that hope be calling you?
Ask the Holy One to bless and sustain your hope for our shared future.

Featured Image: Verina Waldner, Unsplash

NOTE:
Please hold my IHM Congregation in your prayer as we celebrate Founders’ Day, November 10. On this day in 1845, the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary were founded in Monroe, Michigan by Theresa Maxis Duchemin, IHM and Louis Florent Gillet, CSsR. These many years later, we continue to celebrate and give thanks for our graced story.

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