BRIGHT SADNESS

I am in a foul mood this morning. I am also at church for the weekly 7:00am prayer service as I come to this realization. The irony is not lost on me.

I haven’t slept and the darkness of a night spent tossing and turning hasn’t completely released me into the brightness of the day. “Go forth into the world,” intones the curate. I sigh loudly. The grandfather next to me hazards a cautious glance out of the corner of his eye. He gives me wide berth as we walk forward for communion.

“I love Lent!” enthuses my curate later at breakfast across from me. I have, it should be noted, been yawning into my coffee until this point and have just finished accidentally flicking potatoes rather unceremoniously across the table at him. His good nature belies mine. I smile half-heartedly. “I am failing at Lent!” is all that I can think at the moment.

We are in the last days of Lent, and quite honestly, I am still identifying more with the story of the dust to which we all return than I am anticipating the celebration of resurrection.

On Ash Wednesday morning, our curate used the term “Bright Sadness” to describe Lent. This phrase, first used by Fr Alexander Schmemann, serves as “a poetic translation of the "joy-making mourning" recommended by Saint John Climacus in his Ladder of Divine Ascent.” I loved the phrase and scribbled it down on my bulletin mid-service.

Lately though, I feel more scattered and dusty than bright. I’ve failed at my Lenten fast, haven’t cracked open the book I said I’d read, and rather than slow down as Karen Stiller invited us to do at the beginning of the season, it seems like my life’s pace has taken off like a bat out of hell. I’m in a different city almost every weekend and my to-do list is running me, not the other way around. The people around me are struggling and I’m too often at a loss for words for this space that they find themselves in.

I’m not seeing the sadness with the clarity of brightness like I hoped I might. Despite punctuations of joy, I feel that the mantle of discomfort and discouragement fits better for size than any hopeful anticipation or sacramental penitence. I’m on the heels of a season that I’ve begun to term “The Deep Sad,” a time of separation and fragmentation, of mourning and hope deferred for the community of which I am a part.

It was with this spirit that I went to see the play Godspell the other day. Having graced stages around the world for 48 years, Godspell is based on the book of Mark and is devoted to discovering the presence of good news in the dark and fragmented present. I went alone after a busy week and by the end of the first half, I was completely overwhelmed as characters shouted out real news headlines, each of which seemed more heartbreaking than the last, compounding the shadow of “The Deep Sad” that I’m still trying to shake.  

Disgruntled and ill at ease, I stretched during intermission and was startled out of my troubled reverie as the grandmother next to me leaned over and shyly introduced herself. In broken English she explained that her grandson was in the play. After listening for a while, I realized we could switch to Italian. Grabbing my hand in excitement, she peppered me with the usual questions about every aspect of my life. No I was not married. Yes my Italian was bad. No I did not live near my family.

“Your hands are very cold,” she informed me after a few minutes, having boldly grabbed hold of one in order to hear my always too soft voice a little better. And you know, she didn’t say much after that, but she held onto both of my hands for the rest of intermission in order to warm them. At the play’s end as she hugged me and held my hand again, everything about this stranger wished me well – a chance encounter with brightness in a season of sad.

I left the theatre and marveled at how a moment of unexpected togetherness could happen in the middle of a play that sought to address the question of Jesus’ presence amongst us, that searched for the good news in our fragmented society. I wondered at how in my spirit of sadness, bright found me in the form of a tiny grandmother seated next to me. God with us and gospel present in the midst of our togetherness.

Here's what I know. People see what they’re looking for. Though Lent is almost past, I am determined to enter Passion Week with new - or perhaps adjusted - eyes. Maybe the trick is trying to find the light right in the dark. The pathway from broken to re-made, no longer the same but remade into a cracked sort of wholeness nonetheless. Maybe the message of Lent and this pre-Easter season is not so much choosing between dark and light, but looking instead at the shadow of God’s presence in our midst. In the bright and the sad, in His presence with us nonetheless.