Advent musings
It's the last week of the semester (two papers yet to complete), and after two family funerals, I may be experiencing the word noted by my former bishop - kanashimi.
When I googled that word I came up with nearly 600,000 hits, mostly Japanese Anime. "Of course," my 14-year-old said. "I could have told you that."
The experience of suffering or pain honoring another.
I felt that pain when news reached me of Aunt Esther's passing in November. It was the renewing of an old pain that comes from being part of a large extended family. Each passing "celebration of life" is also another root cut out from under the tree. Those who in life connected me to my past have now receded into that same quiet past.
Again when Uncle Vern passed away another root was cut away, but also joyfully commended to the One who always remembers.
Now in the midst of Advent we celebrate in prayers, songs and anticipatory activity, the One who remembers our human suffering, our pain, our melancholy - kanashimi. In Christ, the Divine enters into the midst of creation, takes on the dust that we are (and wasn't God happily playing in the mud before humans emerged?), and is even now lifting us up (all of creation) that we may be restored to paradise. "Come, Thou long expected Jesus."
--georgos
When I googled that word I came up with nearly 600,000 hits, mostly Japanese Anime. "Of course," my 14-year-old said. "I could have told you that."
The experience of suffering or pain honoring another.
I felt that pain when news reached me of Aunt Esther's passing in November. It was the renewing of an old pain that comes from being part of a large extended family. Each passing "celebration of life" is also another root cut out from under the tree. Those who in life connected me to my past have now receded into that same quiet past.
Again when Uncle Vern passed away another root was cut away, but also joyfully commended to the One who always remembers.
Now in the midst of Advent we celebrate in prayers, songs and anticipatory activity, the One who remembers our human suffering, our pain, our melancholy - kanashimi. In Christ, the Divine enters into the midst of creation, takes on the dust that we are (and wasn't God happily playing in the mud before humans emerged?), and is even now lifting us up (all of creation) that we may be restored to paradise. "Come, Thou long expected Jesus."
--georgos
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