The Blame Game

We are living in a time of illness and death spread all across the globe. No country, whether a rich or poor nation, can avoid these two things. Understandably, when prayers aren’t answered, we would like to blame God. But listen to the writer of the book of Wisdom in the Old Testament, who in this passage (Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:23-24), reminds us that God did not create illness and death.
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God did not make death,
Nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.
For he fashioned all things that they might have being;
and the creatures of the world are wholesome,
and there is not a destructive drug among them
nor any domain of the netherworld on earth,
for justice is undying.
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For God formed man to be imperishable;
The image of his own nature he made him.
But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world,
and they who belong to his company experience it.

Fun With Words

Words Left Unspoken

On June 24 the condominium, the Champlain Towers South, in Surfside, Florida collapsed. When I saw the images on the nightly news, flashes of 9/11 rose in my mind. This “mound” will also be searched but as I write this, no one alive, only bodies, have been unearthed. And in the streets near the rubble stand the friends, loved ones, family members, praying for that miracle or at least a body part so that there can be closure.
Last year when the pandemic was raging, we were not allowed to touch our loved ones let alone be in the same room as they drew that last breath. Funeral gatherings were prohibited and even worse, when funeral homes ran out of space to process the bodies, they were stacked like meat in refrigerated trucks. This created a state of mind for the mourning where closure was not possible. Was the person really dead? With no physical proof, the dead become ghosts that walk in the hallways of the soul.
The philosopher Schopenhauer, it is said, stated that “All pain can be borne if it can be shared.” We wish to gather at the hour of their last breath and hold our loved one’s hands. We wish to say one last time “I love you”. We desire to give them a decent burial. Those whose loved ones are not found in the collapse of the condominium can do none of that!
We had gone through this kind of grief on a massive scale in the aftermath of 9/11. Now, 20 years later, thousands of those individuals still don’t have any type of “proof” that their loved ones died!
I reread an article this morning I’d saved that discussed that we need new rituals because nobody has ever lived in this kind of world before. In his article The Last Word, Creating a space for our brokenness (Catholic Herald, Oct 4, 2019), it was as if Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, the author, was given a view of the world 3 months hence! We especially need some way to come to terms with a death when an individual just vanished. Talking to a counselor helps but can never provide the physical closure they so desperately seek.
For most of those individuals in Surfside, Florida there never will be a closure and they will suffer from an enduring unique form of grief. And sadly, the fact is that today’s society mostly leaves us alone with our brokenness. “We are pioneers in new territory, and pioneers have to improvise…” Rolheiser wrote. How is one to process their grief when the last words of love have been left unspoken?

Words Matter

I found this an eye opening discussion about the use of passive voice. It reflects on how we choose to view the world through our use of words, not even recognizing the harm it can cause!
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