Rachel Fitch,
Sid & Cathy Batts Pastoral Resident
About 20 young adults gathered around tables in the Garden Room for dinner and fellowship last Wednesday night. We’ve been meeting monthly, just simple food and space to connect. Everyone began with how they spent their day … with 70 teenagers, with the U.S. Navy, with an 8-month-old, the list goes on!
We’ve had table questions to get to know each other and to think more about each verse of the Beatitudes. Last Wednesday was “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” Matthew 5:4.
In a lot of ways, it is an odd thing to say. Blessed are those who mourn. In Anne Sutherland Howard’s book Claiming the Beatitudes, she writes about Stefani, an Episcopal priest in Manchester who does many more funerals than baptisms or weddings. Stefani shares that these are sacred moments and places. She says that in funerals, even when the attendees or families are not connected to the church, she sees that people act differently. She says she sees men cry or touch and she sees people comforting one another. And, she says, in the mourning together, there is a connection, there is, in a little sense, joy as God is present.
Some of our table discussions looked more like fellowship, which is good! But I did hear from one table that dove into the questions. One said, those people were meant to be at a table together. You see, they shared. They shared of losses and mourning for grandparents and others. They shared of the complications that Covid brought as we couldn’t gather and mourn in the ways we were used to. And, as they closed in prayer afterward, one named that, in the sharing, in the mourning together, their time embodied the verse as they were comforted. They were comforted by one another, they were comforted in the naming of shared or similar experiences, they were comforted in seeing the ways people show up for each other.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
This Thursday at noon the sanctuary will be open as we gather for a simple Service of Remembrance. Whether remembering a loved one who died this past year or one who died many years ago, all are welcome. Whether remembering a particular grief or simply desiring to sit with others as we mourn the griefs we all carry, all are welcome.
I pray that, as we gather, as we pray together, God might make it a space where this verse is embodied. I pray that, as we gather and mourn together, God might make little glimpses of comfort known.
