This was a beautiful yet devastating read. I feel like you’ve summed up perfectly things that I’ve been struggling to get down on the page. It’s all tangled up, we try to make sense of tragedy and sorrow and yet before we even can, there is more of it.
That's how I felt too. I felt such a jumble of contradictory feelings. In the article I was trying to allow myself to not make sense, while grappling to do so. Sometimes, I think its all we can do. To voice the voices. I came across so many judgements of myself, in the act of trying to make sense itself. It made me uncomfortable to post. Maybe because we feel safer having a "position" or line of argument. But any wrestling with suffering defies logic or meaning, or even finding a consistent pattern in ourselves. It just is. Life is so brutal and so unfair, and none of us sit outside the rules of the game. I wanted to say thank you - it means a lot to me to read this comment Nessa.
Thank you for all your thoughts. It is heartbreaking. What can we do? It does feel like so little when things are so big. But we still try to do something. x Lisa
Ah, Jim. I, too, have been feeling a great heaviness from more than one direction. But I have learned not to look for consolation. It feels only right for me to accept the pain that such events illicit in me as the proper response—which is not to say the only response. Naturally I also offer practical aid as far as I am able and prayer of my own kind.
I feel your grappling here with these questions not at all unuseful. I heard many of my own thoughts echoed and mirrored back to me, giving me a different perspective on them.
Just sitting in the discomfort of it all and asking for nothing.
This was a beautiful yet devastating read. I feel like you’ve summed up perfectly things that I’ve been struggling to get down on the page. It’s all tangled up, we try to make sense of tragedy and sorrow and yet before we even can, there is more of it.
That's how I felt too. I felt such a jumble of contradictory feelings. In the article I was trying to allow myself to not make sense, while grappling to do so. Sometimes, I think its all we can do. To voice the voices. I came across so many judgements of myself, in the act of trying to make sense itself. It made me uncomfortable to post. Maybe because we feel safer having a "position" or line of argument. But any wrestling with suffering defies logic or meaning, or even finding a consistent pattern in ourselves. It just is. Life is so brutal and so unfair, and none of us sit outside the rules of the game. I wanted to say thank you - it means a lot to me to read this comment Nessa.
Thank you for all your thoughts. It is heartbreaking. What can we do? It does feel like so little when things are so big. But we still try to do something. x Lisa
Hi Lisa, thank you for reading and for sharing your thoughts. It's all just so unimaginable, so unimaginably unfair xx
Ah, Jim. I, too, have been feeling a great heaviness from more than one direction. But I have learned not to look for consolation. It feels only right for me to accept the pain that such events illicit in me as the proper response—which is not to say the only response. Naturally I also offer practical aid as far as I am able and prayer of my own kind.
I feel your grappling here with these questions not at all unuseful. I heard many of my own thoughts echoed and mirrored back to me, giving me a different perspective on them.
Just sitting in the discomfort of it all and asking for nothing.
Sending love…