Such a Consolation As This

If being alive means inexorably to suffer, then what’s our consolation in being here?

I thought this the other day, like a week and a half back, and I wrote it down. If you subscribe to the way of Jesus, you’d probably say Him. He’s our consolation. But he’s not here – he was already and he is no longer. So what breadcrumbs, with his Spirit, has he left for us to feast from? Well, I’d say the things in the world that are true, beautiful, and good. I feel that’s a fair assessment for most of us, definitely for writers.

I’m not here for money or a nine-to-five or even marriage in its simplest form. I want swallowing bodies of water, racial reconciliation, and a glass of wine in California with my husband who will not leave me. I think while we each await a death that is coming and bear a life that is hard, we humans hunt in a pattern and it’s usually in the direction of truth, beauty, and goodness, all of which preceded our being here and don’t depend on it either. 

And while some may say we’re just lucky to have breath and that the experience of life is consolation enough, to a lot of us, it’s still just Saturday – our faces aren’t symmetrical in the way that science calls us pretty. The hospital smells bad, we can’t afford housing, there’s no guarantee we’ll be attracted to the opposite sex, and our wombs are unbearably empty. And even though we’re periodically consoled by this love that gave us earthly truth, beauty, and goodness, our bodies are tense because the next shoe will drop and God only knows what Sunday might bring. Hopefully relief.

I’m not sure about coincidence and all that, but this is a piece I found fifty-five weeks ago, read from Father Henri Nouwen’s book, A Letter of Consolation. It came up again today in my memories on Black Saturday, with the idea of consolation swirling around in a two-week-old incubator. Thankful for that grace today, and I hope it’s a grace to you, too.

“If the God who revealed life to us, and whose only desire is to bring us to life, loved us so much that He wanted to experience with us the total absurdity of death, then – yes, then there must be hope; then there must be something more than death; then there must be a promise that is not fulfilled in our short existence in this world; then leaving behind the ones you love, the flowers and the trees, the mountains and oceans, the beauty of art and music, and all the exuberant gifts of life cannot be just the destruction and cruel end of all things; then indeed we have to wait for the third day.”

We needn’t anymore consolation that the one of a third day.