We’re on Holy Ground

How hope is born from despair, with Amy Carol Webb

The first sorrowful mystery of the Roman Catholic rosary is The Agony in the Garden. This story is told throughout the gospels, but my favorite is the succinct and yet painfully descriptive version told by Luke in chapter 22. It is the night before the crucifixion and Jesus is having some doubts. He knows he is about to die a painful death. And he is terrified.  Everything has led up to this moment, of him being a martyr for his beliefs, and he just doesn’t want to do it.  He doesn’t want to be the son of God anymore.

In fact, his anguish is so profound, that the gospel of Luke says he is sweating blood.  Sweating blood. This is basically the worst panic attack you could possibly ever have. 

There is a song I learned as a child, called Lenten Love Song and it tells this story. Jesus goes to the garden of Gethsemane very sad and very weary, to be alone to pray.  His disciples are supposed to keep watch, but they fall asleep.  And Jesus feels abandoned and forsaken to his fate. 

Dear God I am so sorrowful / Is there no other way?

Dear God if it is possible / Let this cup pass away.

He is praying to his Father, begging for him intercede, to spare his life.  The disciples have fallen asleep.  No one cares.  And his Father is silent up there in heaven.  His Father is going to let him die. 

Writer and therapist Andrew Lester calls this moment facing the void.  Like Jesus in the garden, we look deep into the pain and find nothing. Despair. Hopelessness. What a shock for those of us who are theists, and believe in a benevolent universe, to discover that sometimes it seems there is nothing holy or sacred in moments of deep despair. 

In the gospel of Luke, right at Jesus’ lowest moment where he is begging God to save him from the pain, an angel appears and blesses Jesus with the strength to go on. The Lenten Love Song continues with Jesus singing,

Dear God I am so sorrowful/But know your way is best

Let love take hold of me/Help me to be bold and free to do your will

To do your will/To do your will and rest.

This is how the Lenten Love Song ends. Jesus declaring his faith in God and his belief that his death serves a larger purpose. He has faced the void and found meaning and hope in the midst of despair. In fact, facing the truth of his situation has somehow led to an even deeper recognition of meaning. The angel has graced him with the strength to continue the story, despite his fear. As the song says, love has taken hold of him and he is free.

When I was struggling with addiction as a young adult, I often recalled the words to Lenten Love Song and would sing it to myself as a lament of my own suffering and a call for God to save me. At the time I felt completely abandoned by God, fated to a meaningless destiny, alone and hopeless.  I had stared into the void and discovered that the God I was taught about as a child wasn’t the God for me.  The story didn’t make any sense. And beneath the veil, there was nothing.  I fell into despair.  

I would often say that I went looking for another God, but instead of finding Spirit, I found spirits. And for a while they seemed to fill the void. I went about the business of erasing myself, and removing the story I’d been taught, which was a painful and seemingly infinite process. Looking back, I can see how important this process was, despite its risks to my life. The pain actually opened me to deeper healing.

French philosopher Gabriel Marcel says this moment, when we find ourselves on our knees in the garden like Jesus—no tenable path forward, begging to a God we aren’t even sure we believe in—is actually the precursor to hope. And it is only in despair that hope can be born. This is where we begin to write a new story. “Hope,” he says, “can only be an active struggle against despair.” 

It’s easy to laugh at the Bible and how unrealistic it sounds, with visits from angels that bring relief.  But the angel is merely a metaphor. In real life, angels don’t have wings. They are instead synchronicities, epiphanies, moments of clarity. I can identify many angels of hope along my journey of healing. Someone in a 12-step meeting who just happened to say the words I needed to hear. A preacher whose sermon felt like it was being spoken right to me. The phone call of a friend right when I was sure that suicide was the only escape from the pain. And with this angel of hope came relief, and even eventually wisdom. For Jesus, he accepted that suffering and death were a part of his story, a part of being human. For me, these angels allowed me to continue to live another day.

In my experience, it is only through facing what is real and true, no matter how painful, that we can open up to the possibilities of our future.  This sort of radical honesty was an essential piece of my journey out of addiction and into recovery.  By accepting the truth of my past, and the present situation that had developed out of it, I was able to imagine a different future. I was able to begin to write a new story for myself and make meaning and purpose out of my life.

In the poem When You Meet Someone Deep in Grief, the author Patricia Runkel writes about entering into despair. In her poem it is a darkened chapel, and like Moses encountering God in the old testament, you must remove your shoes because this is holy ground. In Runkle’s poem, at first it sounds as though the writer is supporting a friend, entering into the sacredness of another’s grief.  But it also speaks to us about how we should treat our own grief and despair. Do not be afraid, for this is holy ground.  In despair is the power of transformation.  And you are here to listen to what it has to teach you.

When I have found myself in the midst of acute pain and suffering, I have learned that to survive starts with humbly entering into this darkened chapel and bravely acknowledging the reality of my despair.  Facing hopelessness can feel like surrendering to death.  We fear it is a bottomless pit from which we will never return. We look around and our dearest friends are asleep all around us, unaware of the pain we are experiencing. And here we are alone in the garden, alone in the chapel of our grief, praying that an angel of hope will appear. Let the candles speak, the poem says. But the silence is empty.

In this scene it may seem as though nothing is happening. But this is the precursor of hope. If I am willing to surrender to it, I find the rewriting of the story has already begun. At times I’ve been lucky enough to have someone willing to enter this space with me, willing to be silent.  In my own work with people experiencing trauma and addiction, I have accompanied them into despair and listened as they slowly articulated the truth of their experience. It isn’t easy to watch someone circle and perseverate. Perhaps this is why the disciples kept falling asleep. To watch a beloved struggle can cause us deep pain as well.  And we listen as past events and future story come together to create a present that is scary and confusing and untenable. It can trigger our own unresolved trauma and pain. We must be brave enough to listen and have faith that speaking the pain is the first step out of it.

Because hope is born right there in that moment, in the grief and the pain and the despair. The human impulse calls us to struggle towards hope despite our grief. And I believe this struggle is grace itself. And whether it is two people in a chapel together or several hundred gathered in religious community, we can find communion with the divine. This is a holy place to be together no matter whether we are hopeless or hopeful, a place to experience the grace of unconditional love. And we recognize that God isn’t “out there” waiting for us to find her, a personified object hidden in the clouds, whose grace we must earn and of which we will never be deserving. Rather, God is right here, born and reborn of our actions in relationship to one another, present to us in the strggle, in the silence and the yearning. 

Ultimately, I have found that hope is not the absence of despair. In fact, it is just the opposite. When I am hopeless I must return to the garden of Gethsemane, or the silence of the chapel of grief, and kneel before the truth of my experience. I must listen to what it is telling me and humbly offer myself to its teaching. This is where my pain is met with love, where God is born and reborn, where my suffering is transformed into meaning. It is in despair where I remember to remove my shoes, for I have stepped upon holy ground.