The Grief Beneath the Argument
The Grace of Belonging | Part Two
One of the things nobody tells you about moving is how personally you can take the absence of a chicken restaurant.
When I lived in Bentonville, one of my favorite places to eat was Slim Chickens. It’s an Arkansas-based chain, and there was one just down the road from where I lived. I could stop by whenever I wanted, and I suppose I never gave much thought to how nice that was.
Then I moved to Davenport.
Now, Davenport has some wonderful restaurants, but there isn’t a Slim Chickens anywhere nearby. This past weekend, I discovered that Des Moines has three locations. Three! Since I was there, I managed to stop at one for lunch on Friday.
It was just chicken, I suppose. But sitting there eating lunch, I found myself enjoying something more than the food. For a little while, there was something familiar in a place that is still relatively new to me.
A little bit of home.
Now, missing a chicken restaurant hardly qualifies as one of life’s great tragedies. But it reminded me how attached we become to familiar places, people, and routines. Sometimes we don’t recognize those attachments until something changes.
And I wonder how often that happens in the Church.
There is a particular kind of grief that rarely gets a sympathy card. Nobody brings you a casserole when a familiar tradition disappears. There isn’t usually a funeral when a beloved place changes or when the people who once filled a room are no longer there. Life simply keeps moving, and we are expected to move along with it.
But something in us notices.
Psalm 126 begins with a beautiful memory: “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream.” The people remember a time when their mouths were filled with laughter and their tongues with shouts of joy.
But then the psalm changes. Suddenly, they are asking God to restore their fortunes again. They remember what God has done, and they are still waiting for God to act. Joy and longing somehow occupy the same prayer.
That feels rather true to life.
In my conversations at Trinity, I have heard how deeply people cherish this Cathedral, its worship, its traditions, and its history. For many, this place holds decades of memories. And when you love something that deeply, change can feel personal.
I have been wondering how much of what we call disagreement in the Church is actually grief that has never quite found its voice.
Sometimes we argue about the thing immediately in front of us because it is easier than explaining what lies beneath it. We debate a decision, a tradition, or a particular way of doing things. Meanwhile, somewhere underneath the conversation is a quieter question: Does what I have loved still matter here?
That is a question worth hearing.
Of course, something that feels like a loss to one person may have been a long-awaited source of hope for another. Some changes are necessary, especially when old ways have caused harm or excluded people from the life of the Church. We can acknowledge someone’s grief without concluding that everything should return to the way it was.
Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” Sometimes we are still mourning something while the people around us have already begun to dance.
And that can be a lonely place.
Perhaps one of the challenges of our common life is learning to make room for people who have experienced the same events differently. We may never agree about every decision made in Trinity’s history, but we can listen to what those experiences have meant to one another.
Perhaps we could begin by asking a question we rarely think to ask in the middle of a disagreement:
What are you grieving?
And perhaps we need to ask ourselves that question, too.
Psalm 126 promises that those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. I love that image because it reminds us that even the ground watered by sorrow can become a place where something new grows.
I am still learning the stories of this Cathedral, including its joys and its sorrows. I want to approach both with care. And I hope that as we continue listening to one another, we might discover that some of the people we have regarded as opponents have simply been carrying sorrows we never knew about.
We cannot heal what we refuse to acknowledge. And we cannot begin to understand one another until we are willing to hear what lies beneath the argument.
There is still plenty of room here for laughter, for tears, for remembering, and for hope.
And by the grace of God, I believe there is room for all of us.
Faithfully,
Brandon +
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