Honoring The Downs and Ups of Life

When I was a child, I loved to swing.  I suppose the truth is, I still love to swing and appreciate the opportunity or perhaps excuse to swing with my grandchildren who also find it enjoyable.  There is something about the up and down, pumping legs first out and then under motion of swinging that I find both soothing and empowering.    

When my husband and I go paddling on the lovely Wakulla River near our home, we see the evidence of the up and down, ebb and flow of the tides. At times there is no dark water mark on the trunks of trees and supporting posts of the docks.  The water level is up.  Sometimes we see the dark, wet evidence of where the water has been on dock posts and tree trunks as high as two feet above the water line, and we know that in time the water will be that high again as the tide changes.   

Within my grown children and their families, in my marriage, in my friendships, and social connections, there are reminders of the ebb and flow of relationships that are precious to me.  In my ministry and as I think of my own development, I see highs and lows, ups and downs, and I would imagine you see the same pattern in your life and relationships.  

All religions and spiritual practices honor this movement.  

The Hebrew scripture speaks of the seasons of life and how to everything there is a season, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.  

Paul in Christian scripture recognized the ups and downs when he said, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether in want or in need.  I can do this through Christ who gives me strength.” 

Buddhist practitioner Pema Chodron says, “Things come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”  

I recently read a Sufi proverb from the mystical realms of Islam that says, “When the heart grieves over what it has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has left.”  Based on deep reflection on the meaning of life through mystical encounters with God, this quote rings true in my own life.  When I grieve loss, I experience the lows, the downs, the ebb of life. 

I experience with full force sorrow and sometimes despair.  But if I find the courage to face these feelings, if I rely on the support of my faith and my friends to experience the valleys of life rather than resist them, I find there is joy even in sorrow, even in grief.  For not even death has the power to remove or extinguish love.  

I find there is joy even in sorrow, even in grief.  For not even death has the power to remove or extinguish love.  

It goes without saying that many of us are grieving. Researchers tell us that collective grief has risen in our world due to an ongoing stream of unsettling global events. We grieve for people lost to a pandemic that never fully left us, for wars and violence that flood our screens daily, and for a climate that feels increasingly fragile. We grieve for relationships that have become strained by the divisions in our world views. And we all grieve for those losses that are deeply personal to us whether of things, of hopes and dreams, of health and wellbeing, of a way of life and values we embraced, or of pets or persons we love and miss.  

Grief is a universal human experience that stems from losses that are significant to us. But as universal as it is, grief is also unique.

There is no right way to grieve or timetable for it. It is experienced in waves or bursts that sometimes come out of nowhere. It is more spiral than linear in nature and, while grief over someone we love lasts as long as the love lasts, we can with intention find healing in our grief. 

Grief can certainly be strong and joy is not always easy to embrace even if it makes an appearance.  But the wisdom of the centuries and of people of many faiths, the wisdom of our own life experiences, is that there is more to life than the lows, the downs, the griefs.  There are highs and ups and joys.  And it takes awareness of and listening to both to make us the best that is in us to be.   

As I write this, I am spending the week in Puerto Rico with twenty-five women ministers from Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) congregations where CBF influence has been growing over the past thirty-five years along with the influence of the feminine perspective in our ministry. 

Six CBF ministers each from Florida, from Alabama, and from Virginia were welcomed by a team of six Puerto Rican women and one woman from the Dominican Republic, who are also in ministry. 

The purpose of our gathering is to get to know ourselves and each other better and to deepen our relationships with self, our sisters, and God.  We are staying in a beautiful setting at Parador Maunacaribe, in Maunabo, Puerto Rico, conducive to self-reflection and the healing powers of nature.

And in this carefully-curated safe space, we are sharing both our joys and vulnerabilities in ways that I imagine will nurture our spirits forever.  The ups and downs, the joys and sorrows, the victories and defeats.  

It seems serendipitous to me that on this island, we wake up and go to sleep lulled by the repetitive sounds of the waves rising and falling, rushing in and out.  As I was sitting one morning watching the ocean that we had been warned to not enter because of its rocks and dangerous currents, I noticed a bent coconut tree on the shoreline. Though it was at a distance and a bit difficult to discern, I thought there was a swing hanging from its trunk.  Upon closer inspection, I learned I was right.    

Swinging out over the sand and back, watching the waves come and go, reflecting on all we were experiencing and learning about ourselves and our relationships, I felt close to all that matters most in my life, including you, dear readers. 

It is my prayer that we all can curate a safe space to reflect on the downs and ups of life and find peace amidst all that grieves us.  

Rev. Candace McKibben