Today, a friend shared with me a poem that I liked very much.  I still like it.  In fact, I like it more now that I did when I first read it, because I have put it through the mill of my own living and my own thinking and it means something very personal to me now.  I am quite sure that if I were the poet, I would not like my work to be treated like this but when you give a gift to the public in general, there are bound to be people who will see their own lives in it and respond as they must.

Here is the poem, which was written, or at least passed along to my friend, by Jeff Chu.

Bless you who are weary, you who are flailing.

May you find rest.

Bless you who are burdened by grief, you whose heart is so heavy.

May you not be rushed from your feelings…

Bless you who can’t quite muster any pre-Christmas cheer.

May you plant seeds of goodness for seasons to come.

Bless you who bristle at mandatory merriment.

May you sense the solidarity and the hospitality of the ancient story, which made room for fear, confusion, and bewilderment.

Bless you who sit in the darkness.

May you find friendship there.

Here are some things I noticed, none of which take anything from the beauty of the poetry.  The first is a good wish only.  What it would mean to me as a person would depend on who said it.  I did like the pairing of “weary” and “flailing.”

The second presents difficulties for me.  The only good thing in this blessing is that you will not be “rushed from your feelings,” but, in fact, there are all kinds of mistakes you can make when you are grieving and, in fact, quitting too soon is only one of them.  Refusing to do the things that will express your grief in the choices you make and the way you act them out might also be a mistake and it is a mistake that is commonly urged upon us by professionals.  The touch that saves this one is the passive verb “to be rushed.”  Being rushed away from feelings that can be better dealt with by experiencing them fully is a bad thing indeed.  But then, who is doing the rushing?

Given the priority I place on taking action on your own behalf, it is not surprising that the next one is my favorite.  You don’t have to experience cheer to do the things that will make genuine cheer possible later in your life.  It is, in fact, one of the most sensible and difficult things I ever did and when I read that line, I felt like cheering.

The next one made me feel like booing.  For the person toward whom the poem is directed, the two responses are “bristling” and “sensing.”  Bristling is so easy, especially when you are under the compulsion that “mandatory merriment” implies.  (Nice phrase, though.). Sensing the psychic welcome available to you in a very old story is harder—especially when you are grieving—but it is nice thing to wish on a friend.

The last one I take to be a kind of summary, not introducing anything new, but making room for friendship.  I can’t help celebrating “sit in darkness,” which calls up the great hope of Isaiah 9 and brings Messiah flooding back through the ears.  But even so, “finding” friendship is as passive as sitting in darkness and I would wish my friend more than that.  I would go back to the “planting the seeds” metaphor I liked so much and I would wish for my sad friend that he would plant the seeds of friendship.