If you missed my introduction to this Advent litany series, please go back and read the previous post.
The second stage of the grief process, as observed and synthesized by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler Ross and Dr. David Kessler, is anger. I say it’s “second” but that doesn’t mean it always appears for everyone in some perfect order. My own experience has taught me that grief is cyclical, and I often find myself returning to various phases for deeper work. And certainly moving through phases of anger has been a significant part of my own journey.
We stay in each phase as long as it takes, which is an unpredictable length of time because grief is an unruly process.
I’m leaning into contradictions and paradox. Into what sometimes feels like impossibility! Like this: in a world of anger, violence, injustice, suffering, we are continually advised by the Christ to be at peace, to create peace, and to not be fearful. How on earth? I can see how in heaven, but how on earth? Luke writes that, going along with God’s promise, “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us.”
In the meantime we have plenty to be angry about. Neither inner or societal peace are going to come about consistently without some work on our part - some training and continual embracing of the Peace of Christ, even in light of our righteous anger about unjust systems and trauma.
Advent invites us to reconcile the irreconcilable, and to learn to be comfortable with that dissonance and keep faith in spite of it. Advent offers us a peek behind the veil: what are we looking at? Now, what are we looking FOR?
God, we are challenged to live peaceably in a society filled with anger,
In which reactivity and outrage are normal,
Where most everyone is living with trauma of some kind or other,
And systemic dysfunction is all around.
We see how the dominant culture habitually covers up conflict, calling it peace,
While disregarding justice…