Comfort in this Season
by John Addiego
For years my French grandson slept with a one-eared doll of nonspecific mammalian species named Doux-Doux, which means Soft-Soft. His parents spent many frantic bedtime hours searching for Doux-Doux because their child couldn’t sleep without it.
Today, his American cousin (aged 19 months) sleeps with a spatula. It’s plastic and about as long as his arm, and I’ve seen him sift sand, poke sea anemones, defend himself from tickling fingers, and shovel beans into his mouth with it. As I watch him drop off with his egg-flipper cradled in his arms, I wonder if he’s fencing with Zorro or turning flapjacks in his sleep.
In the face of darkness and uncertainty, what gives us comfort? I think it depends on how dark the darkness is. Some years ago, my family was shattered by grief. Psychotherapy, pharmaceuticals, groups, books, all aided recovery, but I knew I needed something else, particularly in order to be the most helpful to the kids. I needed to be free of cynicism and fear and a deterministic view of our victimhood. I didn’t want what I thought of as a mindless faith in God. But faith came to me in an unexpected way, in the practice of Christian Science, a practice that I would call mindful, away to pay attention to what’s beyond the surface of things. As I got a glimpse of divine Love and the holiness of all being, I felt not only helped but healed of grief. I think our whole country needs comfort in these hard and divided times.
People of faith, atheists, and agnostics alike seek it. Sometimes the actions of zealous religious fundamentalists seem to be one of the biggest problems; at other times, the mercy and compassion at the heart of the enduring religions of the world may be our greatest hope, as I’ve felt in my own church and interfaith activity. We seem to be a peculiar people, a nation of contradictions. Consider this season, late May, the effulgence of spring, when America sets aside a day to honor mothers and, two weeks later, our war dead.
At a time when warmth finally returns to our valley and the grass grows like wildfire, we’re called to remember both the tenderness of infancy and the death of young soldiers, both the courage of giving birth and the courage of facing the horrors of war. Is this right and proper? Absolutely! But it’s disquieting, especially in juxtaposition. Walt Whitman expressed the poignancy of this ambiguous season in his Leaves of Grass: “Tenderly will I use you curling grass,” he wrote during the Civil War, “it may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, it may be if I had known them I would have loved them.”
Where can we find comfort in the face of sorrow and death? Jesus told his followers, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” And he gave this promise: “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; even the Spirit of truth.” This Comforter is also referred to as the Holy Spirit, and in my limited personal understanding and experience, it embodies a calm trust in the goodness of the universe and a freedom from fear.
The comfort of something larger than what seems to be the human scene, something transcendent, spiritual, eternal, and good, feels true to me. It is stronger than any grief, grander than any holiday, softer than any Doux-Doux. Dare I say it? It is even more useful than a spatula.
