Still, another dawn.
A blessing for all who hurt.
O dear friend, where shall I even start?
My heart is heavy like the heart of many. While some of you might feel uplifted and relieved.
But if you have read my last letters, you know I had hoped differently. I had hoped America would choose differently. I had hoped that America would heed the warnings from history, and the two traumas of my German home country.
That America would know the approaching tyrant when they see him.
And so I am still looking for words, dear fellow pilgrim. Words which could make sense. Words which can embrace those who hurt today.
So this (mid)weekly blessing comes to you humble and small, as all blessings do. I chose to capture some pictures for you with a meditation on Psalm 137. May it hold your heart and all it feels today:
Another dawn
I woke early on Nov 6 with a heavy and confused heart. I went on a long walk into the dawn. Apparently the world was still standing and tender light was wanly flickering over the misty waters like on the first dawning.
Quiet enveloped my heart which had run out of words.
Thin, slowly drifting fog was hanging from the trees which had emptied themselves of their leaves just some days ago.
A few ducks were going about their day.
The soft daybreak caressed my anxious heart and filled it with calm.
I am still here, I heard a tender voice whisper, I am still here, right by you.
“Lord remember…” is how Psalm 137 starts. It is a psalm of mourning of the loss of the homeland, it captures the feelings of anger and displacement the Hebrew people felt in the Babylonian exile, but also the hope that God would remember them in their grief and tend to their wounds.
There is a haunting and comforting recording of this psalm by Psalms for the Spirit which you can listen to right here. “Set during the Babylonian exile,”
writes in her introduction, “this Psalm mourns what was left behind in the homeland. The refrain, inspired by the traditional song ‘The Emigrant’s Farewell,’ echoes the request that God remembers those who grieve and those whose wounds have not yet been healed:”
Don’t forget Lord,
how I grieve,
for my heart has wounds
that have not been healed.
Do not forget, Lord,
remember me.
Take away the grief
that fills my thoughts.
Do remember…
…
Do remember me.
— after Psalm 137
So to all who grieve this day and to all who are anxious about the time to come, let us grieve and sigh together. Let us hold our hearts together, let us cry out together to the one who holds us all.
Do not forget, Lord,
Do remember us.
May it be so and may you find comfort in your grief, Almut (with Chuck and little one)
PS: If you can, leave a heart, a word or a line which resonated with you in the comments, so we know you have been here :-)
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About Almut
Almut Furchert, Dr. phil., Dipl. Psych. is a German American scholar and practitioner, a psychologist turned philosopher turned writer, traveler, photographer, retreat leader and mother of a pre-schooler. She has taught and published on authors like Kierkegaard, Buber, Frankl, Yalom, Edith Stein, and Hildegard of Bingen. Almut is also a Benedictine Oblate and lives with her family in a little college town in MN.
Beautiful photos that capture the fog swirling in my heart and mind these past few days…
Thank you for the reminder that “I am right here with you.” Because “I have wounds that are not healed yet”.