von einem der über machte

Last week this card was posted on Postsecret auf Deutsch, the German Postsecret site.  I find the original Postsecret to be kind of gimmicky and predictable, but Postsecret auf Deutsch is new enough and German enough that it is still fresh and interesting.

I made this card over three years ago, by adding the text to a photo I had taken of a sunrise.  The verse is Matthew 5:4, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” which is also the opening text of Brahms’ German Requiem, one of my absolute favorite works of music.  I like to translate the German verse literally: “blessed are those who carry sorrow”.  I took it on as a sort of theme verse for my life.  I have carried sorrow, and there was a time when the promise of this verse was the only thing I could hang on to. When I made that card I was in the thick of struggle and suffering, and I needed it as a tangible promise.  I assumed that I would always carry that sorrow; I thought that my suffering and grieving would never end, and the most I could hope for was to be comforted in my sorrow.  It seemed like the comfort that I wanted was so little and yet so unreachable.

For three years I looked at that card every day. Even after I became an atheist, even after I moved a couple of times and left my bibles and other religious items behind, I still kept that card framed in my apartment.

Then one day I decided that the card was moot and I no longer needed it.  I was being comforted from the sorrow that I carried, but in a different way and on a completely different wavelength from what I had imagined when I made that card and took that verse as my mantra.  It is still significant to me because of the hope it gave me at a time when religion was the wavelength of sustenance that I needed.  I didn’t want to just discard it.  So I sent it to Germany, because the German language has also been a source of sustenance for me.

I didn’t realize how far I’ve come until I was watching a movie recently where a woman was weeping, wounded, and mourning as if her soul depended on it.  I recognized it deeply because I have wept and mourned like that– what seems like a long time ago.  I have spent entire days and weeks lost in my own tears.  Seeing an expression of despair that touched on the degree of despair that I had at one time, seeing it as an outsider and not being pulled down by it, I made a discovery:  I have made it through to the other side.

hope

I want to say, to anyone who thinks that God is your only hope for recovery, for justice, for redemption, that he is not. Whatever impossible thing you are facing or have faced, there is such a thing as healing apart from religion. There is such a thing as redemption from suffering and injustice. These things are possible, and you do not have to wait for heaven or for a miracle to see it.

I have suffered. I have survived something that really sucks. For a long time, I’ve taken Matthew 5:4 as the theme verse for my life. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

As a Christian, I was comforted with the thought that justice and healing would come one day, with the kingdom of heaven. But now, I have seen more than mere comfort. I have seen the beginning of healing. I have seen that nothing reasonable is hopeless, and we don’t have to depend on God for wrongs to be righted.