Usually Advent stirs in me feelings of wonder and light – waiting in joyful hope. This Advent, I am more aware of the hovering presence of darkness and death, than ever before in my life.

Part of that is my age, as family, friends and colleagues enter what Mary Oliver calls “that cottage of darkness”.

Part of it is the tragic situations in which so many of earth’s inhabitants live: the merciless death and destruction in Israel-Palestine, in Ukraine, in Myanmar, Syria, Haiti, Sudan – to name simply the most immediate reference points that come directly to mind. In the parts of the world that are not directly at war, the weight of the lies and manipulation that seem so ‘soldered into’ our political and social systems scream out for truth and justice. The heartbreakingly high rate of overdoses, especially among the young, tears great holes in the future. And then, there’s global warming, which as António Guterres says, has become global boiling.¹ So much is being lost and destroyed. Anguish and suffering can feel unbearable and endless. Grief can seem overwhelming.

The insights of poets, as well as the everyday examples of friends and acquaintances are two bearers of grace that can help us grieve our losses.

To that end, I share a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, that I recently discovered, and which I find very moving.² 

On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star
would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons
equals the collective weight of every animal
on earth. Including the insects. Times three.

Six billion tons sounds impossible
until I consider how it is to swallow grief—
just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed
a neutron star. How dense it is,
how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.
How difficult it is to move then.
How impossible to believe that anything
could lift that weight.

We humans have a capacity to ‘lift that weight’, to find in ourselves and in our hapless situations, a grace and goodness stronger than all the desolation and despair. As Wahtola Trommer says further:

There are many reasons to treat each other
with great tenderness. One is
the sheer miracle that we are here together
on a planet surrounded by dying stars.
One is that we cannot see what
anyone else has swallowed.³

We RNDMs in Canada, have experienced two deaths in the last two weeks. The Sisters who died were part of the fabric of our lives, and their deaths in such proximity have been difficult. Sr. Patricia Orban died in Regina, and Sr. Cecile Delorme died in Winnipeg. Each of their lives was a bearer of grace, a light in the darkness, and part of the “sheer miracle that we are here together.”

So on Wednesday December 13, as a testament to light in darkness, we will publish a eulogy given on behalf of the RNDMs at Patricia’s requiem, and on Wednesday December 20, we will publish Cecile’s.