War devastates not only our country's landscapes but also the landscapes of our human lives, leaving ruin and suffering in its wake, with broken windows, roofs, and walls of our souls.
Grieving is not a disease that needs to be cured but an integral part of our existential experience on the Silent Planet. When death and destruction become the unfortunate norms, grieving becomes entwined with our daily struggles.
Grieving is not a weakness or a flaw in our character, as many try to “spiritualize” and “diagnose” to avoid accepting the depth of grief of those they work with, partner with, and live with.
Grieving is not a disorder. Such an attitude leads to stigmatization and a lack of support for those struggling with grief to the depth of losing the sense of life and pain.
Grieving is not a mental illness that we should feel ashamed or embarrassed to recognize and admit in ourselves in front of the spiritual Iron Men. It is not a shame to seek a safe location to express your grief, to make your mind and soul so empty that only the Holy Spirit could fill it again, not with "something," but only by... only with Himself.
Grieving is not limited to the death of loved ones, although this is undoubtedly one of the most significant sources of grief. Grieving is also about losing our homes, communities, way of life, and a sense of safety and security for our siblings, children, and parents. These losses are also devastating, although not as strong as losing a loved one.
Our grieving emerges as an innate response to death and to the fear of death of those we love amid the chaos and loss. Grieving serves as a reminder of the sacredness of life and the essential bonds of love that unite us in times of war. Grieving connects us to our human essence: our capacity for deep emotional connections and shared empathy that transcends societal constructs and war's violent divisions.
Grieving is our means of processing our collective emotional, spiritual, and moral trauma and reaffirming our connection to life. Thus, those who label wartime grieving as pathological misunderstand themselves and the human condition and essence of the Other.
Grieving is about our capacity to form deep relationships and bonds with others and our need for meaning and purpose in our relationships with the Other.
Grieving is how we process our understanding of our place not in the ideal... but in the broken world, shattered during the war when everything feels out of control and when we desperately need to reassert our humanity.
Grieving reminds us of our shared humanity in His image and likeness, although wartime aims to dehumanize us, to make us silent on the Silent Planet, to make us leave the swimming islands to firm land before the sunrise, the time when the Green King and Princess are allowed to do so.
To call grief a disease is to imply that it needs to be “treated” or “cured” to enable people to return to some sense of normal functioning. But after deep loss, there is no “normal” to return to. We are forever changed. Even the Son of God has wounds on His palms for eternity to be and come, the eternal scars without hellish burning and tearing pain.
If Jesus was grieving in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the road to Golgotha, on the Cross... then... who am I to play a role of a spiritually invulnerable Rembo who does not recognize their vulnerability?
"Who am I, my Maleldil?"
"I am with you, Ransom, as Who I am... I am nearby and grieving with you... Someday you will be UnIncarnated... to be incarnated again into the new body without grieving... with the scars... but no pain anymore..."
Peace be with you, the People of the Bridge... and I wish you a Silent Night... to you and your children...
— —
Taras N. Dyatlik, Ukraine
24 June 2023
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