Dear fellow traveler,

When we gave our winter solitude retreat in February here in MN we did not expect it to be the start of a much longer time of solitude we now all share. How are you doing in these troubled times? Are you safe? Are you struggling with the challenges this time brings upon us? Or are you busy helping others? Please tell us how you are. We wish to hear from you and to think of you in a time when we all are faced with the vulnerability of life and our own limitations.

Around this time last year, I was carrying a heavy load. Our tender little baby daughter was still growing, but ignoring her due date, making every step and breath more difficult with the hour. When she finally decided to enter this world I was thrown immediately into heavy labor which seemed to stretch for an eternity. Pain beyond any I have known was washing over me, the pangs of labor coming so fast for countless hours that I could barely breath or think. No indeed, it was not the graceful Yoga birth I had envisioned. In the end my baby and I clung to life as my doctor ended our passion by cutting me open, lifting our baby daughter from the wound, and stitching me back together. As they bound me to the operating table, both arms stretched wide open I could not help but remark what that felt like: to be tied to my own cross. The nurses smiled and gave me more pain killer. I relaxed into giving up; giving up my ideas of being in control, giving up my expectations, even giving up trying to understand what was going on. I became part of something greater, something I could not control but just receive. My body was shaking uncontrollably, as my husband tenderly tried to hold my hands down and the nurse gave me another warming blanket. Somehow birthing felt a lot like dying.

Did you know that JS BACH’S musical Passion has the potential to comfort the sufferer, and to strengthen our self healing potential and resilience? And did you know that Bach’s Passion exists in a multinational, multilingual and inter-religious take performed in the spirit of reconciliation and longing for healing in our world called the Arabian Passion? When we first heard this version of the Passion by the Sarband ensemble it moved us to tears. And it still does. Maybe because I have lived in the Middle East for some time and love the Arabic language. Perhaps because I sang in the Munich Bach choir for several years. Or perhaps because hearing the beautiful alto Aria “Erbarme Dich, Herr” (Have mercy, Oh God), sung in Arabic simply does exactly what the Bach Passion is meant to do: to transcend space and time, language and understanding, and to connect us with the deeper layers of our heart.

And around this time last year, in the birthing suite where I was struggling in agony with my own limitations it was exactly this Aria which gave me deep comfort in my pain. Holding on in the midst of pain and uncertainty I lifted my voice to the heavens: “Have mercy, Oh God”, “Erbarme Dich, Herr, um meiner Zähren willen…”

Erbarme dich,
Mein Gott, um meiner Zähren willen!
Schaue hier,
Herz und Auge weint
vor dir
Bitterlich.

Have mercy,
My God, for my tears’ sake;
Look hither,
Heart and eyes weep
before thee
Bitterly.

This plaintive aria is a painful and humbling but also wholesome recognition that we depend upon mercy. When sadness and loss crush us, we cry out for Divine help. Our cry is itself evidence of hope that suffering will end. Passion week has always been an invitation, an opportunity, to tend to our sorrows, to revisit our fears, or as CG JUNG has it, to ponder our shadows. Bach’s Passion engages us, with power and grace, in the mystery of inwardly walking through Passion week.

In this challenging time of a world altering pandemic we will enter this year’s passion week in a cloud of fear and uncertainty while clinging to hope. Thus, though it seems contradictory for many, it is not the avoidance but the tender care for our sorrows which will lead us to Easter, which will lead us to a revival of what has been dead to new life.

In this time of dread, when the whole world is confronted with our human limitations, with our fears, and with a stark recognition of our mortal state, we found our vision for this year’s passion week: to walk together from Palm Sunday to Easter Night sustained and consoled by Bach’s Passion. And this is our invitation to you. It goes from our heart to every heavy heart longing for connection and comfort. Its intention is not to distract from our sorrows but also not to be swept away by them. Instead gently to lean into them, so new life can break through from the abyss of death.

Here is how the spiritual writer and existential thinker SØREN KIERKEGAARD puts it in his comforting notes to the sufferer:

Though it might feel that your suffering
is going right through you,
it is you who goes through the suffering.

What does that mean? It means that though we might feel frightened and burdened and overwhelmed by our sorrows, the daily news, the waiting, the future prospect, there is a way to not drown, to not despair in the midst of it. That way, as the wise women and men tell us, is precisely to walk through our sufferings. That means there are two ways of dealing with suffering. One is to give into despair. The other way is to give into the suffering, by noticing it, and by tenderly leaning into it and, if you can, to hold it into the presence of God. The lamentation psalms stand as witnesses just as Job’s lamentations do. We are not only allowed to lament, we are called to lament. In doing so, we get up from under our burden, we find our voice, even if it is a lamenting, crying or angry voice at first, and we start walking through our sufferings by taking it under our feet. This is not easy advice. But I have seen many being lifted out of their despair by recognizing: I can do something. I do not need to suffer silently, numbed, helplessly. I can do something with my sorrows. I can give them words, music, I can sit with them, I can hold them, I can think of them as a long winding gravel road under my feet.

Leaning into our sorrows probably starts with lament. In doing so we will stand in a long tradition of people who did so before us. Bach’s Passion is giving us words for it: “Heart and eyes weep before thee. Bitterly. Have mercy, my God, for my tear’s sake…have mercy”

Do not walk alone that winding road. Walk with us if you can. And peace to you!