I have a friend who is a recent widow. This first year has been hard for her. I was surprised, however, when she reported that one of her colleagues at work had commented to you, “When are you going to get over with this and get on with you life?” Obviously the friend doesn’t know much about the process of grief. The death of a loved one isn’t something that one gets over. We are all changed forever by grief. Furthermore, grief has no set timeline. Those who are grieving themselves sometimes think, “When do I go back to normal?” They also sometimes think, “I must be going crazy to feel so sad for so long.” They aren’t. Grief is a long-term process. It isn’t crazy to feel bad in the midst of irreplaceable loss.

Over the span of my career, I have had the privilege to sit with people with whom grief is raw. I have been called to be with people who have just experienced sudden and traumatic loss. I also have had the opportunity to be with people who participate in support groups for those who have had loss. I know a bit of what grief can look like years after a loss has occurred. These experiences have taught me quite a bit about my own grief.

Sometimes you simply have to sit with grief. You don’t expect it to get over. You don’t know if it will. You simply are grieving and you allow yourself to be in the midst of the process without any expectation of an end time.

If you only skate along the surface of Christianity, it might seem like the Christian faith doesn’t spend much time with grief. After all, the trip from the Good Friday service to Easter Sunday worship is less than 48 hours. And many Christians don’t even travel that part of the journey, going from Palm Sunday to Easter without attending any Holy Week services. From triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the celebration of the resurrection in a week - and then get on with the rest of the Christian year.

I remember a year of loss in our lives. Nine months after my brother died, my mother died. A couple of months later my father-in-law died. It was a tough time for our family. Later that same year our church went through a stressful season of wrestling with a challenging budget. Harsh words were said in frustration. I wanted to say, “Hey, cut me some slack here!” but refrained from the outburst as together we wrestled with the process of developing a spending plan for our congregation. Looking back, I realize that I learned a very important lesson in that process. I learned to ask myself what it might mean to cut some slack for others when we are going through a difficult time. I developed a more healthy way of handling conflict with people with whom I work. I learned to give others the benefit of the doubt. I discovered how to look at the sources of grief in the lives of others. It has helped me immensely. Now when I encounter a difficult person, my mind goes to the question, “How can I cut that person a bit of slack?”

Sometimes you simply have to sit with grief.

For me, Tuesday of Holy Week has become a day to practice the art of sitting with grief. I drop the pretense of putting on a cheerful face. I allow myself to remember the losses. And there have been so many losses. In just the past year there have been several significant deaths of friends and colleagues who were younger than I. There have been 32 deaths from severe storms in our country in the past week. The death toll of the war in Ukraine continues to climb. The entertainment news is filled with the deaths of significant stars whose names were once household words. A person doesn’t have to look far to find grief.

In the 1860s, as the United States teetered on the edge of a Civil War, a unique new form of music began to emerge. Characterized by the notes of several different African-American cultural motifs such as spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, and chants, a unique scale and set of chord progressions accompanied by a shuffling or walking bass line began to emerge in music. The music began to be called “The Blues.” It isn’t a narrow genre. There are acoustic blues and electric blues, Chicago blues and Delta blues, West Coast blues and Piedmont blues. The forms of the music began to be set with early publication of music in the first years of the 20th century. Today a blues concert might feature a wide variety of flavors from country to bluegrass to jazz to ragtime to rock and roll to rhythm and blues.

When we added a blues concert to the Holy Week offerings at our church in Rapid City, we attracted a different group of people than our other Holy Week services. Some found the event to be slightly irreverent. A few wondered about the expense. It was, for me, a time to simply sit with the grief that comes with being a pastor of a congregation. I could sit and listen and think of all of the losses our community had suffered in the year that had passed. I could dwell for an evening with my personal grief as one who had been sitting with a lot of people in the midst of grief as well as my grief over losses in my life.

The blues don’t offer to fix anything. They don’t pretend to make things better. They simply express the burden of generations of oppression and human cruelty.

Sometimes you simply have to sit with grief.

My prayer for Holy Week this year is that people will be allowed time to sit with their grief. In a society that is always rushing to the next event or the next mood, may we find time to simply be sad. It isn’t the worst thing in the world. Scan your playlist for the blues and take time to listen. I’ll be sitting with you.