Weltschmerz

 

Weltschmerz - oooh, that hard stop T sound, followed by the scary, schmeery z at the end, captures the world-weariness I’ve been feeling these days, and I’m grateful for the rough, pointed edge of a word that expresses disappointment.

Unsurprisingly, the stuff of life often wields the sword of getting what we don’t want and raises the question of how we care for our hearts and minds when hopes come crashing down. Some rant and rave; I tend to shut down. I think I’m fine but slowly realize I don’t feel much of anything, and float behind a sheer yet steely wall. Safe there for a while, I gradually absorb the shock of what overwhelms me. I shift, shed tears of disappointment, and I might even slide into rage before I come to long enough to wonder how I will walk the shadows of a losing streak, how I might pick my way through the rubble of hopes dashed without tripping, breaking my neck, or falling into a black hole.

After the smoke clears a bit, I take refuge in the wisdom of poetry. Poems help me delve more deeply than my protective surface responses. I stand before my bookcases, waiting and watching to see what titles beckon, and then I grab a bunch that I think might ground me, offer consolation, and push me into a broader perspective of understanding that which has dragged me down. 

I love the poet Denise Levertov, but I haven’t read her in years, so it was good when I found an old collection the other day and re-read her poem, Immersion, which I offer here. 

There is anger abroad in the world, a numb thunder.

because of God’s silence. But how naive,

to keep wanting words we could speak ourselves,

English, Urdu, Tagalog, the French of Tours,

the French of Haiti. . .

Yes, that was one way omnipotence chose

to address us – Hebrews, Aramaic, or whatever the patriarchs

chose in their turn to call what they heard. Moses

demanded the word spoken and written. But perfect freedom

assured other ways of speech. God is surely, 

patiently trying to immerse us in a different language,

events of grace, horrifying scrolls of history

and the unearned retrieval of blessings lost forever,

the poor grass returning after drought, timid, persistent.

God’s abstention is only from human dialects. The holy voice

utters its woe and glory in myriad musics, in signs and portents.

Our own words are for us to speak, a way to ask and answer. 

In my current state of disappointment, I resonate with her image of an “anger abroad in the world, a numb thunder.” Her image of the “horrifying scrolls of history” quickly conjures up a list of gender and human rights violations, the Civil Rights Movement, the Holocaust, wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, genocides, and atrocities of all sorts across the globe throughout history. I have to bat back my horror at the idea that God also addresses us through the horrible “scrolls of history.”  Through our immersion in the up/down nature of the human experience, we can open through God’s “silent” communication to a “perfect freedom.” Despite my current discouragement, I feel a rough comfort in her images of “the unearned retrieval of blessings lost forever, the poor grass returning after drought, timid, persistent.” The God of the resurrection is immersed in this mess, and how does that inform how we “ask and answer” the questions life raises?

Without a doubt, disappointments plunge me into confusion about the future, and I quake thinking about approaching realities. In the end, Levertov’s final line encourages me. I love how she blends“God’s woe and glory” with “signs and portents” and then drops us - what we have to say into the mix. Here are whiffs of another sort of immersion - my participation in the "great unknowing" - the unfolding of history. In the face of that which causes disappointment, I can channel my hopes, creativity, and passion into what I do and what I say, and that’s one decisive way to counterbalance all that seems to have gone so wrong and disappoints.

One way