Early Monday morning as I learned of the remaining living Israeli hostages being released, I experienced waves of relief come over my body. Like so many, I have prayed for the return of all hostages for the past two years. I am grateful that at least one chapter of this bloody conflict seems to be closing.
Experiencing this tentative sense of closure after two years released a surprising jumble of other emotions. I have difficulty identifying or expressing them – they include elements of sadness, anger, numbness, anxiety, and regret. I call them “an exhausting conglomerate of grief.” I know from conversations with students and colleagues that my emotional experience is not unique.
While celebrating Simchat Torah and reading this week’s Torah portion, parshat Bereshit, I was struck by overlaps between God’s process of creating the universe and the human process of grieving. What follows is my own meditation on how God’s actions on the first day of creation (Genesis 1:1-5) can instruct and inspire us to approach our own grief as a creative process:
When God began to create the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1)
Bereshit, the first word of the Bible, describes the beginning of God’s creation. It is often translated as when God began or in the beginning. However, there is an ancient interpretive tradition of understanding Bereshit as referring to Torah (Bereshit Rabbah and Rashi, cf. Proverbs 8:22). The verse could be translated as By Torah, God created the heavens and the earth. When beginning to grieve, we can invite God’s instruction into our lives to guide us through the process.
The earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water – (Genesis 1:2)
When first examining our feelings, they can seem unformed and void. We can’t put them into words or distinguish between them. Often the most prominent sensation we perceive is numbness or nothing at all. The greater the intensity of our feelings, the harder it can be to perceive them, let alone express them to others. Grief can seem timeless – we worry it will last forever. This verse puts language to my current experience of grief: darkness over the surface of my own deep feelings.
The second half of verse 2 describes a wind from God sweeping over the water. Ruach, the Hebrew word for wind also means spirit. The verse is an invitation to discern where God’s spirit may be moving in our lives. Of course, because wind is invisible and unpredictable, God’s movements may be hard to detect. Wisps of grace give us hope that our own grief will not be stagnant or inchoate forever.
God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. (Genesis 1:3)
The passage shifts suddenly in verse 3. Rather than silence and darkness, God speaks light into being. Like God, we, too, can unexpectedly begin to speak about our own feelings, including our desire for healing.
I see two different ways of understanding light in this verse. First, light may be a metaphor for understanding or insight. We may need light to help us see our obscured emotions.
Second, light may refer to our own feelings. Just as the sun can blind, the intensity of our own emotions can impede our ability to perceive ourselves clearly. What seems like darkness may be an overabundance of light. Recognizing our feelings illuminates our emotional landscape.
God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. (Genesis 1:4)
God sees that this light is good. Applying this verse to the creative process of grieving is powerful: our feelings and our perception of our feelings are inherently good.
In the process of grieving, we often experience secondary shame because we believe that we should not feel as we do. Rather than experience this shame, we unconsciously cut ourselves off from our feelings. However, being able to perceive the reality of our own emotional experience indicates emotional strength. God sees that it is good.
God called the light Day and called the darkness Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day. (Genesis 1:5)
In this verse, God gives the light a name. God calls it day. In the process of identifying our feelings, it is helpful to name them. God calls the darkness night. Even in places where our feelings are obscured, it is helpful to name the obscurity.
Rather than operating at a primal level of creation (light and darkness), here God uses speech to order the world, structuring it into time (day and night). A formless jumble has become ordered. Grief has become part of a greater story that unfolds over time.
The first five verses of Genesis describe only the first day of creation. But God continues creating for five more days—forming, distinguishing, and naming all things as good. God turns a formless void into the beautiful, holy world that we all inhabit.
We, too, can use the formless voids of our own grief process as raw material to create vibrant inner worlds infused with purpose, meaning, and goodness. Like God, we can experience the creative potential of darkness.
I do not know what will happen in Israel’s future. I know that I will continue to pray for an end to the violence and the beginning of a just and lasting peace.
For today, it feels like enough to sit with my own emotions and the emotions of the people I serve. Working through our grief with creativity and care is holy, hard, and necessary work. Yet such work is not frivolous – it strengthens us in our peacemaking and bridgebuilding efforts that are needed now more than ever.
My prayer for us all is that we have space to engage in the creative process of grieving. And I pray that like God’s work in creation, from darkness we can create the world anew.