The second Beatitude is a powerful feminine weapon in Taoist warfare against the bitterness that can accumulate with time.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Matthew 5:4.
No one who’s truly alive escapes major loss. As years go by, our responses to grief determine the grace with which we age, and our psychological health. Mourning requires submission to feelings of loss in the moment. Feelings lead; the mourner follows. When I was a young child, a custom still existed in the United States where a woman in mourning would wear a black veil in public. I wish that custom would be revived and expanded. Dark modern sunglasses may give a message like, “Back off,” “Leave me alone,” or “You can’t hurt me so don’t try,” but I’ve never seen sunglasses that seemed to say, “I’m dealing with major loss. I still need to get groceries – don’t expect a smile.”
In Taoist texts water symbolizes strength through flexibility. Water breaks boulders. It vivifies the world. Water goes low unless it has to go high. Rivers run to the sea because they flow downhill. Water isn’t haughty. It quietly takes the low seat. In 2017, the parliament of New Zealand granted the Whanganui River in North Island the same legal rights as a person. If people honored water in the correct measure, it would be recognized as a world leader.
The word “Blessed” in this Beatitude suggests a time sequence. First mourn, then blessings will come. Mourning is action – recognizing loss, feeling the depth of it, admitting the pain of it, allowing time to do so. It requires willingness to be interrupted by the process of working through messy feelings.
In Jungian symbolism, salt means grief. If I suffer a big loss and don’t mourn, the salt will become bitterness in my personality. Lot’s wife in the Christian Bible seemed to have held onto fantasies of her past in Sodom, where luxury and immorality provided a lifestyle of indulgence. The story says she turned into a pillar of salt. It seems she became a rigid, bitter old woman.
On the other hand, if I mourn, then the salt transforms into wisdom. Over the course of a lifetime, I have the opportunity to gain apprehension of the deeper truth beyond rationality. This shows as beauty in the aged.
Carl Jung said this about salt: “Tears, sorrow, and disappointment are bitter, but wisdom is the comforter in all psychic suffering. Indeed, bitterness and wisdom form a pair of alternatives: where there is bitterness wisdom is lacking, and where wisdom is there can be no bitterness.” (Jung).
When it isn’t from self-pity, crying can change troubled feelings into healing, and sometimes buoyant effervescence. The sense of releasing a burden accompanies a feeling as if my windows have all just been cleaned. Like a computer re-boot removes digital junk, crying can remove mental and emotional junk. Then I’m not only wiser for having grieved, but happier.
Blessed with wisdom, clarity, buoyancy. The most painful of times can turn completely over. A leaf that falls lands on the ground, dies, feeds the earth that feeds the tree that brings bright green in time.
The next post, in two weeks, will focus on the third Beatitude.
Works Cited