Perseverance

       Much of living with grief is a matter of perseverance.  The bereaved is challenged to 'keep on keeping on' and if he/she does there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. A middle class lifestyle insulates against many of the forms of oppression others experience  In the cocoon of middle class existence we're seldom tested in ways that could show either the depth of the goodness or the reality of evil that lurks within. We don't know the depth of our perseverance because we haven't been challenged to our core.
      With the news of Toni Morrison's death recently, our book club was moved to read her book Sula,  It's one of her earlier books, published in 1973, and quite short. It's the type of book many reviewer's would call 'searing.'  Set in a small town in Michigan, and an African American neighborhood, it covers the period of 1919-1965. In it she has this reflection on the perseverance of these African Americans.   
    "What was taken by outsiders to be slackness, slovenliness or even generosity was in fact full recognition of the legitimacy of forces other than good ones. They did not believe doctors could heal --for them none ever had done so. They did not believe death was accidental--life might be, but death was deliberate.They did not believe that nature was ever askew--only inconvenient. Plague and drought were as 'natural' as springtime. If milk could curdle, God knows that robins could fall.The purpose of evil was to survive it and they determined (without ever knowing they had made up their minds to do it) to survive floods, white people, tuberculosis, famine and ignorance. They knew anger well but not despair, and they didn't stone sinners for the same reason they didn't commit suicide--it was beneath them." P. 90

   "They knew anger well but not despair,..."  Is not that the essence of healthy grieving which may be full of anger, yet, not giving into despair?

Takk for alt,

Al

Go-carts on a Lisbon street.

Birthplace of Henry The Navigator, Porto.

Monument to Henry The Navigator, Lisbon.