Being able to name reality truthfully is part of the way that we stay sane. Under-reporting or over-reporting reality can cause us to become disequilibrated. If we can't name our reality in a way that fits the experience, we begin to feel a kind of vertigo or a warping of vision.

This is why it matters supremely what our pastors say from the pulpit and what our teachers tell us from the lectern and what our therapists tell us in the safety of their office and what the president pronounces from the podium and what our friends speak back to us in trust.

Part of the crazy-making nature of this #Covid_19 pandemic is that nobody knows how to name the reality of our experience accurately, partly because we don't really know what's happening, partly because things are changing so rapidly, partly because we've never been here before.

One of the things that's helpful to me from the psalms is that they don't reserve the category of death to the end of life. In the psalms, death comes not once but repeatedly throughout our lives. And on every occasion, it violates God’s life-giving purposes for all creation.

Anything that depletes life, as with sickness or natural disasters, is like a death. Anything that distorts an aspect of life, such as depression or slavery, is like death. Anything that mutes or reduces life, like imprisonment and the loss of community, is death.

So if you're feeling like a death is happening in your life, as the psalms see it, you have permission to name it as such. You won't be exaggerating or "making a mountain out of a molehill." You'll be speaking faithfully about life. Little or big, a death is a death....

And once you name your experiences truthfully, you can begin to face them in life-giving, health-increasing, heart-mending ways. You can mourn what actually needs mourning, rather than stuffing it down or pretending it doesn't matter. You can release things back to God.

You can also invite a friend or neighbor or pastor to bear witness to your death: to hear you out, to testify to your pain and loss, to speak the words of Christ's peace to you, so that your ears might hear afresh and your thoughts & feelings may reckon with the truth.

What is that truth? That Jesus has gone to the monstrous depths, swallowed death whole, tasted its bitter finality, and conquered it. That the Spirit of God intercedes for us through wordless groans. And that God in Christ grieves with us & remains with us in our present deaths.