THE SORROW OF THE WORLD

When I heard today that some good friends have suffered a great sorrow, it came to me that the sorrow belongs not just to them, but to all of us. Their sorrow is, you might say, the sorrow of the world. Sorrow, after all, is not a physical entity that can be in the possession of just one person, the way you might possess clothes or a car. Sorrow is more like a mist that moves through millions of us at the same time, swirling and settling in different ways in each person. Some of us feel the sorrow of disappointment, some the sorrow of loss, others the sorrow of hopelessness, but, in a real sense, it’s the same sorrow, the same numbing mist that’s been evermore making its heartbreaking way across the earth. My friends are feeling the same sorrow that’s being felt, as I write, the world over – the sorrow of Syria, the sorrow of Egypt, the sorrow of widows and orphans and refugees, the sorrow of the lost and lonely, the abandoned and unnoticed. We all share this sorrow. It’s not mine or yours or ours or theirs. My sorrowful friends live far away from me, but we’re together in this sorrow – they and I and all our suffering sisters and brother across the earth.