Chaos & Grieving

In these days of chaos, I am traveling with the daily meditations of Matthew Fox and Richard Rohr. They give me occasion to reorient my questing heart to respond rather than react to each day’s rapidly unfolding events.

Today Fox draws our attention to the rising awareness and questioning about the antichrist. In simple terms, this figure pretends to be good and divinely appointed, but is deceptive, creating confusion and destruction. Whether this figure is metaphorical or attached to a particular historical person has always, in my experience, been open to debate. Fox, however, notes the reflections of 12th Century Hildegard de Bingen who painted her vision of the antichrist. In part, Fox describes her depiction.

“The antichrist is necessarily the opposite of interconectivity and compassion. Her painting of the antichrist borrows heavily from the Book of the Apocalypse and her sense of the End Times.  In it, she pictures evil and the coming of chaos as the unraveling of the ropes of justice that keep order to society.  In her painting, she features several beasts who are unraveling order by pulling on a rope.  Chaos reigns with the antichrist.”

These beasts represent those who “bite at their own condition” and do not burn with justice, “warlike men” who wage wars without considering God’s judgment, those who put luxury living and their own selfish pleasure before the performance of worthwhile acts, rulers who create sadness and uncleanness in themselves and their subjects, and those who rob others.  The black rope, she tells us, represents “the darkness that stretches out many injustices.”  She pictures Christ as a young man, “who is the beginning of justice” and “a very strong warrior” who will “break the head of injustice.”  Justice and beauty will triumph.  

But “grieving well” is our work during such a time. Richard Rohr states, “As external chaos rises, inner chaos is touched off.” Our work is to face and acknowledge this as part of the pathway to healing, discernment, and action. Rohr puts it this way:

By honoring grief and healing, we re-member, and we put ourselves back together. We can make decisions about how to move forward from our core selves rather than our guarded hurts. The shape of us and our world is being reimagined in this process from a place that has a little bit more wholeness. When the past is offered healing, compassion, and forgiveness, the future will have good water to put our feet in.  

We often avoid thoughts of either “antichrist” or “grieving.” Both are painful to face. When each is worked through, however, we come through to the other side standing on the promise of rock-solid assurance.