BOOKS! (Jesus Wept)

Today is Thanksgiving, and since Thanksgiving is November 28th this year, coincidentally today is also the one-year anniversary of my grandpa's funeral. To honor today, I visited Grandpa's grave this afternoon, and now I'm writing a short review of a book that used to belong to him. 

 

Jesus Wept: Trusting the Good Shepherd When You Lose a Loved One by Leroy Brownlow

By virtue of helping to declutter Grandpa's house this spring and summer, I am now in possession of his copy of Jesus Wept, a 47-page Christian gift book about grief that he received from a friend when his mother (my great-grandmother) passed away. This is one of those moments where life feels like one big circle, because this book meant to comfort Grandpa is now comforting me amidst Grandpa's passing, and because I'm pondering how similar my 2023 was to Grandpa's 1992 in terms of that juxtaposition between new life and death, or recovery and the lack thereof. Grandpa lost his mother in May 1992 and gained his first grandchild/only granddaughter (me) in December, whereas I watched my mom spend the first half of 2023 healing from a spate of hospitalizations and then watched Grandpa succumb to his own hospitalization in the second half.

It took me almost the entirety of the past year to finally read this little book; I tried and simply couldn't bring myself to do it before, but I finally managed it earlier this month. And although I did initially expect Jesus Wept to be fluff, I was surprised to derive a genuine sense of consolation from it. I thoroughly appreciate all the inclusions of poetry as well as Brownlow's frequent assertion that crying is beautiful and natural and not only appropriate, but necessary. These aspects are unexpectedly soft and evolved for a white man from the South writing Christian books in the 1960s. (Jesus Wept is a 1988 republishing of Brownlow's 1969 release titled With the Good Shepherd.)

 

What I find most compelling about Jesus Wept are its multiple analogies about life going on after certain phases end. Moving from one home to another doesn't mean a tenant's life is over, but that it will continue on in a new home. A ship sailing out of sight doesn't mean it's lost, but that it's all the more closer to arriving somewhere else. And my favorite, given Grandpa's career as an educator and a principal for over 30 years: a school year ending doesn't mean a student's life is over, but that they now get to rest and enjoy what they've learned. Grandpa gets to rest and enjoy what he's learned.

For someone like me who is both a believer and a critically thinking person, the last chapter of Jesus Wept is certainly an eyebrow raiser. The way it uses seeds as a metaphor to emphasize how death liberates us from this world and is a blessing from God, and how humans can't realize their full potential until after they die (entering the realm of limitless possibilities that is the afterlife), I couldn't help but consider how easy it's been for people to argue that Christianity is a death cult. At the same time, I couldn't deny how strongly this metaphor resonated with me, even though I'd heard it before. Reading it in this context reminded me of an animated short film I watched this summer called Ninety-Five Senses, which similarly suggests that death opens up an entire host of new possibilities (95 additional senses, for example) that we simply cannot fathom or access during our temporal lives here on Earth. And who wouldn't want to be able to imagine their loved ones experiencing and enjoying more on the other side than what life allowed them the first go-round? I know that kind of imagining has done wonders for me and my grieving process.

Obviously religiosity and flowery language won't be helpful to everybody dealing with loss, but if you were raised in church or simply have an interest in religious writings, then give this book a try. Once I stopped dragging my feet I finished Jesus Wept in two days, and it only took me that long because I was intentionally spacing the book out to help its ideas marinate in my mind.  

Favorite quotes:

"But he knows beyond the hills there is a valley where life is pleasant" (15). 

"For school to be out merely closes the classes—not the life of the student. It rather gives him a chance to rest from his studies and to enjoy his learning. So goes life in a world designed to be a preparatory school. In it we learn from many sources. And after the learner has finished his course, it is only natural for him to go home" (25-26).

"He considers the welfare of the dying as well as the living; and His calling one home is not to hurt us who remain, but to help him who departs" (32).