Last week I took refuge from the frigid temperatures by going to the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul to hear a concert hosted by the Schubert Club. These Thursday events held at noon in the large, open space there seems as safe an opportunity as I can imagine to soothe a wintry heart. All folks are masked so it is impossible to see the beauty of their faces but the spirit of people in the presence of live music has the ability to remind us that we are still community, hungering for the sounds and silences that have had the power to lift the heart and heal the soul since the beginning of time. 

This particular program contained two song cycles performed by a string quartet and the beautiful soprano of Maria Jette. In her description of the songs we were about to hear she talked of how the composer, Robert Schumann, was given to ‘weltschmerze’, something she described as a feeling of melancholy, world-weariness, even pain for the world. The masked faces around the majestic space seemed to all nod in a collective ‘ahh, yes’. Jette was the only unmasked person in the room and so her face mirrored our own pandemic knowing. Weltschmerze…sometimes a different language can say just what needs to be said. We are all in a certain state of weltschmerze.

I am not sure if this German phrase is what caused me to begin to push back at the melancholy of it all but I began to think of the ways in which it is possible to lift one’s self above the world-weariness if only for a moment here and there. In a  bag I had been keeping in the basement were paper white bulbs I had intended to do something with. So, I brought them out and began to create a way for them to grow and bloom. Not today but in some future that will come. Around the bulbs I placed some shells I collected on the beach a few weeks ago when the Sun was beating down and the sound of the ocean was filling my ears and nostrils. And then I placed the butterfly that I found last June on the pavement of a parking lot. The winged one was already no longer living when I found it but still has the ability to thrust its beauty into the world. Before I knew it I had created a shrine to whatever is the opposite of weltschmerze.

Then a few days later, the world lost the beloved Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh. The wisdom and presence that he inspired seems the very antidote to weltschmerze. His teachings are a very call to see the gifts of every moment…even those wracked by a virus that does not want to leave us. Even in these times he can call us embrace whatever is happening in the world and to see it for what it is. 

“Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.

Breathing in, I see myself as a flower.
Breathing out, I feel flesh.

Breathing in, I see myself as a mountain.
Breathing out, I feel solid.

Breathing in, I see myself as still water.
Breathing out, I reflect things as they are.

Breathing in, I see myself as space.
Breathing out, I feel free.”

Winter days are threatening ongoing cold. There are shrines to be built to remind us of what endures. Deep breaths, my friends…deep breaths.