You Don't Have to Redeem 2020

“Are you…ok? Like, are you making it?” My colleague, whom I had not seen in nearly a year, peered at me from a small Zoom window, squinting as if she struggled to recognize me. I do not think I look much different from when the year started, but one can hardly account for the untraceable contours of grief after a year like this. “Yes! Yes. Thank you for asking. What a year, huh?” We exchanged smiles, we saved face, and we carried on with our meeting. I do not resent her questions. She is a compassionate and perceptive person, who is willing to approach vulnerability with grace and intentionality. By no fault of her own, I left the conversation feeling rattled.

What can I say about this year? Even if everything in my personal life had rolled along smoothly, the collective damage of the year would be enough to change me. I do know people for whom 2020 was markedly their best year. I know people who made radical lifestyle changes and were able to sustain physical health for the first time. I know people who fell in love, got engaged, or got married. I know people who had babies, adopted puppies, and expanded their quarantine pods with adorable bundles of joy. I know people who finished their PhDs and people who reached career goals. I know people who picked up new hobbies, and found ways to thrive. Despite everything 2020 threw at us, the world kept turning, and the joys of life continued to roll in for some of us.

But I also know people for whom 2020 was the worst year yet. I know people who lost family members to Covid-19. I know people who lost loved ones to suicide. I know people who battled cancer in solitude. I know people who struggled through chronic illness, which worsened when their routines were disrupted by the pandemic. I know people who got divorced. I know people who lost their jobs, lost their homes, and lost their safety. I know people who lost more than they knew they could lose in a single year.

My family has not experienced the worst of this year, but it has certainly been a year of profound loss: lost employment for my husband, lost home, lost pregnancy, lost health. I would never forsake the joy this year brought us! Being able to spend time with our family in Atlanta, Nate finding employment again, and me passing my doctoral exams with no rewrites has all brought immense joy! But even in the presence of such joy, the personal losses and the public losses have compounded one another and have left their mark. I will never be the same after this year. My colleague startled me because I wondered what she could see. As she squinted her eyes to reconfigure her old friend, now contorted by despair, I wondered if she saw me as broken or whole.

For lack of sufficient terms, I have been referring to the feelings of fear, despair, and disappointment of 2020 as “big feelings.” I enjoy dark humor, and frankly, to give these feelings such an elementary designation does feel comical. “Big feelings” for a “big year.” I know—I’m quite the wordsmith.

This morning when I woke up on the eve of 2021, I wondered what I must do with these big feelings at the turn of the year. I would gladly toss them into a dumpster set ablaze. Is this the part of the year where we forget our old acquaintances—the shadows of loss we kept as company when we could not leave our homes? I have seen a post making its way around Facebook, beckoning people to share their accomplishments from this year. I typically enjoy this kind of activity. I do not underestimate the power of such positive reframing. And yet, I am concerned about an underlying impulse in the post—that we must redeem this year, that we must tie a big pretty bow on it before we leave it behind forever.

When I use the word “redeem” I am engaging the work of Karen Bray in her book, Grave Attending: A Political Theology for the Unredeemed, which was released earlier this year. In this book, Bray challenges neoliberal narratives of redemption which categorize some feelings as markers of redemption, and others as markers of the unredeemed. Feelings that we tend to categorize as negative—sadness, despair, hopelessness, fear, anger—have also been categorized in our society as “unproductive.” Moodiness may slow down the production line that feeds the voracious mouths of our economy. When we assign a moral or spiritual significance to efficiency or productivity, we allow spiritually disinterested economies to hijack our theologies. As a result, happiness and joy are celebrated in our faith communities, and even incentivized, while sadness or fear are characterized as demonic, unhealthy, or otherwise completely unwelcome.

Bray suggests that oftentimes the moodiness that we deride as “unredeemed” or unbecoming of a “redeemed” person is really pointing us to a truth that has been suppressed by political or social structures. Thus, she argues that in order to reclaim theology from the clenches of neoliberal narratives, we must tend to unredeemed moods. We must engage in “grave attending”—which she defines as, “a caring for the gravity, the pulling down to the material world, the listening and feeling for what all its myriad emotions have to tell us and where they have to lead us. It is also a witnessing to those identities, collectivities, and possibilities assumed to be buried over and gone, the ghosts that haunt us and so gift us a sense of what we might have been and an imagination of what we might become.” (p. 27)

Thus, we ought to interrogate our impulse to reframe all of 2020 in a positive light. When I see my colleague squint at me, as though she sees my wounds, I should not feel a moral obligation to hide. I do not have to get rid of the big feelings of 2020 in order to feel whole or worthy. I do not have to sum up 2020 with a list of accomplishments or cover over my wounds with a veneer.

I understand the temptation to leave it all behind. I do. I have joked with my family about digging a grave for 2020 for our NYE celebration this year. But here is the thing about big feelings: we have to work through them. Many of these big feelings are tied to forms of radical suffering and trauma. Many of these big feelings really are like mere acquaintances; we will not truly know them until we have walked with them for a number of years.

So, this is the part of the blog where I tell you that it is ok to carry 2020 with you awhile longer. It is not your responsibility to redeem this horrible year. That would be far too great a burden for any individual. You don’t even have to redeem the big feelings. You don’t have to transform them. You don't have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You don’t have to lock your grief in a closet as we turn over to 2021.

Big feelings need to be recognized. Trauma demands a witness. Suffering beckons truth-tellers. I fear that if we too quickly turn our backs on the suffering of 2020, we might preclude any possibility of mending what was broken. If we do not take the time to understand the year we had, we may never create structures for proper prevention in the future. If we do not observe the grief of deep loss now, we may be surprised to find it waiting for us around every corner of our future. If we do not listen to the truth of these moods, we can surely expect to be haunted by them.

Telling the truth about the year we had is not an easy task. A quote from W. H. Auden comes to mind: “Truth, like love or sleep, resents approaches that are too intense.” The truth that is hidden away in peoples’ homes, the truth that resides in our bodies, the truth about the systems of our society which resulted in disproportionate losses among the poor and underrepresented—these are truths that demand persistent witnesses who are willing to approach with compassion and grit.

It is not our responsibility to redeem the big feelings of 2020. But it is our responsibility to tell the truth, and in compassion and love for neighbor, extend solidarity. Out of love for God and neighbor, we are called to the tasks of grave attending. Yes, this year has changed us. And when we are finally able to see each other face to face again, no longer shielded by masks, we may find that grief has left a mark. But even as grief leaves its mark, even as wounds transform the landscape of our lives, we have the opportunity to look upon each other as whole, worthy, creatures of integrity. Sustained by persistent love, and driven by truth-telling, we will find a way to carry 2020 together.