Saudade

Dear Lord, 


I learned a new word today! (You know I’m a hopeless logophile! ; D) 


Saudade [saw’da de] is a word of Portuguese/Galacian origin with no literal English translation. Wikipedia defines it as: A deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for something or someone that one was fond of and which is lost… It often carries a fatalist tone and a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might really never return.


What a beautiful expression of that which is so elusively defined, if even such words exist to adequately and accurately express such a feeling! I personally find that to be true of so many things in life—emotions and thoughts which are so intense they’re almost tangible, yet so much bigger than our vocabulary (or any vocabulary, for that matter) are equipped.


While I am aware of an acute sense of saudade today in particular, I think I’ve been in a perpetual ebb-and-flow state of this thing my entire life, starting at the tender age when I began processing reality and individually experiencing the world around me. It’s like I’ve always known that there’s this lack of something, like a jigsaw puzzle finished save for ONE piece in the dead center (of course)—essentially rendering it undone until that last piece is located and set in place. Always conscious of this underlying “thing,” I never knew why or how or even what it was. It just made me deeply, profoundly sad. Well, no one likes to be sad, right? And for YEARS I searched—whether consciously or subconsciously—to name it correctly, identify its source and discover its root cause so I could FIX IT. 


As you know, Lord, better than even I do, that I tried just about everything to figure it out. I pretty much got it all wrong until recently, but more on that in a minute. 


Even now, as I write this from the perspective of considering many of my questions answered to a degree, there’s still so much more I don’t know. In fact, the more I learn, the less I know! Yep, that’s right! Despite where I’m at (at 40), all I’ve been through to get here and all the knowledge, wisdom and lessons I’ve acquired along the way, I still don’t fully understand it! The more I learn, the less I know. 


But the one thread that runs constant throughout the fabric of this journey is YOU, Jesus! You are the SOLE and INCONTROVERTIBLE truth upon which everything is built—the answer to my every question and that missing piece of the puzzle. I tried forcing any number of things into that one empty space in the center of my life, all in vain. Because that space was in tune with my SPIRIT. And it required a unique, specific, one-in-a-zillion-shaped piece—YOURS. It was Yours alone to fill. NOT the string of men, hobbies, habits, acting-out behaviors or anything else I tried as a substitute. You and You alone complete me.


Having said that, Lord, I still FEEL it—why? I don’t mean today, because I know the saudade has been aggravated by all the changes that have occurred recently and how fast my children are growing up! I am more aware of the acceleration of time than ever before. I can almost hear each tick, tick, tick of the second hand as each moment passes. It makes me LONG for that which I cannot have: to turn BACK that clock and recapture all the moments of my misspent youth and the childhood of my kids at more tender ages—to regain all that time wasted and all those precious moments forever lost to my narcissism and selfishness. I robbed myself and my kids of time and memories we can never get back.


It’s effing HEARTBREAKING!!!!!!


So, despite the joy I honestly do have in my life now, in YOU… there is still this tinge of sadness; the saudade. And I can’t help but ask You about it; can't help but to try and understand it.


I’m reminded of parts of my favorite passage in all of Scripture, Ecclesiastes 3:
“…What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end… I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing can be taken from it. God does it so that men will revere Him… Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account.”


If I consider saudade to be a mindset or a state of being, Lord, I know it can be triggered by certain temporal events and the awareness of losses experienced. But is it more than that? You say that You set eternity in the hearts of men. Yet we are finite beings in a finite world. The only part of our human existence that transcends time and space constraints is the spirit—it’s the only truly infinite part of who we are, the only thing that remains after the rest of it is gone. Given this fact, perhaps it’s the eternal nature of the spirit that senses such things as saudade, allowing us to even be aware of such things that would be unknowable to us if our human existence was strictly finite. Meaning, without the infinite nature of spirit, we’d be like animals moving solely on instinct with no rhyme or reason to anything, and we’d never even sense eternal anything, much less be able to think about it. But because You put something outside the time/space continuum inside us, Lord—the eternal spirit—we are able to notice, consider and on occasion know about things bigger than we are… that something is occurring for which we have not yet found the words.


This same spirit also allows us to face saudade and resist it. For while the past is indeed lost to us, You are gracious enough to always give us a second chance in the present, in this moment. You also promise us a hope in tomorrow, and is this not in and of itself a gift—a powerful weapon against saudade? We hear so often of the human spirit, that it is “strong and resilient.” I submit that this is untrue! Instead, it is the HOLY spirit, acting as a balustrade to the human one, infusing it with a strength and courage uncommon and unfound in mere mortals, which makes any human capable of withstanding. For when we are weak, YOU are strong.


So maybe saudade is merely the presence of an infinite spirit inside a finite being, and that tinge of sadness comes from the recognition that because of this innate weakness, SO MUCH is truly out of our control! And all human beings are, to varying degrees, little control freaks. Yet there is hope, coming from the knowledge that what is out of our hands is firmly, ably and capably in YOURS. This is a gift from You, Lord, for which I, personally, am immensely grateful! For saudade alone, without this hope, would be a sadness so tragic and a fact so heavy that it would be intolerable… Because You love us—love ME—You gave us free will, and the ability to think, to reason, to communicate, TO CHOOSE... thereby enabling us to find contentment and joy in the face of such heavy, sorrowful things. 


This is, along with everything else in life, a delicate balance. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; everything has a counterpart. Darkness has light. Hate has love. Sadness has joy. Anger has forgiveness. Brokenness has restoration. Sickness has healing… On and on… Each pair being opposite sides of the same coin.


Lord, I am so grateful for my salvation. I’m an expatriate here, homesick for my eternal home I’ve only gotten glimpses of but cannot yet see or fathom. I’m grateful for my secured and irrevocable eternity in Your presence. I love you and am grateful for all of it… Yet, I must be honest and say that this part of it really sucks! The consciousness You give us, the mind and soul that separates us from all other created beings, is beautiful but also terrible! It’s a severe mercy. This eternity You’ve set in my feeble, temporal, puny little heart can be SO heavy at times! Like any good sinner saved by grace, I adore the highs and loathe the lows. I like “knowing” and “awareness” but I hate the responsibility, the weight and the sadness that so often accompany these insights.


All that brings me yet again back to gratitude, Father! Because I can come to You and talk about it. I turn all this over to You. Just talking to You helps me bear it and makes it less sad and heavy. Help me to navigate this saudade with humility, dignity and grace. I want to honor You in all I say and do. Help me to thrive and flourish today; rather than wilting under the weight of the eternity in my heart, let it be the freedom that allows my spirit to soar on wings like an eagle! 


I am encouraged and inspired knowing that You make “all things beautiful in their time,” and that my time of beauty is coming, and is even already underway. Saudade alone brings to mind what I’ve lost, on what is unrecoverable to me. To quote Browning, saudade prompts the realization that “a common greyness silvers everything,” because it focuses only what I can grasp. But You help me to focus on all that I’ve gained, on all that has been restored and made worthy again in Your name. This is a focus on my reach—“Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? Ah, but a man’s REACH must EXCEED his GRASP, or what’s a heaven for?”


These quotes are from Robert Browning’s poem entitled, “Andrea del Sarto.” It means “The Faultless Painter.” Del Sarto was a Renaissance painter held in high regard for his technical skill. Yet it was this same skill for which he was criticized, Vasari being his most vocal. Vasari alleged that, though having all the prerequisites of a great artist, del Sarto lacked ambition and that divine fire of inspiration for which the works of his more famous contemporaries (Leonardo, Raphael, Michaelangelo) were highly praised. He said that “while he had great technical skill, his paintings lacked ‘soul.’” 


Everyone’s a critic, right? LOL! Yet cannot this same thing be generally said, Lord, of each and every human being? If we are viewed as artists, our lives as the canvas on which we paint with strokes of experience; of good decisions and bad ones, of victories and defeats, of emotions and thoughts—then to some degree, we can all be considered artists with “great technical skill.” Whether or not our individual masterpieces have “soul” is determined by whether or not we reach, in spite of the opinions, criticisms and praise of others, or if we are merely content with what we can easily grasp. 


Whether or not Vasari’s and others’ opinions of del Sarto’s art are true, still… He reached! And this, to me, at day’s end, Lord, is what separates a true artist from painting by numbers. It is also the strongest defense against the saudade we ALL face; our REACH is what keeps us from allowing the saudade to overtake us. 


“You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?
I’ll work then, for your friend’s friend...
You smile? Why, there’s my picture, ready-made!
There’s what we painters call harmony!
A common greyness silvers everything—all in a twilight,
You and I alike…
The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,
And autumn grows, autumn in everything…
As if I saw alike my work and self
And all that I was born to be and do.
A twilight piece. Love, we are in God’s hand.
How strange now, looks the life He makes us lead;
So free we seem—so fettered fast we are!...
I can do with my pencil what I know,
What I see, what, at bottom of my heart,
I wish for, if I ever wish so deep…
Well less is more, Lucrezia; I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them…
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know
Reach many a time a heaven that’s shut to me, 
Enter and take their place there sure enough,
Though they come back and cannot tell the world.
My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here…
I, painting from myself and to myself, 
Know what I do, am unmoved by men’s blame.
Or their praise, either…
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
Ah, but a man’s reach must exceed his grasp, 
Or what’s a heaven for? All is silver-grey,
Placid and perfect with my art; the worse!...
Well I can fancy how he did it all,
Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see, 
Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,
Above and through his art—for it gives way;
That arm is wrongly put—and there again,
A fault to pardon in the drawing’s lines,
Its body, so to speak; its soul is right,
He means right—that, a child may understand.
Still, what an arm! And I could alter it;
But all the play, the insight and the stretch…
I might have done it for you. So it seems;
Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules.
Beside, incentives come from the soul’s self; 
The rest avail not. Why do I need you?...
In this world, who can do a thing, will not;
And who would do it, cannot, I perceive;
Yet the will’s somewhat—somewhat,
Too, the power—
And thus, we half-men struggle.
At the end, God, I conclude, compensates, punishes.
‘Tis safer for me if the award by strict,
That I am something underrated here.
Poor this long, while, despised to speak the truth…
And I’m the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt
Out of the grange whose four walls make his world.
How could it end in any other way?
You called me, and I came home to your heart. 
The triumph was—to reach and stay there; 
Since I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost?...
I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.
I regret little, I would change still less.
Since there my past life lies, why alter it?...
No doubt, there’s something strikes a balance. 
Yes, you loved me quite enough, it seems tonight.
This must suffice me here. What would one have?
In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance—
Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,
Meted on each side by the angel’s reed, 
For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me to cover—
The three first without a wife,
While I have mine! So—still they overcome
Because there’s still Lucrezia, 
As I choose..."


(My chosen excerpts from “The Faultless Painter”)




I love You, Lord. I offer this "saudade" I feel so intensely and acutely today to You, and everything else with it, ALL of me... for Yours is ultimately the only opinion that matters to me. Thank You that despite the tinges of sadness and pain that go along with being fully ALIVE, it's ultimately the flip side of that coin that really matters... No matter what anyone else says or thinks, I won't give up. Thank You for listening to me. I mayn't fully understand all this, but it does help to just get it off my chest. ; D


I reach...


Amen.