A quartz contentment, like a stone

I have been going through some interesting experiences of community, so called. It's instructive to have what Bonhoeffer called "the view from below."

Thus, this poem speaks to me:

After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.
This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.
     Emily Dickinson

"A quartz contentment, like a stone."

Then I happened to find this passage yesterday, randomly, as I opened a book:

"He began to be troubled and deeply distressed. He said to them 'My soul is exceedingly sorrowful... Stay here and watch!"

"Stay here and watch!"  He speaks urgently. Did his friends stay and watch? 

No.  

Not one. 

What I respond to in the passion story is this: it's dark and unflinching about how human beings are.

Yet I do believe, like George Fox,  that over the ocean of darkness is an ocean of light.