Loss

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Drinking Poison

Do you ever stumble over the Our Father? No, not whether to wrap it up with “for thine in the kingdom, the power…” or chop it at “deliver us from evil”. My problem is more than linguistic. From time to time I get hung up on “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Sometimes the words hold up a mirror revealing more than I want to see or admit, more than I am willing to give.

Yesterday a friend shared just how complex and convoluted our emotions can be. Reflecting on my post about loss and grief, he confessed an unwillingness to acknowledge anger, an emotion with which he has come to recognize a complex and difficult relationship. Recently, as he probed more deeply into experiences of sadness and fear he has discovered that feelings of anger were being masked by the other two emotions.

My friends honesty challenges me! Yes, loss and grief — as we live these out day by day — get all bunched-up and tangled with feelings of fear, sadness, anger, betrayal, remorse, you name it! Often, unmasking one emotion reveals others joined at the hip complicating and confounding our ability to disentangle from the emotional mess. Reciting the Our Father can become a jarring reminder of the paralysis I sometimes feel around my need to forgive.

Jeanne Bishop, the author I referenced yesterday, had the ultimate challenge of forgiveness! Her sister, brother-in-law and their unborn child were brutally shot by a gunman awaiting their return from a celebratory dinner with Jeanne and their parents. It’s a heart-wrenching, compelling story of forgiveness, something I am incapable of replicating right now.  My emotions remain too entangled, my vices too entrenched for such magnanimity.

Yet, Bishop’s words return, over and over, offering wisdom to the degree I am willing and able to hear:

Hating is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die!

Jeanne Bishop was strengthened by a determination not to give her sister’s killer that emotional power over her! From the moment that the police told her that Nancy and Richard had been murdered, she sensed in her deepest core that hating the person who did it would affect him not a bit, but it would destroy her.

Our emotions are complex and convoluted and frequently mask others more entrenched. Grief from deep loss, anger over genuine injury, hate welling from despicable behaviors can ensnare us. They can kill us.

Self-interest is not the most altruistic of motivations.  Yet, it serves as the most basic of moral imperatives to forgive — we must not give to them that power!

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See: Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy and Making Peace with My Sister’s Killer by Jeanne Bishop. Westminster John Know Press, 2015. p. 45.

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As We Would Want It

“Make a fist! That’s right… a big, tight fist! Now, put it in front of your face… right up there near the bridge of your nose …right between your eyes. What do you see?”

With this simple exercise, Jeanne Bishop’s pastor helped her deal with the excruciating grief associated with the tragic death of her sister, brother-in-law and their unborn child.

“What do you see?”

“I see a fist.” Jeanne replied.

“Good.” the pastor said. “Now slowly, slowly take that fist and move it down to your side. … What do you see now?”

“I can see everything, the whole world.”

“Do you see that fist, the one that once blocked out everything else? … It hasn’t change size or shape. It’s just as big as it was before. It’s just not here” — the pastor raised his fist back to his face — “anymore.”

With this very simple and accessible routine, Pastor John Boyle assisted a bereft woman to see that she could move ahead with painful memories, enduring love, the truth of her loss as “companions” by her side.

The pastor assured her, “You have had a loss. You will never get over it. But you will get out from under it.”

When grief is fresh it feels raw and all-consuming. This in testimony to the depth of the relationship lost. It appears to block out the rest of our world, like the fist in front of our nose. With time it subsides — in its own time and as it serves its good purpose. The chasm created by the loss never leaves but moves to another place, always by our side.

Memory, love and loss — our ever-present companions. Over time, life becomes as we would want it. As it should be!
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References and quotes are from pages 44-45 of Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy and Making Peace with My Sister’s Killer by Jeanne Bishop. Westminster John Know Press, 2015.

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Boundless Grief, Boundless Love

Lisa was the apple of her father’s eye. It was a bitter blessing, therefore, that she could be at his bedside when my brother died. My own experiences of loss prompt me to remember her often during this past month. Grief is damn hard!

As we took our inevitable leave on the afternoon of the funeral, Lisa and I embraced to express our grief, enduring affection and mutual need for consolation. Experience reminded me of what was in store for her — the seeming finality of what feels like an ultimate goodbye, the bottomless pit that would likely open as she drove the fifty miles to her home in Sioux City, how those miles committed to memory from so many happy occasions could now appear foreign, inhospitable, estranged.

I felt compelled to say something profound, at least avuncular. But there are no words! Yet, I mumbled something, fumbling to say what Dietrich Bonhoeffer expressed so well:

Nothing can make up for the absence of someone we love…
it is nonsense to say that God fills the gap; God doesn’t fill it,
but on the contrary, God keeps it empty
and so helps us keep alive our former communion with each other,
even at the cost of pain…
the dearer and richer the memories,
the more difficult the separation.

That’s been my experience. Perhaps it will be Lisa’s. The challenge for me has been to leave the emptiness empty, open, raw as it is! I know the futility of trying to anesthetize the pain with alcohol. We are prone to fill the void with consumption or consumerism of all sorts. We easily seek diversion and distraction aplenty. Yet, what’s buried alive stays alive. If in our desperation we attempt to deaden our irreplaceable loss, our profound and personal “emptiness”, the void remains only a vacuous insatiable hole.

The unimaginable, the painful bitter route of grief unencumbered, becomes our source of blessing if we can remain open, embracing loss as life’s ultimate assurance of love. Bonhoeffer wisely concludes:

But gratitude changes the pangs of memory into tranquil joy.
The beauties of the past are borne, not as a thorn in the flesh,
but as a precious gift in themselves.

Of this I am certain… Lisa remains the apple of her father’s eye!

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Shattering Shelter and Simplicity

You don’t need to have seen the movie Ida to be moved by its timeless and provocative questions. Trudging through the English captions of this Polish production only engages the viewer more deeply with the protagonist’s quest. Filming in black and white brilliantly sharpens the movie’s impact.

The story is that of a young Polish novice about to profess vows in the convent where she has been raised since being orphaned as an infant. She is encouraged by a wise and solicitous mother superior to discover her true identity and desires before moving forward with her profession.

Fledgling curiosity — like any who would engage the universal struggle for authenticity — shatters the ordered, sheltered and simple universe of Ida’s youth. She discovers her heritage as Jewish, the daughter of parents whose home was confiscated and who perished in the Holocaust. A hardened, forceful, agnostic maternal aunt serves as midwife for Ida’s birth into maturity.

A neighbor and I discovered a mutual love for Ida.  This has lead to snippets of conversation and email banter over the past few days.  Sarah and I are intrigued by lingering images, unanswered questions and left to wonder…

How is religion a “container” of sorts? In childhood this allows for a feeling of safety and security. Maturation, should we choose to grow-up, will burst these old wine-skins. Sometimes this even requires us to ask whether that original container was all that  safe or secure.

In any case, the rough and tumble of youth will force us to outgrow it. We may fiercely resist. It may be a relentless struggle. But one way or another a wise mother superior or a wizened maiden aunt is likely to introduce us to a more complex and authentic God outside of convent walls.

Does our religion — any ordered, regular spiritual practice as “convent life” implies — bring one to awakening? Or, does it close us off to the rough and tumble of life meant to move us to maturity? Does our “god”, our church, our spiritual practice keep us safe and small or does it make us magnificent and magnanimous?

The movie leaves us hanging… we do not know where Ida is headed! Had she seen enough of the world? Might she be going off in a totally new direction?  Will she reclaim the home and heritage of her parents? Returning to the convent is now a more mature option — but somehow feels like it might just be too safe of an option. But who knows?

Is this newly empowered and freshly inspired woman even ready to comprehend the complexities of life and the huge loss she has just uncovered? Any who have dealt with some hard things in our lives will, even if begrudgingly and through monumental effort, come to embrace these complexities and losses.  But this is a process into which we are mentored over a lifetime.

Wisdom comes much later… is still coming… never stops coming.

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See Ida if you can still find it in a theater near you. If you cannot, or if you want a perceptive synopsis before you go, Commonweal magazine provides a great [review].

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Something is Radically Wrong

“When I was young I thought the goal of a spiritual life was some form of bliss or contentment. In my pride, I wanted not only to attain this but to be seen to have attained it. Christian mysticism and Buddhism intrigued me, and of course I understood neither of them.”

This self-admission by John Garvey in the current issue of Commonweal magazine really caught my attention! I became even more intrigued by his honest admission that “being a fool for a while is part of the process.”

Garvey explains that it wasn’t until many years later that he turned around to look at his life and saw that what had led him to where he really was involved a mix of depression, anger, fear, and anxiety. As the wise sage he has become, Garvey observes that “all you can deal with at the start is yourself.”

Seems so obvious, self-evident. But is it? Aren’t most of us inclined to fix everybody else before we get to ourselves? And if we courageously look in the mirror are we not inclined to shift blame?   Even “accepting Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior” can be little more than a delay tactic forestalling life-saving major surgery.

Garvey tells of a man who was ordained a Zen monk, and is now an Orthodox Christian. He teaches meditation and asks his students, “What do you hope to gain from this?” They may say something about having a more whole life, serenity, etc.—the usual clichés that surround the idea of enlightenment.

The monk points out that he is a divorced man, a recovering alcoholic, and has suffered through long periods on unemployment—the point being that nothing, including meditation, can guarantee wholeness or any sense of moral or therapeutic achievement.

It is common for people to think of morality as a major end of the religious life, or some sense of “being right” with God, or of being on the right side of a particular issue. Garvey has come to recognize that this need to be right is at best ego-satisfaction and an idolatrous temptation.

What John Garvey didn’t see when he was younger — and why I resonate so strongly with his reflection — is quite simple: the common insight of the great religious traditions is that something is wrong! Something about ordinary human consciousness doesn’t work, and it only gets worse when we try to put ourselves in control, to fix things.

To admit that I need help and cannot somehow conjure it up through my own power is liberating. We must turn from ourselves to something outside ourselves, hoping it will be gracious. We must acknowledge our core interior emptiness.

This is where the Christian story matters so much—brokenness is the beginning of salvation! We must enter our emptiness, return to the radical “nothingness” from which all was created. In a culture addicted to control, power and autonomy this knowledge is hard to come by.

How much more counter-cultural can we get than to believe, to truly profess, that we are the most open to grace when we admit how broken we are. But it is in this that we are saved!

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You may access John Garvey’s excellent reflection [here]. However, Commonweal restricts full access to subscribers.  My post here is largely dependent on his insights so I hope I have done him — and you — justice.

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Fear of Flying

“COME TO THE EDGE.”
“No, we will fall.”
‘COME TO THE EDGE.”
“No, we will fall.”
They came to the edge.
He pushed them, and they flew.

Thus, early 20th century French poet Apollinaire cuts to the heart of the matter! We humans have an insane case of vertigo and cling to what is “safe”, clutching tight to social norms and standard expectations for our security. Life, more precisely living, isn’t like that!

I love riding my scooter — yes, it costs $3.74 to fill the tank. But what I really love is the rush of the air, the freedom of movement, openness to the elements, feeling one with the machine. I’m careful and have never ridden without a helmet and a florescent lime vest like the ones used by road crews.

I really tire of the litany of warnings the majority of folks repeatedly intone… Be careful! That’s dangerous! Watch out! Is that safe? You could get killed! Growing weary of their professions of concern, I am increasingly curious whether my self-appointed safety patrol is in fact secretly jealous, actually envious of something they would love to do but remain hamstrung with fear.

Apollinaire was on to something! Riding my scooter is as close to flying as I will ever get this side of being a pilot. Though even scootering doesn’t quite rank up there with sky-diving — only once from 15,000 feet about ten years ago. The one-minute 10,000 foot free-fall before opening the parachute was one of the greatest spiritual experiences of my life. And, yes, it scared the crap out of me!

The way we live our lives mirrors how we practice our religion — often clustering in self-selected enclaves of like-minded folks who share our answers to life’s important questions. This is perfectly okay and necessary. Just last Sunday the Gospel was “Come to me all who labor and are weary; I will give you rest.” The problem is getting too fixed in our ways — too settled in our own weariness, resting with own answers.

Take Peter for example — our “rock” of faith on which Jesus would build his church. Along with the other apostles Peter repeatedly asked, “What’s in it for me?” Despite the many reassurances of the hundred-fold, even a master-teacher like Jesus must exhibit super-human patience… and still does with the rest of us!

Apollinaire’s “COME TO THE EDGE” is a lot like Jesus prodding Peter to get out of the boat and walk on water (Mt 14:22-32). “Wudda ya, nuts!?!” Like the master teacher to whom I was tethered in my sky-dive, Jesus was right there to grab Peter when he experienced his latest bout of self-doubt.  Too often these doubts paralyze us in a nasty case of vertigo.

In Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor observes that religion serves two functions in our lives. First, it provides a way for people to understand and find meaning and purpose.  That’s good! But like a self-appointed safety patrol who scorn scooters, too many of us play it safe and settle for the security they find.  Unwilling to inch closer to the edges of life, they never get to see horizons that provide unimagined vistas or the hundred-fold Jesus promised in this life. (Mk 10:30)

The crunch comes, as it did for Peter, when we come face to face with the second function of religion — real conversion, genuine transformation. We prefer that religion simply function like Guy Noir of Prairie Home Companion giving us answers to all life’s important questions.  But there’s more — the “losing your life” part.

We, like Peter, will fight to defend the Jesus we think we understand, even drawing swords to keep him from being taken from us.  All the while we cut our selves off from him.  We deny the very path of salvation Jesus came to show us by example, the very way that leads to life and is our truth: “Those who find their life will lose it and those who lose it will find it” (Mt 10:39 & 16:25).  When we see that Jesus really means it, we like Peter run for our lives!

BBT quotes Christian mystic, Ken Wilber in stating the obvious — this “transformation” talk doesn’t sell well. It didn’t in Jesus’ time and it doesn’t in ours! According to Wilber, “soul” for most Americans has come to mean little more than “the ego in drag.” Much of what passes for spirituality is really all about comforting the self, not losing it!  We so want the answers to life’s questions and solutions to its heartaches to come from somewhere or someone else.  Isn’t that God’s job, to keep us safe!?!?

“COME TO THE EDGE.” Get out of your boat! If you want to save your life lose it… Yes, we often need to be tethered or assured by an out-stretched arm. That’s what the church is for — not to enfeeble us but to set us free!  Thankfully we have a patient, though persistent, teacher who walks his talk.  In addition to the reassurance of a good teacher, we sometimes just need a big hard push!

We too will ultimately hear the words addressed to Peter as our own: “I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are mature you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will put a belt around you and lead you were you do not want to go.” (John 21:18)

“COME TO THE EDGE.”
…
They came to the edge.
He pushed them, and they flew.
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Barbara Brown Taylor’s reference to Ken Wilbur may be found on pages 86-88 of Learning to Walk in the Dark. She is quoting One Taste: Daily Reflections on Integral Spirituality by Ken Wilbur. Boston: Shambhala, 2000.

 

 

 

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Going Over to the Dark Side

A woman from Georgia has more to say to me about God than anyone else I know. With feet firmly planted in a working farm she tends with her husband, she simultaneously culls Moses, fourth century Cappadocian monk Gregory of Nyssa and the anonymous fourteenth century author of The Cloud of Unknowing for wisdom.

Please… before dismissing her as pious or preachy, you must know that she writes for those of us who are “in deep need of faith right now, but the kind you inherited from your parents is not cutting it. You want something that asks more of you than to sit and listen quietly while someone else tells you how to live.”

I eagerly await everything Barbara Brown Taylor writes. We are about the same age. She served a good part of her life as an Episcopal priest. Having left active ministry I resonate with her honesty: “I also discovered a number of things about my Christian tradition that had not been apparent to me while I was busy upholding it.”

In her most recent spiritual memoir, Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor says chief among these is the way Christian teaching thrives on dividing reality into opposed pairs: good/evil, church/world, spirit/flesh, sacred/profane, light/dark. Keeps life simple… you don’t even have to be Christian to know who are the “winners” and the “losers.”

Separating the world into opposing camps makes it easy to know who is closer to God and who isn’t. This really simplifies life for those who don’t care to spend much time thinking about whether their categories hold (or are even Christian). Such clarity provides a strong sense of purpose by focusing daily battles they will take on as their moral duty. The more we beat back the powers of the flesh or of darkness the closer we get to God.

BBT brilliantly coins this as “a bad case of solar affective disorder” or “full solar spirituality. She suggests we can usually recognize a full solar church by its emphasis on the “perks” of faith — a sure sense of God’s presence, certainty of belief, divine guidance in all things, and reliable answers to prayer. Members strive to be positive in attitude, firm in conviction, helpful in relationship, and unwavering in faith.  She asks, who wouldn’t want to dwell in God’s light 24/7?

But then life happens — Christian life happens! You lose your job, maybe your house. Your marriage turns sour. A grandchild is born with a serious genetic disorder. Sure, the full-solar Christians will be there for you and express genuine care. But the shady side of life will soon exhaust their resources. Too many of us are woefully ill prepared to enter the dark-side of life without putting our own faith at risk. We are prepared to deliver a hot-dish casserole when human hungers are so much more insatiable!

The great thing about BBT is that her profound observations are never a self-righteous judgment or divisive condemnation. If it were she would be guilty of the very dualistic thinking and separating into “winners” or “losers” she bemoans. Rather, Learning to Walk in the Dark is a refreshing invitation to embrace “lunar spirituality,” a realistic true-to-life faith that recognizes that the divine light available at any given time waxes and wanes with the seasons of our lives.

It’s not whether we have enough faith to explore the darkness — life itself provides more than enough incentive — but whether we are willing to bump into the things that frighten us and ask the darkness to teach us what we need to know.

Christian faith professes that Jesus was crucified, died and was buried, descended into hell, on the third day rose from the dead and only then ascended into heaven. Sounds like pretty intense darkness to me! Does this not proclaim the way and the truth of our lives?  Should we really expect it to be any different?

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This reflection is largely based on the Introduction to Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor. HarperOne, 2014.

 

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In Memoriam

Our hearts are full with love and loss this weekend. In Minnesota we are heavy with the lush beauty of a long-awaited Spring. Yet, our evening barbecue with friends will be preceded by a visit to Resurrection Cemetery.

We don’t get to live long before we know the loss of loved ones. I have lost five of nine siblings in addition to my parents. We are of that generation which now attends many more funerals than weddings — we find they are increasingly for our contemporaries. Still, we have come to that unexpected vista where we recognize grief but equally cherish love and a life well lived.

Among the many losses, the one I hold closest to my heart this Memorial Day is that of Visitation Sister Peronne Marie Tibert, VHM. Peronne was my Elizabeth – that elder wise woman I would run to in moments of exhilaration and brokenness. We consistently shared such intimacy with poetry and over tea. Our common passion for gardening and bread baking waned as we aged.

Peronne died in September twelve days after marking her 90th birthday. In our last conversation on her birthday she said, “It’s time!”

In her memory, and remembering the many we have loved and lost, I share a sonnet Peronne wrote in 1959:

I shall remember gentle April rain

When only crumbling dust is to be found;

I shall remember fields of sun-filled grain

When hallow husks lie scattered on the ground;

When storms shall rage against the rocks I’ll hear

The lapping of soft waves upon the strand;

When stinging winds shall break the bough and sear

I’ll blow a milkweed seed across my hand.

 

No shrieking hawk will still the skylark’s song

Nor blot the memory of the bluebird’s wing,

For even when all loveliness is gone

I shall recall each tender, trembling thing.

Today I enfold love within my heart

To keep against the day when we must part.

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Lest We Ever Forget

Again, we remember!

Yom Hashoah is observed from sundown this evening through sundown tomorrow, April 28. Although it is a Jewish holiday it is both appropriate and salutary that we all pause to mark this occasion. We commemorate a great horror but also celebrate tremendous heroism.

Yom Hashoah remembers the six million Jews – and millions of others as well – who perished in the Holocaust as a result of the actions carried out by Nazi Germany. May we never forget!

Since Yom Hashoah is a relatively new holiday, there are no fixed rules or rituals. Often, Yom Hashoah is observed with candle lighting, speakers, poems, prayers, and singing. This evening at sundown, or anytime before sundown tomorrow, pause…  light a candle… remember!

In the rising of the sun and in its going down,
we remember them.

In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
we remember them.

In the opening of buds and in the rebirth of spring,
we remember them.

In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer,
we remember them.

In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
we remember them.

In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
we remember them.

When we are weary and in need of strength,
we remember them.

When we are lost and sick at heart,
we remember them.

When we have joys we yearn to share,
we remember them.

So long as we live, they too shall live, for they are now a part of us, as we remember them.

— from the Rabbi’s Manual 1988