Advent from the Underside: Symbols of Compassion

A rosary ? Why, yes. Despite my deep Protestant roots, literally centuries deep, decades of chaplain training have made certain I always have a few in the glove box in the car. 

 What exactly does a Menorah look like? Let me google it on my phone and we can look at a picture together.... Half an hour or so and several sheets of construction paper later- an almost perfect representation if the Wikipedia pic. 

The hope of divine compassion real in human life. Light overcoming darkness. The comfort of familiar ritual- centuries proved. Human suffering knows no bounds, cares not for doctrine or belief. It seeks only the blessing of relief, the strength beyond strength of hope amid overwhelming grief, suffering and unrelenting pain. 

At a shelter for the homeless, unmedicated mentally ill: Advent from the underside. Come Emmanuel, come soon.  

 

 



“Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:11-13)

So today, I am grateful for all that I have, for family and amazing friends, for my work which calls me to join those huddled at the foot of the cross and to the garden where Christ speaks our names, and, for a life time’s graces of stewarding hounds and horses and kitty’s of many sorts.

Today, I am grateful for all those I have lost, for the graces of the journeys of grieving them, and, for that which was mine but is no longer and for gifted strengths that lay beyond.

Today, I am grateful that my strength is not mine but is in Christ who offers new life and hope beyond all that I am and all that I have. Amen.

And, well, I have to be grateful this Thanksgiving morning that Foxhound Kelly is happily occupied scrubbing the very last molecule for peanut butter out of the empty jar.

Reminder from yesterday: People often think, “I’ve put that (traumatic event/loss) behind me.” Or, “I  saw a counselor (or talked with my pastor) about that at the time.” All the while they are wondering why certain present time events or encounters keep bother them or bring up the long ago pain or struggle. What folks don’t take  into consideration is that: they have changes, their lives have changed. The meanings they constructed in the past (on their own, with a pastor or therapist)  may no longer fit.

We often need to go back later and form new meaning from old, long past struggles. It is simply a part of our human condition. If you think about it, look how long the followers of Jesus have been trying to live into the meaning of his death and resurrection…

 

Throughout time God made great and mighty acts of salvation known through water. At the creation of the world, the Spirit moved across the waters bring all that is into being, God delivered the people of Israel through the flood and through the Red Sea. In the fullness of time, God sent the beloved Son, Jesus nurtured in the waters of Mary’s womb, baptized in the waters of the Jordan by John and filled with the Holy Spirit. So too, God meets us in the water of our tears holy and mighty signs of the grace we can only barely begin to comprehend.... This seems especially true of those that well up against our will as we sit among the faithful of the community gathered worship and praise holding the everyday memories of  ancient griefs and the emergent sorrows of living and loving.Amen.



Christ is King of the Underside:


If Christ were not King I could not do my job. Every time I see the carnage that some parents wreak in the lives of their children who continue to love them, still. Every time I stand with my arm around the weeping wife of someone dead to alcohol’s seductive betrayals. Every time I see the records of the birth of some young one as I enter notes about their death—from things that different choices would have saved…

Every time, I rely on Christ the King. Living on the underside means living into death in the hope of new life. It means that I have hope and faith that as I die a thousand deaths in each of these encounters, our risen Lord is holding me as I struggle to hold the pain and grief and fear and sorrow of those who come to us for care; feelings of hopelessness and helplessness that are far, far too much for any of us to know alone.

When all is lost. Strength is spent. No direction is before us. When we have died. And, died. And, died. Again. There is only grace. The grace of the infant Jesus who Mary held as every young mother does, cradling all the hopes and dreams of the coming of new life. The grace of Jesus who suffers with us, coming desperate and despairing to his knees at prayer all alone before his death , those who were to accompany him fallen away to sleep. The grace of the Christ raised and walking in the garden, whose very words held Mary’s grieving, hopeless heart turning its sorrow into joy, it’s grieving into fresh hope and expectation.

If Christ the King did not hold my heart, it would be broken, everyday, beyond repair. But Christ is King. A King whose true reign is not hi up upon a throne lording over all, but down on the underside, a place we will all visit if we are human and we live, Christ’s true reign holding those hearts most in need of grace and hope, of faith and the promises of some new life for the living of these days. Amen.

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:19b, 20).


I am grateful for the presence of the Christ who has walked hand and hand with me as I have lived into a future which has seemed more and more uncertain, as I have learned, not only to live, but to enjoy a life that no one would choose.

Jesus and Paul were intimately familiar with the tender balance of the Lament Psalms, the gentle holding of the deepest throws of human grief and sorrow in intimate connection with our only true hope, witnessing the gracious Presence who does not hide from us in our times of trouble though it is often easier for us to trust the reality of our pain (Psalm 10:1). I am grateful for the Presence I could often see only by its dim reflection and the patient offering of the delicacies of a grace I am only poorly coming to comprehend. Amen.

Perinatal Bereavement: Grief at the Holidays

Today the Huffington Post ran an article by Charlotte Hilton Andersen titled, Ten Things Not To Say To a Woman Who's Had a Miscarriage. Which reminded me of this article we give out to bereaved parents this time of year, with a different image we give it out for the spring holidays as well. With Christmas a week away it seems good to bring it here. Hoping for all a gentelness in these days....

Adapted from a National Public Radio interview with Kenneth J. Doka, Ph.D., Professor of Gerontology at the Graduate School of the College of New Rochelle and Senior Consultant to the Hospice Foundation of America.

A question commonly asked by bereaved parents at this time of year is, "How can I get through the holidays?" There is no single answer. One important guiding principle is: do what is comfortable for you….

What is comfortable? Whatever seems to best meet your needs at the time. And although it is important to make a plan and think ahead how to handle the holidays, it is also OK not to know until you get there, especially if this is the first holiday season since the death of your child. Make a plan, but be open to changing it if it seems necessary. This is the key to coping with the holidays: find the way that is right for you.

"When we are already experiencing the great stress of bereavement, the additional strains of the holidays can create unbearable pressure," commented Jack Gordon, HFA President.

Some people find it helpful to be with family and friends, emphasizing the familiar. Others may wish to avoid old sights and sounds, perhaps even taking a trip. Others will find new ways to acknowledge the season.

Whatever your response, remember these points:

1)         Plan for the approaching holidays. Be aware that this might be a difficult time for you. It's not uncommon to feel out of sorts with the celebratory tone of the season. The additional stress may affect you emotionally, cognitively, and physically; this is a normal reaction. It is important to be prepared for these feelings. Part of being prepared is being open to changing your plan if need be to best care for yourself during the season.

2)         Recognize that holidays won't be as you dreamed they’d be. There is a good possibility that doing things as you have in the past will be painful and disappointing to you. Doing things a bit differently can acknowledge the importance of what isn’t while preserving continuity with the past. Different menus, changing decorations, attending a different service, or even celebrating in a different location may provide that slight but significant shift. However, be aware that your feelings will still be there. If you decide on a change, be careful not to isolate yourself.

3)         Include your child who has died in your holiday plans. Acknowledging this relationship in tangible and visible ways can be important. If it feels right to you, you might: give gifts to a child in need in your child’s name, select and hang a special new ornament on your tree just for your child, place a rose or other meaningful flower or decoration on your holiday table as a reminder, make a donation in memory of your child. Continuing your bonds with your child at this time of year can be a poignant, but important, part of your grief’s journey. 

4)         The holidays may affect other family members. Talk over your plans. Respect their choices and needs, remember we all grieve differently; compromise if necessary. Everyone (including yourself) should participate in ways that are comfortable.

5)         Avoid additional stress. Decide what you really want to do, and what can be avoided. Perhaps cards don't need to be sent, or shopping can be done by phone or catalog.

6)         Do the right thing: not what others think is right, but what you need and want to do.

Thoughts from a Grieving One

"Return to Center," the Phillips Exeter Academy Chapel, Exeter NH

Last night was the annual Candlelight Memorial Service we have for parents and family members who have suffered a perinatal loss at our hospital, it is also open to the community. My colleague was scheduled to deliver the homily but was taken ill. I was given about three hours to prepare this reflection for the service. In the bulletin for the service, the title for the homily my colleague was to deliver was listed as: "Thoughts from a Grieving One." That seems apt.

Thoughts from a Grieving One

It is a very long journey, this grief of mine. One that has given its own form and shape to my living for over two decades now. My two oldest would be 26 and 25, the last, the youngest would be 22. There were never any others. That is a long, dark grief journey all its own.

I was a young Associate Pastor married to a young Associate Pastor when my babies died. I was, he was, we were, in the business of things religious. I was, then, as I am now, in the business of helping others find meaning in the difficult, grief-filled, painful parts of human existence.

In the tenderness of those young and callow years, before the immensity of the grief, before the enormity of the pain and loss the meaning simply wouldn’t come.

Bound so intricately in through those longed for, hoped for, prayed for little lives and the inexplicable pain and incomprehensible suffering of their dyings to the great mystery of Creation, the cycle of life and of death of grief and sorrow and then of…. I knew not what. No meaning among all the meanings that I knew, and I had learned so many only a few years before and how to use them well—none would offer comfort. There was no balm in Gilead, no easement of my suffering sickness of my soul.

It was like life as I knew it had stopped. Meaninglessness and emptiness, confusion and the void drew me in and were all around me.

The only small point of meaning I could muster, seemingly against my will, were these few words of scripture, the only words that made some small sense. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep….” “….(T)he earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep….” “Formless, void, darkness.” Those were the words that drew me in. I was formless and void and dark.

I remembered enough of my Hebrew to know that formless was translated from the Hebrew word to-hoo, meaning—confusion, uncertainty, emptiness, nothingness…. And void from the word bo-hoo, meaning—emptiness and waste…. And then there was darkness, in Hebrew, teh-home, meaning obscure or some secret place.

And there I was, for there was no doubting in any part of my being that what had happened in the obscure and secret reaches of my body, places designed to create, nurture and bring forth life, was a great darkness that covered the face and the depths of my world with confusion and emptiness, meaninglessness and uncertainty.

For the longest time, this was all I could read. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep….” Finally, I could get to the wind, “…a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Wind, roo-akh, in Hebrew, also breath and spirit, spirit of God.

Finally, I realized it had been the roo-akh all along. For so long it was all I could do, breathe. Breathe into the void, into the emptiness, breathe into the confusion, the uncertainty; breathe into the meaninglessness, the waste. Breathe. Breathe in and out—the roo-akh, the spirit of God, the wind that brought all that is into being. Perhaps, it could create life, new life, within me as well.

Listen now to the story of Creation. Listen for the too-hoo—the confusion, uncertainty, emptiness, nothingness of your own story. Listen for the boo-hoo, the emptiness and waste that seem, perhaps, all around. Listen from the depth of your teh-home those dark and secret places that cover your world.

Focus too now on your breath. Breathe in and breathe out. Focus on the roo-akh you shared with your child who is now gone. Listen for the roo-akh, the Wind, the breath of life, the spirit of God calling for the new life from the formlessness and the void.

Genesis 1 & 2 Select1In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

3Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

6And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. 8God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

9And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. 12The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. 13And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

14And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, 15and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so.

16God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, 18to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

20And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” 21So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. 22God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

2 4These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. ….— 7then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

Let us pray:

Creator of all Life and Breath:

One-by-one every family we know breathes in whispered, clandestine tones….

It happened to us… to our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, to a sister and her husband, brother and sister-in-law, to our best friends….

Four times in a row

before the baby came

once, before

We even knew…

Three times

over six years

and then children

healthy and perfect.

To our relief, the dare-not-breathe-a-word-of-it horrors of never-at-all hang palpably between the words of but a scant few.

Just keep breathing

in and out

in the darkness of the deep void that consumes.

Breath is sometimes the only life you have. It is, often, the only life shared with the child who is gone from your sight. This breath is sometimes the only life you can give.

You, God, you have been there all along…

In the breath, frail as it sometimes seemed.

Breathing with us…

holding us from the beginning,

as we are holding each other, now, in invisible bonds.

We won’t feel this way

always.

Everything that is, you created out of the breathless deep darkness of the void. Wind in the sky and the breath of life into all that is. Into each of us.

You do no less for us, for we gathered here now:

Calling us out of our places of endless darkness…

Helping us find new substance and shape for our living

beyond the void that has taken the shape from our lives.

Carry, us, O Creator God, from this shapeless time, into new fruitfulness for our living.

Call us out of the water of our tears, bringing us to dry land.

Bring light to our darkness, O Creator of light.

Assure in our darkest nights…

that dawn and its daylight will always follow.

When the water of our tears do overcome, console that they team with the potential for new life. Bring forth from us each one of us new life for the living of our days.

Lift us gently, our compassionate Creator. Take us softly in your arms and breathe tenderly into each of us your breath of new life. Amen.

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month

Bereaved Parents Wish List

1. I wish my child hadn't died. I wish I had him back.


2. I wish you wouldn't be afraid to speak my child's name. My child lived and was very important to me. I need to hear that he was important to you also.


3. If I cry and get emotional when you talk about my child I wish you knew that it isn't because you have hurt me. My child's death is the cause of my tears. You have talked about my child, and you have allowed me to share my grief. I thank you for both.


4. I wish you wouldn't "kill" my child again by removing his pictures, artwork, or other remembrances from your home.


5. Being a bereaved parent is not contagious, so I wish you wouldn't shy away from me. I need you now more than ever.


6. I need diversions, so I do want to hear about you; but, I also want you to hear about me. I might be sad and I might cry, but I wish you would let me talk about my child, my favorite topic of the day.


7. I know that you think of and pray for me often. I also know that my child's death pains you, too. I wish you would let me know those things through a phone call, a card or note, or a real big hug.


8. I wish you wouldn't expect my grief to be over in six months. These first months are traumatic for me, but I wish you could understand that my grief will never be over. I will suffer the death of my child until the day I die.

9. I am working very hard in my recovery, but I wish you could understand that I will never fully recover. I will always miss my child, and I will always grieve that he is dead.


10. I wish you wouldn't expect me "not to think about it" or to "be happy." Neither will happen for a very long time, so don't frustrate yourself.


11. I don't want to have a "pity party," but I do wish you would let me grieve. I must hurt before I can heal.


12. I wish you understood how my life has shattered. I know it is miserable for you to be around me when I'm feeling miserable. Please be as patient with me as I am with you.


13. When I say "I'm doing okay," I wish you could understand that I don't "feel" okay and that I struggle daily.


14. I wish you knew that all of the grief reactions I'm having are very normal. Depression, anger, hopelessness and overwhelming sadness are all to be expected. So please excuse me when I'm quiet and withdrawn or irritable and cranky.


15. Your advice to "take one day at a time" is excellent advice. However, a day is too much and too fast for me right now. I wish you could understand that I'm doing good to handle an hour at a time.


16. Please excuse me if I seem rude, certainly not my intent. Sometimes the world around me goes too fast and I need to get off. When I walk away, I wish you would let me find a quiet place to spend time alone.


17. I wish you understood that grief changes people. When my child died, a big part of me died with him. I am not the same person I was before my child died, and I will never be that person again.


18. I wish very much that you could understand; understand my loss and my grief, my silence and my tears, my void and my pain. BUT I pray daily that you will never understand.

Prayer Grieving My Mother in Adoption

THE MOTHER CONNECTION

The New York Times Sunday Magazine, August 17, 1997

Hope Edelman

It rained the day of my grandmother’s funeral, a fine drizzle that clung to our dark coats like a silver veil. She died this past December, a few weeks short of her 90th birthday. We buried her in the family plot just behind my mother, who died at 42. The official documents listed my grandmother’s cause of death as acute respiratory and coronary failure, backed up by advanced breast cancer – an absolute calamity of the chest – but I believe otherwise: that despite all her ailments, she died of loneliness and quite possibly a broken heart. She kept asking for my mother until the very end.


The bonds between mothers and daughters have always been tight in my family – too tight, most of us have complained. It’s as if the women believe that the harder they cling, the more they can protect. If only that were true. Our stories are marked by departure and longings, by frustration and despair. My great-grandmother, Ida, leaving Russia at 36 with three children, saying goodbye to the mother she would never see again. My grandmother, Faye, a stubborn, willful woman with a love so enduring and irrational that it often drove my mother to slam down the telephone or retreat into her bedroom to scream at the walls. My own mother, whose early death from breast cancer left behind two angry teen-age daughters and a mother who walked around for months refusing to accept – was never able to accept – the truth.


In the full Bonwit Teller shopping bags my grandmother used to carry wherever she went, she kept a framed photograph of her mother, a serious woman in a dark print dress who died before I was born. I used to laugh at her for this, teasing her for dragging around a picture of an old woman in the bottom of a tattered paper bag. My mother would hush me, telling me to leave Grandma alone. Only later did I realize the poignancy of this act, how important those bags were to my grandmother’s feelings of safety and well-being, and how the image of her mother must have provided the same: how my mother understood this and how, by gently quieting her daughter, she showed loyalty to an aging mother who at other times nearly drove her mad.


I treasure these memories now, along with the stories these women told me about their lives. As we sat around the kitchen table or took long drives in the car, they handed down women’s culture, replete with all its tales of hardship and triumph, loss and rebirth. My grandmother spoke of her mother’s ability to stretch a piece of meat far enough to feed seven, and about how she herself studied to become a lawyer only to find she didn’t have enough money for the exam fee. My mother told stories about maturing faster that her peers, about how her mother hadn’t prepared her for her menstruation and how she swore, at age 9, that she would tell her daughter in advance. (She did, when I was 8).


But now there is no one left who can verify my memories of these women, who heard the exact stories they told me, or can add to them, or tell me which details I’ve got wrong. At 32, I’m the only woman left in my maternal line, and few things I’ve encountered have made me feel quite so alone.


I was acutely aware of this as I stood at my grandmother’s grave in the gentle rain. Damn it! I wanted to cry out. The last one gone! I understood that I represented a symbolic end point, but I did not yet realize that I could represent a beginning, too. So it is perhaps not all that surprising that when I learned I was pregnant less than two months after the funeral, I received the news with uncharacteristic calm. It was a statistical fluke, one of those birth-control failures that pull effective rates down into the 90-odd percentiles, or so the gynecologist said. I didn’t disagree. In the frenzy that followed – planning a wedding, buying a house and all those doctor’s visits – there wasn’t much time to sit and reflect. Which is probably why I didn’t notice for months that this year I’m bridging the gap between death and birth. I’ve lost all my mothers, but I’m in the process of becoming one, and it’s a sweet and healing continuity that added an unexpectedly profound twist to Mother’s Day this year.


I cried when the ultrasound technician told me the baby is a girl. How will I protect her? How will I accept that I can’t? Each time I feel one of her kicks, already signaling her independence, I feel a blend of joy and wonder and fear and grief unlike anything I’ve known before. And this is what I think: that maybe this child wasn’t an accident after all. Maybe in a family where the love between mothers and daughters was always unquestioned and absolute, a vacuum can’t exist for long. Maybe, just maybe, when the last mother dies, a new one must be born.

"Ask any woman whose mother has died and she will tell you that she is irrevocably altered, as profoundly changed by her mother's death as she was by her mother's life."

~Hope Edelmann

Twenty-eighty years since her death there is integrity, dignity and grace, in the ongoing struggle of grieving my mother. My adopted mother. The only mother I have only known. My Mother's Day prayer asks Jesus to help me find those places within myself which are her bests gifts to me; those places where she can live on.  With Jesus' help, I pray live in ways which offer to those in need of connection and care those gifts which were her gifts to me. Amen. 

For Mother's Day, Chagall's

"Mother and Child in Front of Notre Dame" 1953.

In my 50's, at long last more able to be true to my self: I can see more clearly in the shadows within, some pale reflection of birthmother, Patricia. I can hold, with gentleness and compassion, both the extreme brokenness and frail blessedness of my mother, Frances. And, I can speak softly in my heart, and in my living, of my own three Dear Little Ones whose tender hearts have rested for so long with my own dear mother’s. With gratitude, Happy Mother's Day.

Same Geek Different Outfit: The Codex Sinaiticus is Now Online

When I was a kid, long before computers, one of my dad’s favorite hobbies, especially after heart disease ended his golf “career”, was accounting. He owned a multinational manufacturing company, and thought I know he employed bookkeepers, accountants and financial officers to do this for him; he liked to keep books himself. So he did on large, long sheets of impossibly fine lined ledger paper. He loved it. It always made my eyes role back in my head and my insides go numb when he dragged the stuff out. He did it often. You would never catch me dead doing that. In the thirty-plus years since his death it is one of my strongest memories of him.

Despite the strong association, you won’t ever catch me dead doing that. What can catch me doing is reading about things religious or philosophy or psychology. I need to read in these areas for a living but I also read them in my spare time too, like for a hobby. Humm… not unlike keeping books for your own company in your free time.… Same geek, different outfit.

This week geekdom for me seems to have reached a level unimagined by my dad who never even saw a computer to my knowledge: The Codex Sinaiticus is available online.

According to the website: “Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important books in the world. Handwritten well over 1600 years ago, the manuscript contains the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. Its heavily corrected text is of outstanding importance for the history of the Bible and the manuscript – the oldest substantial book to survive Antiquity – is of supreme importance for the history of the book.”

I entered the site, it’s quite intuitive. I got chills; it is truly amazing to be looking at this manuscript—not at a copy—so foundational to the faith. I poked about a bit and came to Galatians, “Bear the griefs of one another, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (6:2). Isn’t that what Christ is doing in these moments as I marvel not only at this document, but also at how, in doing so I am like my dad. Somehow across time and space, continents and technology Christ leads me tenderly to a place in memory and in heart where this piece of my father, dead for so long, lives within me. Such is the power of the resurrection. In turn, I will know the grace of sitting with others as they grieve and holding theirs on tender hope that time and space, continents and technology, memory and heart will fulfill the law of Christ within them as well. Amen.

Happy Father's Day, Dad

My Dad died while I was at college. A long time ago. I’ve lived well over twice as many years without him as I had with him in my daily life. I was so young for most of our time together. Memory dims. Yet, if I dwell in the memory for a while, I can still recall, with vivid detail, what it felt like when I was a little girl, in petty coats and Mary Janes, to see him come through the door at the end of a work day. I can feel the excitement and bursting love upon seeing him again, feel the anticipation of arms out stretched to receive in warm embrace. My heart recalls its fondest hope. Happy Father’s Day.

The Truth is... Not My Life

I'm living the life no one wants, least of all me. But it is mine and I am responsible for my own happiness and so I must seek the integrity and truth that are mine in the life I've been given.

At 52 divorced 17 years from my husband who cheated on me with women entrusted to his care, I can say that I am only now coming to understand that being a mother is the most life changing thing that has happened to me. Sadly, I am a mother to three children who died before they ever drew a breath, my Dear Little Ones, and to the millions conceived and dead in shattered hopes and broken dreams of over 3,000 monthly vigils held in tortured expectation of s/he who would never come.

I see and read in the blogs and books the term “child free” and although I have no living children, and have spent the last two decades carefully, neurotically and sometimes ragefully, trying to avoid the whole “child/baby thing”, trauma therapists call it selective avoidance, I find now that menopause’s “gifts” have forced me reenter the obgyn zone in ways terrifyingly similar to my infertility struggle days. And by the way, my friends with children are now sprouting grandchildren and I don’t believe I have it in me to not fain excitement about the children of the children whose conceptions, births and lives I systematically avoided for so long because of the unrelenting pain which them simply being kindled within my soul. I cannot live another twenty, thirty, forty years into becoming that old woman, bitter, tortured soul who smells of urine, lives with stray cats, in ceiling-high garbage, friend only to the condescending smile from meals-on-wheels.

Coming now to see more clearly that “child free” is not the truth of me, and that in the grief of them is my maternity for I have pondered them in my heart and carried them in the deepest recesses of my being, having been claimed by a love for them more powerful than any other I have known. Truly, I would and almost did on more than one occasion, give my life for them, sacrifice more of me than I had ever known. In my grieving now I pray for a softening of this mother’s heart of pain and the good guidance of others seeking to make their way through this unmapped, shrouded landscape of living into grief’s maternity.

Listening in Prayer

Migration

This year Marie drives back and forth
from the hospital room of her dying friendto the office of the adoption agency.

I bet sometimes she doesn't knowWhat threshold she is waiting at—

the hand of her sick friend, hot with fever;the theoretical baby just a lot of paperwork so far.

But next year she might be standing by a grave,wearing black with a splash ofbanana vomit on it,the little girl just starting to say Sesame Streetand Cappuccino latte grand Mommy.The future ours for a while to hold, with its heaviness—

and hope moving from one location to anotherlike the holy ghost that it is.

Migration" by Tony Hoagland from What Narcissism Means To Me © Graywolf Press, 2003

At the many thresholds of our future, may our prayers this week seek Help in holding all the heaviness of our deepest griefs and longings. May we find there the Holy hope to we need to keep moving from this place to the next. Amen.

Blessed Return to the Water and Land

I was honored last Sunday to preside at the internment of cremains of a couple married over sixty years who never had a fight that their family can remember. She died about five years ago and he just in April. Their middle son combined their cremains and we gathered to interr them in the rock garden he built overlooking the pond on his property, just as his father requested.

On a beautiful, sun-filled summer day the family gathered—sons and their wives and partners, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, cousins and in-laws of every sort. The golden retriever came carrying a big stick in his mouth chasing the yellow lab in and out of the pond. They shared memories and tended babies, cried and swapped stories about their aging parents. Everything was as it should be to honor the loves and lives which had passed from their midst.

We read some scripture too and prayed a bit…

"The days of man are but as grass; he flourishes like the flower of the field;. When the wind goes over it, it is gone: and its place will know it no more. But the merciful goodness of the Lord endures for ever and ever toward those that fear him. "
(Ps 103:15--17)

"As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" ….Deep calls to deep… By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life. " (Ps. 42:1-3, 7a, 8)

Almighty God, Creator and Sustainer of all that life, we come this beautiful day, in this gentle place of your creation, amid the warm embrace of family and friends to give you thanks, to mourn the loss and celebrate the life of A and to commit him and his beloved B to this earth of yours and to your eternal and tender care. It is at times like these and in places and gatherings like this that we feel strongly how small and fragile are lives truly are; but a hand full of dust and nothing more. But we come knowing that you love us even in our fragility, and in that love we rest secure.

Eternal One, you alone can alone can bring the sorrow and pain of our frail and fading hearts into beauty and compassion—flowering with new life. In these hours, turn hurting hearts once again toward you. In your Word may we know the beauty of this place, among the bonds of love shared here, before the awe and silence of death, speak to each heart gathered, the words of new life for which they long. In the face of death, re-kindle hope and love and bonds of family into the promise of new life. Lift us above all our distress into the beauty and joy and hope of your presence.

In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection and its promise of Living Water through Jesus Christ our Lord, in this place of water and earth, we give back to our God who created them, and us all from the dust of the earth, A and B. We give them back to the elements from which they were formed—ashes to ashes, dust to dust and trust them to the Living Water, entrusting them for all eternity to their Creator’s tender care. Today A and B rest from their labors. There good works follow them to the glory of God and in the lives and loves of all they leave behind. Amen.

Why I Listen

Why Blog

Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress;
my eye wastes away from grief,
my soul and body also.
For my life is spent with sorrow,
and my years with sighing;
my strength fails because of my misery,
and my bones waste away. (Ps. 31: 9-10)

So writes the Psalmist. The wasting of grief, the Hebrew word in both instances here is ashesh. The old King James translates it as consuming—grief so profound it consumes the body and the bones, the soul and the eyes. All human strength fails and only the grace of God offers rescue and relief.

I write because there is nothing left of my own strength, only the grace of God has lifted me above the sorrow and the sighing of a life spent dwelling in the valley of the shadow.

Life’s shadow, its sufferings and its sorrows come in many forms. For many children born into the love of adoption, myself included, there is shadow of an unspoken grief that speaks eloquent testimony to the endurance of our most early bond of love. From there the journey of this shadow came to my father lost, even before his death at all to early of an age, to an illness which slowly sucked his life even before it ceased his breath. And with his illness came the shadow of my mother lost, as well, long before her time to the ravages of alcoholism and its violent speech. Her life too dripped slowly away ending long before it’s due. After my father died all too soon, I their only child, before reaching the age of full majority, became the keeper of her life adrift in alcohol’s squalling seas—her Power of Attorney for health and goods, a mantel which quivers even the most experienced and mature.

All this while finishing an undergraduate degree in Religion and an M. Div. from a seminary a proper distance from her home.

In my marriage our three children die before they even drew a breath. In carrying the second I almost bled to my death upon the bathroom floor and at that same fate nodded with the conception of the third. All my living in those days contained the shadow of this threat as long as we tried to conceive.

I know now, but knew only then in the most hidden parts of me from myself, that for many years my husband carried on serial affairs with women trusted to his care as pastor of their congregations. When finally that knowing came to light one Sunday afternoon as I entered the empty church approaching his office door, there was nothing left to do but save myself, from the dark shadow of our lives and face the even deeper fear, Kierkegaard’s defiant despair at willing not to be myself, alone and suffering all hope of future finally dead. No parents or siblings to comfort me or ease this dark transition into the shadow world of the living of my days in grief of ever sharing heart and breath and life and hope with the child for whom I had so long longed and risked my life for the loving of one as yet untimely born.

In the desperation of my despairing heart, I turned to the pastor of my own church for comfort and support, for hope and help in the living of those dark days. His advice to me was to join another church where I would find more single people. In the dishevelment of my pain, believing I misunderstood his intent, I persisted over many months in pursuit of what I would, in time, come to know was not within him to impart. Unknowingly, I turned for compassion and support trusting my life in some of its deepest and darkest hours to a man whose office door was closed on a darkness which paralleled my own. Clergy sexual misconduct is a vile and evil thing which seeps its tentacles of betrayal and suffering, of abandonment and grief into every nook and cranny of every longing heart it touches.

Though my pastor did not violate my by body, with the help of our denomination’s local officials who knew of the affair he was having during the time I was seeing him for pastoral care and helped him keep our entire congregation in his darkness, his ignoble counsel, and my local denominational leaders violations as fiduciaries of my spiritual and emotional safety and wellbeing within the church, broke within me so many things I could not count the cost.

In the wreckage of this deep despair I journey even further into deaths shadows still and lost so many other things which were dear to me that nothing but my God could save me from the wasting of its consuming grief. And so I write of the grace which finds me on these dark shadows paths and leads into green pastures offering me rest beside still waters. In this blessedness of God my soul finds restore and the journey now within my heart prays seeking always God’s rod and staff, protection and guidance, for the living of my days. So I listen for grace wherever it is spoke. Amen.

Faith in Breath

Funeral Homily

Genesis 2:7 and Romans 14:7-9

“—then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground; and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7).

From the dust of the ground we were created, the Hebrew word for ground is adamah, the Hebrew word for us human beings, adam, reminding us of this rather inauspicious heritage. The ancient wisdom reminds that from the very beginning without God’s breath, breathed into us at the creation of the world, we are nothing but dust. We are nothing in this life save we share the very life breath, the very Spirit (in Hebrew, ruwach, is translated both breath and Spirit) of the Creator of all that is.

In your mother’s final days among you she journeyed to return to her Creator, who gave her life and breath and Spirit, all of which she shared so abundantly with all of you who loved her. It was in that Spirit breath where she placed her final hope and faith for her eternal care.

The last days of her journey, as difficult as they were, were shared by you who loved her best and especially those of you who quite literally shared with her the breath of life, the Spirit of the Living God. You whose hearts literally beat with hers for the many months and days you shared her body and her blood, and who journeyed on with her across these many years; the loving and the crying, the raising and struggle, the praising and the problems which are the common lot we all share in love and hope in the Spirit of this life for which we were created.

Her fear of this final journey, I believe, was not of dying but of struggling into death, of fighting for breath against all hope and all will of her own, all the while wanting only to return to the life of the Spirit who created her and whose very breath had sustained her all the living of her days.

In those final days among you, her hand frail and strong upon your chest, a gesture of her love and faith and hope in the life, which she mourned to leave you, yet which she longed to share again with those who loved her and had passed this final journey years before. Hers a gesture of what love would do when the beloved can no longer find within the strength to sustain the breathing and the living and longs the Spirit’s final breath from this life unto the next.

Her frail hand in final strength upon her heart which trusted in all hope that her life among you would not cease with the passing of her breath, but would beat on in the beauty of the hearts she shares with you and the Spirit of the living God to whom she has returned. She lives on in faith and in the beauty of the lives you shared with her in the living of her days and which lives always on in your loving memory of her who gave you life and who lives forever with the Giver of all Life.

St Paul writes to a congregation of the faith in Rome, “We do not live for ourselves, we do not die for ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, if we die; we die to the Lord, so whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For this end Christ died and lived again so that he might be the Lord of both the living and the dead” (14:7-9).

So she who lived and loved and breathed in the Spirit of the Lord is safely at rest with him and all with whom she shared life and breath and love and Spirit with whom she has now shared faith’s ultimate life journey.

For those of you who remain among the living, who will grieve deeply for her passing and will suffer sorrow for the loss of her in the days and months a head, find comfort with one another—in your sharing of the memories and the loving, the living and the telling of all the joys and sorrows, the laughter and the pain that were the breath she lived among you and in which her spirit still remains. In these find breath, and hope and loving, and the comfort they contain for nothing can separate them from this Life—the Spirit of the risen Christ. In this Spirit’s breath she now rests and it lives among you all your days in the loving and faith and hope you share with one another in the speaking of her name upon your breath and loving Spirit. Amen.

Seek Others Seeking Faith

I am so very sorry that your dear son is gone from you and that he is not here to share the joys of this life with you and big his sister. And, gosh, how very sorry I am that, when you most needed the compassion and love that are at the core of Christ’s ministry, you ran across a Christian Vicar who so painfully, obviously has missed the point of Christ’s teachings and the faith.

There are a lot of boring (unless you like that kind of stuff) theological and biblical reasons why many Christians have strong reactions to the idea of Reincarnation; most of them having to do the soul going heaven to live with Jesus after death. I am also aware however, that there are many doctrines surrounding Reincarnation offered by Hinduism, Buddhism and other ancient Eastern and more contemporary spiritualities. And too, there are many ways that Christians understand both Reincarnation and the teaching of their own Christian traditions about life after death. The short answer is: no one really knows what happens after we are dead.

Though I am the kind of person that likes this boring kind of stuff, I find that on this grief journey of mine I am placing greater importance not on the thought that I will one day be reunited with Elizabeth, Claire and Alice, though I certainly hope and look forward to that, but on how I allow my grief of them to gentle into greater compassion and love as I seek and pray for healing. As I face the sorrow and pain of the loss of my Dear Little Ones, how I survive these griefs which seem unbearable reminds me that somewhere in the universe is a power greater and more powerful than they and that I survive only by its mercy and any growth I obtain is by its grace.

For me that power is the love and compassion of my crucified and risen Lord, but as I understand Buddhism--poorly perhaps, it could also be in my meditation, especially in my grief, on the Dharma or compassion of creation for myself and all living things. As I understand Hinduism--again I am sure quite poorly, I might be seeking, in my meditation on my grief, to know the truths my higher self might want me to know about this life on my grief journey.

I personally encourage you to seek out others who share your faith and who seek, as do you in its meaning, a gentling of life’s deep pains and sorrows.

My reading of Christian scripture and my knowing of Christ in prayer is of someone who would offer you compassion in your grieving, mercy a mid your pain and an offer of rest and comfort to you, no matter what you believed, in the name of the One he called by the Aramaic equivalent of Daddy.

Wishing you days of compassion, mercy, rest and comfort.

Holidays and Counting

As of this Forth of July, I've passed over two hundred holidays alone, that's counting my birthdays. It is a conservative estimate of about five thousand hours spent trying to find some place of deeper meaning out of which to live other than the stark truth of my existence--that I have no parents or siblings; that because I am adopted, once my parents died, my "family" claimed no bond to me; that my three Dear Little Ones--Elizabeth, Claire and Alice are dead and that my single life of childlessness, as I'm passing into menopause, is not of my choosing. Though I chose my divorce, I did not choose the affairs he had with women in the congregations he served as pastor, and when his behavior came to light and he showed no remorse, nor any inclination to change, his inability to choose our marriage made my choice inevitable.

With the passing of each of these holiday-mile-markers on this path I'm traveling, I have become more and more aware that it is a journey into the darkest fear which lurks in the shadows of the human soul.

W. R. D. Fairbairn's Psychological Studies of the Personality, explores this most fundamental human need--the need for human relationship. Breaking ground in the theory of psychoanalysis he wrote, "The real libidinal aim is the establishment of satisfactory relationship with objects" (p. 138). Our genesis as Fairbairn understands it, proclaims the truth of Genesis, "Let us make man in our own image... it is not good for man to be alone" (Genesis 1:26 & 2:18). At the most fundamental level of our existence, at the place where our most human natures meet our most divine we long for relationship.

A year ago on Easter Sunday, my path a mid this most fundamental longing took a turn. God spoke in a voice both clear and deep: "It is not good for you to live alone, and so much of it has been of your own choosing. You have chosen faith in the truth of your aloneness and the reality of your pain and the power of your suffering of your losses over me. It is not good for you to be alone. Can you choose me? Is my love for you not the Truth? Is my grace not that which is truly real? Am I not more powerful that all the pain of all that you have lost and suffered?"

And so it began: Can I trust God more than all of these? I can know this only as his grace and seek the blessing of his strength and trust the guiding of his hand. Nothing I have can show the way.