Monday, November 24, 2008

Grieving Our Way Through The Holidays

The Monday before Thanksgiving several years ago, I made pastoral calls on two parish families whom I knew to be grieving painful losses. The two households could not have been more different. In one, the dining room table was already set for the feast to come, and on the chair at its head stood a large picture of the grandfather whose funeral I conducted the previous year. Other family pictures that included him were prominently displayed throughout the living room, den, and kitchen as well. This year, we're going to remember a lot, talk a lot, and laugh a lot about Pop, his son told me with a lilt in his voice.

In the other home I visited that afternoon, there were no signs of Thanksgiving preparations at all. The rooms were conspicuously devoid of any reminders that a much beloved wife and mother had once lived there. Her husband told me that that she would have wanted the family just to get on with their lives and not dwell on her. It's helped to do just that, he said, or we'd all be stuck in the past the way my mother-in-law is. His plan was to eat Thanksgiving dinner with his teen-age daughters at the local cafeteria. I made a mental note to myself to think more about whether the two approaches to the coming Thanksgiving Day that I saw in both homes that afternoon were more the cause or the effect of how each family was doing with their grieving. The best I could come up with at the time was that it was a little of both.

Recently I came across a research-oriented study on grief by two therapists in Colorado, Steve and Connirae Andreas, that helped confirm my own developing intuition back then that maintaining an active relationship with someone we have lost by means of stimulating and enjoying our memories of them is a very good thing. It works better than what may seem to be a more heroic approach of putting that person out of our minds as soon as possible and moving on. It was this latter approach that the second family I described had embarked upon, with the "help" of well-meaning friends, and it did not seem to me to be coming off very well. The Andreas have an insightful way of putting the point of this paragraph, in terms of keeping our deceased loved ones' presence "comfortably inside" us.

One thing that still bothers me about some of the so-called "classic" literature on grief and grief recovery is its taking too much liberty with what the ancient Preacher of the Old Testament teaches us about the "seasons" of life. There is a time to mourn, he wrote, and then there is a time to dance. (Ecclesiastes 3:4) He did not, however, tell us how much time we are allowed for the transition, contrary to the views of many mental health professionals who suggest not too subtly that letting heavy grieving go on for too long ---much longer than a year seems to be what "too long" means --- will put us into unnecessarily "complicated bereavement." In my experience, grief-work takes as long as it takes, and it tends to go better when we activate good memories of the one(s) we have lost rather than when we seal off easy access to those memories.

Most grieving people with whom I talk and work who either cannot get beyond its initial, intense stage, or who try to get over it by deadening themselves to feelings altogether, tell me with unnerving consistency that they feel they are required to disconnect altogether from the one(s) they have lost, that it is too heart wrenching to do it, and that they are somehow not measuring up to what is expected of them. I try to remind them as best I can that we are created to seek, love, and cherish close relationships, not to sever them entirely, even ones that may not be altogether good for us. Basically, disconnecting from them is something that God takes care of for us; we do not need to work very hard at doing it ourselves. Why? Because people we love die, physically. Our grief-work begins by accepting this God-ordained fact and by holding in our hearts and minds, that is, through memory, those we love whose lives are now being lived out elsewhere.

A lot of people are grieving a lot of things these days, more things than usual. I have been thinking a lot about their grieving, and my own, enough to warrant a couple more attempts in the next two columns to deal with how all of us might better face the holidays that are upon us in a time of loss and in the midst of national crisis.

Monday, November 10, 2008

A Puppy, A Pastor, And A President

Given what lies ahead for our next President, it was something of a relief that the Obama family shared a lighter moment with us that involved reconciling conflicting ideas about the next canine occupant of the White House. I loved the way the President-elect summed up the dilemma: finding a mutt who won't bring about allergic reactions. It got me to thinking about another dilemma facing the next First Family: selecting their next pastor.

Whatever one may think of the Obamas' former pastor and of their too lengthy association with him, removing oneself from the caring environment of a formerly trusted community of faith is a wrenching experience that is only made worse by not finding a new church home within a reasonable period of time. I cannot imagine how hard it must have been for this family to face a decision like this in the midst of the most upending period of their lives. It might have been made a little easier by the pastor himself. From my vantage point, he disregarded rather flagrantly the aspiring family's well being in pursuing his own prophetic agenda at the expense of taking a more pastoral role in the situation in which he and his church suddenly found themselves. In a sense, Barack Obama did not leave his church; his church and their pastor left him. Even so, the Obamas' decision, both necessary and right, left them without a church home and, until recently at least, without either the time or the opportunity to search for one.

One hope that I continue to harbor from the Jeremiah Wright controversy is that religious people all across the land can see in it an opportunity to do some serious thinking about both the agonizing challenges and soaring possibilities that surround the ministry of every truly faithful and effective pastor, priest, rabbi, and imam today. For openers, we need to reflect deeply on the awesome scope of pastoral responsibility itself. Pastors are servants of God's message, God's people, and God's kingdom together, not of one to the exclusion of the other.

At any given moment, it may seem that fulfilling any one of these responsibilities requires setting aside the other or others. Illustration: one clergyperson happens upon the scene of a traffic accident and finds himself cradling a drunken driver who has just wiped out a whole family by running a red light, and who is desperately crying out for him to pray for his soul. Or: another discovers that key leaders of her church's soup kitchen ministry are members of the local KKK. Or: still another struggles with pressures from the congregation and the community to give the pulpit over to politicians at election time.

Another thing worth reflecting on is how leaders of congregations, in witnessing faithfully to God's work in the world, can ensure that irritated reactions will not elevate to some combination of panic, rage, and withdrawal. The Bible speaks often of those who are shepherds of others' souls bearing an awesome responsibility to comfort as well as afflict people. As far as I can make out, the balm of Gilead was never intended to be only an allergen. Hopefully, the Obamas' next pastor will be as free of the latter as their new puppy will be.

Wondering and worrying about the Obamas' ecclesial uprootedness lately, I have let my thoughts drift back to Jeremiah Wright's frighteningly effective but otherwise preposterous posturing across many years in dangerously charged political atmospheres. And to similarly odious experiences listening to other princes of the pulpit pound the fear of everlasting damnation into people, while still others sweetly seduce their enraptured constituency to pony up just a little more for the Lord and rest assured of prosperity as their fitting reward. Guys and now gals like these do tend to capture and hold peoples' interest. But ministers are not supposed to be entertainers, and by the world's standards the salvation process can even border on the boring. Get up early, say a few words of thanksgiving to God, help the neighbors, say a few more words of thanks, find some more neighbors who need help, say even more words of thanks, turn the light out, and drop off to sleep eager to begin the process all over again. If the President-elect and his family succeed in finding a bunch of people like this to be around, they can count themselves richly blessed.

I have an idea about what the pastor of such an undistinguished congregation might look like: "no beauty, no majesty to catch our eyes, no grace to attract us to him." (Isaiah 53:2) Pretty much of a mutt, actually. Good hunting, dear ones.