Images and Random Thoughts on Grief

My father-in-law died June 29th, 2012 at 5 am. It is a significant loss. He was a good man. I am in grief. This grief is not an exclusive experience. No, it touches the lingering grief that stays with me from losing my father in 2006, from losing my mother-in-law in 2011, and other smaller losses that have decided to take longer than I have years in me to heal. Grief is cumulative. Below are some raw random thoughts on this grief.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

My thoughts are confused like layers of hurried clouds headed in different directions just before a storm. My emotions are pent up like billowing clouds laden with water, but refusing to rain any of it out. There are lightning stabs; there are thunder starts. And invisible dam defies gravity and holds it all up. It roils and churns looking for a weakness, some way to burst forth.

My soul is pregnant with grief. But there is no relief in giving birth to a tornado. The unpredictable swirl of winds destroys this and has mercy on that and there is no explanation There is no way to know when it will swoop down for a heart crushing appearance.

There is a loneliness in a grief storm that seven billion people can't solve.

There is a numbness so deep that all the pain in the world can't produce a sensation.

There is a pain so deep that a bucket of novocaine can't numb.

There profound awareness of Nothing occupies too much space.

Words scurry away like roaches under the quick midnight kitchen light and meaning runs away with them. They exist, but they cannot be found.

Memories disappear like a power outage.

Hope gasps as its own existence flashes before its eye.

"I want Nothing" is a sick song stuck in the soul.

"I want Nothing" is the ironic state of a grief-smudged life - the more I get of it the less I have.

Running away from grief is like running away from air. It's everywhere and is it required.

Oh, if grief were merely being sad, it would be so easy. It would be understood. It would be unambiguous.

Grief has a Protestant work ethic. It never sleeps and never takes a vacation.

Oh grief, must we become friends?

Ramblings on Life and Death: The Spectrum of Death

Life and death seem to be polar opposites. Death is the absence of life, and if there is some life, death is nowhere to be found. Life and death are a dichotomous reality.

There is plenty of evidence for this sort of dichotomous understanding of life and death. People buried in cemeteries stay there. No one wonders whether those bodies are coming back. My grandfather died of heart attack when I was 10 years old. He was alive and then he was dead. Just like that.

And yet, death and life are not always so easily categorized. Anyone who has a debilitating disease, serious mental health disorder, or has a loved one in hospice, can see that there is life and there is death co-existing – competing as it were, for dominance.

People wrestling with major depression sometimes describe the experience as a weight on their spirits, as thought death itself were gnawing away at their still living soul. People with long term or terminal illnesses or fragile health conditions are aware that death is not only near, but sometimes encroaches in, even when life is very much active. In hospice we see the relenting of life in an often gradual transition to death. Death occupies more and more while life vacates more and more.

Life and death is more like a spectrum with a point of no return on the death side. Unless the person has crossed the point of no return, there is some life, but there has been some death as well.

This idea that there is a little death in all of us is hard for many to accept. We want to be fully alive until we are fully dead, but this is not the reality for most people. We assert our science and our technology in efforts to eliminate the death end of the spectrum – or at least stretch it our further than it is. We assert art and literature in efforts to understand this spectrum and this mystery of death, to define it, to control it just a little.

Theology enters in differently than art and science in that theology does not accept death as an end to the spectrum, but rather a transition into the next portion of the spectrum. It is the great reversal where life is launched from death itself like the very dead seed germinates when conditions are right.

Science and art seek to deal with death on its terms while theology deals with death on other terms.

As we sit with my father-in-law at in home hospice, giving him medicine for comfort, we see this spectrum playing out. We do not believe that his death is the end of the story, that there is no more life once death captures his entire body. We see death as a transition. His weak, broken, leaking body is the seed of something wonderful about to germinate.

Our lives, everything out our fleshly existence happens in the dirt of heaven. Only when we die can we live above the dirt.

Song of the Northern Pacific

I tried to get the attention of the ocean. I wanted to listen to what she would tell me. I introduced myself and asked a questions, but she would not answer. In fact, I was completely ignored. I knew she had much to say, but she would not speak to me, not with words. No. The ocean does not stoop and the ocean does not waste. Words fail as they leave far too much room for interpretation.

The ocean does not speak, but she does sing and she does dance. She sings not with words, but with unending experience. She performs her music - she dances.

She didn’t notice me. I rode a massive boat over her skin and she didn’t notice. I exploded onto her with all my might, with all my fury, with all my sound. I churned her waters with a mighty churn, like pools under Niagara. White foam waked from my ship, cutting a thick line through her surface. I rocked her with all I had. 

Within seconds, the will of the sea recouped my little flutter and she became untouched once again – not even tickled. She was unamused by me, not because I was unamusing, but because I was not consequential enough to be noticed. My greatest barbaric yalp melts into silence, into nothing, into the sea.

The sea is not big on empathy. She’ll open up and swallow a boat without remorse. She offers no condolence. She’ll let a whale launch through her surface without need for applause. She is impervious to cursing and to affirmation. She has never walked a mile in your shoes and never intends to. She does not bless and she does not curse with any sense of benevolence or malovence. She provides, but not because she is giving. She is violent, but not because she is evil. She is simply being who she is and will not agree to be otherwise.

Rally of a Lifetime

The ump should have called the game for fog in the 4th inning. A dense fog had settled into the late night game at the  St. Louis Park ball field that hosted the Minnesota state tournament for the 13 year old Babe Ruth league. It was a losers bracket game in the double elimination tournament – Apple Valley against St. Paul Battle Creek. Apple Valley was down 7-1 in the 4th inning and we were grumbling about the fog.
The umpire wasn’t about to call the game. It was already past ten o’clock at night and the winner had to play a double header the next day. The tournament schedule was already way behind. Barring tornadic activity, the game was on.
We were a powerhouse that year. When the season ended, we had won 64 games and lost 10. It was demoralizing to be down to a patsy team like Battle Creek, a team that played bush-league ball and kept on with the infantile baseball chants bad coaches allow their teams to do. We were too old for the “belly itcher” chant.
We fought out way back to a score of 7-4, but now it was the bottom of the 7th inning. This was it. If we did not come up with three runs, it was the last game of the season. We would go home and privately cry.
Battle Creek was low on pitching. There was an inning limit per pitcher and their good pitchers had all burned through their allotment. They brought in some kid to pitch that last inning who had probably played second base all year hoping for a chance to pitch, but never gotten one because frankly, he wasn’t that good. He walked the bases full for our number 5 hitter, Harry Anderson.
Harry had prematurely already grown into a man by the age of 13. He was regularly shaving and weighed over 200 pounds. He had already hit a ball over 400 feet earlier in the season. It was called the “condo shot” because he hit it off the roof of a condo past the left field fence. Harry was capable of ending the game with a grand slam. He was also capable of ending the game by striking out.
With two outs in the bottom of the last inning, down by three runs, Harry stepped up to the plate with a I-am-going-to-be-a-hero look on his face. It was the look that made it most likely for him to strike out. The first pitch came in like watermelon. Harry swung for the fence, but completely missed the ball. Brian Davidson was on first base and clapped, “Let’s go Harry, no need to be a hero.”
The next pitch came in as fat as the first. Harry swung again and missed. It was his NASA swing as he was going for the stars, which were completely obscured by the dense fog. In fact, during Harry’s at bat, the fog intensified. We could barely see where the outfielders were. The stadium lights just made the fog bright, but didn’t help in seeing much.
Harry looked at the next pitch. A ball . He looked at two more. ball two – ball three. Now it was a 3-2 count with two outs in the bottom of the last inning of the losers bracket game of the Minnesota state tournament. The next pitch carried a lot of weight.
The pitcher threw another watermelon and Harry went NASA again, only this time he connected. He sent the ball straight up into the fog and it disappeared. Everyone ran. The second baseman backpedaled, but looked confused. The right fielder charged, but with shoulders shrugged. Harry rounded first like a freight train laden with cargo. our coach John Sherman screamed wildly, “Run, no one knows where it is!”
The ball landed in shallow right field almost hitting the right fielder on the head. Harry lumbered into second base as the rest of the bases cleared. The game was tied. The bench went berserk. Harry stood on second base pulling his batting glove off finger by finger with an I-knew-it-all-along look on his face. Only this time it didn’t annoy anyone. Harry was the hero.
Tim Kraft stepped to the plate next and lined the first pitch into right center field. We heard something hit the chain link fence which we only assumed was the ball. The right and center fielders disappeared into the fog haplessly chasing the sound of a ball. Harry lumbered home and scored the game winning run as the team rushed home plate and tackled him. We would have lifted him onto our shoulders, but he was just too big. We all hugged. It is times like these when men can pour on the hugs.
It was the rally of a lifetime. 

Healing From Privilege?

Healing from privilege? What does that even mean? How is privilege a wound? What’s wrong with getting ahead? Having some entitlement? having a little leverage in life? It’s not like I am a bad person to have resources or authority or get a pass on a few things others have to account for, am I? Am I?

Privilege in and of itself is not a wound. There is nothing wrong with having privilege, per se. However, there are significant vulnerabilities that come with privilege that initially hurt other people and ultimately hurt oneself.

There are at least three significant areas in which people with privilege need to heal.

Mono-awareness. People with privilege do not have to be aware of much outside of themselves because in large measure there is little need to have to be aware of it. Nothing is contingent on needing to know how others (gender, ethnicity, wealth…etc) live because they are (in the short term) unnecessary. People with privilege do not have to get to know anyone unlike themselves. Therefore the privileged seem to gain nothing for stepping outside their comfort zone. It is the exact opposite with the less privileged.

Healing from mono-awareness means first and foremost becoming aware that one is privileged – that not everyone lives like they do. What is easy for them is difficult or impossible for others. Then it means being intentional about learning the lives other people who are very different than themselves. It requires learning enough to be able to grow empathy for other people and be able to connect in their less than privileged status.

Leveraging for self. People with privilege have, in general, either learned how to leverage the system to their advantage or were simply born into a leveraged situation. There is power in their status or resources which make increasing their status or resources easier than less privileged people. There is a certain logic to this leveraging that may or may not include greed for more resources or lust for for more status or power. Whether there is greed and lust involved or not, the very act of leveraging all of one’s power for oneself is a wound.

Healing from leveraging for oneself means to find meaningful and sustainable ways to leverage one’s power, resources, and status for the benefit of others who have les privilege. It is an intentional act that should not be reactionary, guilt-based, or a mask for further leveraging as so much philanthropy is today.

Narcissism. The world revolves around the privileged. Attention, resources, trends – any pathway toward maintaining relevance seems to require a little if not a lot of narcissism. It is an accepted part of the game. Be as narcissistic as possible without looking like that is what you are doing – who you are being. You can get away with a whole lot of it without penalty with some extraordinary payoffs.

Narcissism is a wound in need of healing. Gaining perspective that any world that would decide to revolve around you is a pretty sick world is a good place to start. Being willing to release and abandon the narcissistic striving required to maintain one’s place is a major component to healing the would of privilege.

A final word. Healing the wound of privilege does not require a vow of poverty. It requires perspective, empathy, and action.

To Heal or To Hurt; To Be Healed or To Be Hurt

Life is consequential. Everything matters, even if just a little bit. Every single human interaction serves as a mutually constructed change of trajectory for everyone directly involved in the interaction, not to mention those indirectly involved.

Presence Matters. Each individual’s presence matters – always - in every situation in which they are present. People are simply incapable of not behaving and therefore incapable of not communicating and therefore incapable of being inconsequential. Presence is influence of some kind. When we are in the presence of other people we are constantly in the process of making their experience of the moment different than it would have been otherwise.

Absence Matters. Absence matters just as much as presence and sometimes even more. There are contexts and situations in which a person is expected or needed or wanted to fill a role. When that person is absent, their non-presence is felt. Absence is still a behavior, still a communication, and still an influence.

It should be noted that there are two kinds of presence/absence. Physical presence is the kind of presence we think of most often. It is obvious when someone is physically present. However, there is another kind of presence that is a little less obvious – psychological presence. Psychological presence is when someone is felt, whether their body is there or not. A parent facebooking while their child is telling them an important event of the their day is being physically present, but psychologically absent. Being apart form someone on a special holiday could be a situation ion which a person is physically absent, but psychologically present. When physical presence and psychological presence are incongruent, there may be stress or relational ambiguity.

Intentionally Present. Intentionality of presence or absence is important because it is consequential. Deciding to be present or absent in any moment is the first step of influence and being influenced, of healing or being healed, or hurting or being hurt. Simply being aware that presence or absence matters is part of what it means to be intentional about making a difference in this world…about deciding how this world will make a difference on yourself.

Making Presence Matter. When the decision to be present occurs or when you find yourself present in a situation that was unplanned, being intentional with the way that presence is spent matters. Will this be an experience in which your presence helps the other present people? Will you be a healing presence for others? Or will you be a hurting presence? It is impossible for your presence to be neutral. Even in the slightest way, people will be better off or worse off because of you.

Making Meaning of every Moment. Everyone else’s presence and absence has an impact on you as well. No one is neutral. Whether the presence of absence of others hurts or heals has two important factors. The first is the initial impact of their presence or absence. Does it heal or does it hurt immediately? What is the reflexive internal or external response before you even get a chance to think on it? The second factor is how the experience is framed – essentially, what meaning will you decide to make of it? Events are events and have an initial impact, but the post-event meaning making shifts the influence from the sender to the receiver.

Viktor Frankl used this power of interpretation and it saved his life. He developed logotherapy as a way of healing and living.

Our lives matter. We cannot not have meaning for ourselves and for everyone else who connects with us in any way. We are consequential people in that we impact and influence others. We are particular people in that the influence we have is unlike the influence anyone else has or could ever have were they to put their entire effort into it. We will heal or hurt. We will be healed or be hurt. And best of all, we have some say so in all of this.

Naturepreach

Nature is constantly telling the truth. There is a conversation nature is having with us, and if we dare to listen, we might hear a truth that can change our lives. In nature, we might just hear the voice of God. Here are some of the truths I heard nature tell me in a recent trip to Fall Creek Falls, a state park in Tennessee.

• Life is normal, but so is death.
• Beauty is free, but not unlimited.
• Freedom demands wisdom and refuses to protect a person from bad decisions.
• There is room for lots of different creatures.
• I am small.
• I am huge.
• There are forces that exist that are impossible to resist – and most of them are good.
• There is song, laughter, and applause that does not depend on the presence of humans.
• Nature enjoys a relationship with humans more than ownership by humans.
• Nature is generous.
• The story of life is told once a year and the storytellers are the trees.
• Nature doesn’t require an audience, but doesn’t mind one either.
• Nature isn’t worried about death or taxes.
• Beauty can induce a blessed and refreshing forgetfulness.
• The storehouses of inspiration are unlimited.
• When everyone does what they are meant to do, no one gets exploited.
• There is enough.
• Process outlasts content every time.
• Nature is self-cleansing, self-restoring, and self-contained.
• Respect is always appropriate.

To be healed and to heal

I was late to a research meeting in McNeal Hall on the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota. Stressed, scattered, and trying to recall what it was I was supposed to have prepared for this meeting and how I might pass in front of everyone else as prepared when I was not, I entered McNeal Hall. Entering on the ground floor level of the Southside entrance, I went up the stairs two steps at a time, mumbling something to myself like a confused and agitated man who could thank caffeine for taking the edge off of the effects of perpetual insomnia. That’s when it came out.

  “The purpose of my life is to be healed and to heal others.”

I said this single sentence out loud, with clarity, and confidence – a trifecta. It made more sense to me than anything I had ever uttered before in my life. It felt profound when I said it. A relief. I believed it without uncertainty. I had spoken truth.

So what did this mean? I was being formed, sometimes rather reluctantly, into a social science researcher in the premier Family Social Science Department in the world. How would being a researcher accomplish such a goal? I was already a licensed marriage and family therapist. Could I not accomplish this goal in life without the multiple agonies of getting a Ph.D? So why this moment of clarity in this place? At this time? With this perceived life trajectory?

And what were my wounds? How would these wounds inform my call to heal others? Who would the “others” be that I should help to heal?

There are many ways in which healing occurs, as many ways as there are to be wounded, I suppose – perhaps even more. There are so many kinds of wounds a person can experience. There are physical wounds, of course, ranging from bumps and bruises to losing limbs and traumatic brain injuries. There are psychological wounds as well. The DSM 5 catalogs a whole bunch of them. There are relational wounds, spiritual wounds, wounds of oppression, injustice, identity, sexuality, privilege, grief & loss, betrayal, dismissal, missed opportunity and regret. There are so many different kinds of wounds and we all experience some of them. There are no unwounded people.

Everyone is dealing with their wounds. I am dealing with mine. I deal with them first off by trying to be aware of what they are. An unattended to or unknown wound can become what is called, “normal,” and yet it is not healthy. I am also seeking to observe my own reflexive efforts to attend to my wounds. How am I coping with my wounds when I don’t even realize that is what I am doing? (why do I drink so much caffeine?)

I want to move from reflexive to intentional in the way I deal with my wounds. I want to move from reactive to responsive. From fear-filled to pr0active (courageous). From wounded to healed.

It is from my wounds that I more likely to spread my pain to others. Untreated wounds become infectious. The wounds I carry with me which go unknown are the wounds that have the highest likelihood of hurting someone else.

The reason I must heal myself and all the healing processes to influence me is not only that I might live with the benefits of healing. If that were the case, however, it would be enough. But there is a larger reason to enter into healing. The more healed I am the less my wounds will negatively affect others. I bless the public world by healing my private world.

Personal healing is an act of social justice because it is not possible to quarantine one’s own wounding. The person who believe they’ve successfully isolated their woundings is living a life of naïve unawareness of the extent and influence of their wounding. They spread their wounds without knowing.

Beyond healing for one’s own sake and for the sake of others, I must go about helping others to heal as well. I must do this in whatever context I find myself in.

Each would I experience myself is instructive of the wounds many others have experienced. Each of my wounds wounds tells a story as do the wounds of everyone. Perhaps our stories merge a little and we each feel less alone.

Evaporating

I was an ocean;
I surged and crashed,
I raged torrent fits
Against rock and sand;
I shaped shores,
I smoothed stones,
My tidal tantrums
Educated poets,
Hypnotized artists,
Drown sailors,
And made people into lovers.
-and the sun shone on me.

I was a lake;
I shimmered and stirred;
I held fish and birds;
I lapped shores;
Stoneskippers paradise,
My quiet mystery
Educated poets,
Hypnotized artists,
Drown city noise,
And made people into lovers
-and the sun shone on me.

I was a puddle;
Gathered drops and drips;
I held moments and mud;
Potholes and lowspots;
My ephemeral existence
Educated poets
Hypnotized artists,
Drown sneakers,
And made grown-ups into children
-and the sun shone on me.

I was a tear;
I kissed and told;
I held hearts and souls;
I fell into laps;
My impassioned ache
Educated poets,
Hypnotized artists,
Drown hopes and fears alike,
And returned people back to flesh
-and the sun shone on me

Face time with the Risen Christ

If you had been dead three days and then had been raised from the dead, who would you go show yourself to? Who would you want to know you were alive? Who would need to see the proof?

Jesus had some decisions to make upon being raised from the dead. He would walk the earth a few more weeks and then “ascend” to Heaven (as though Heaven we up there somewhere). One of the important decisions he had to make was who he would intentionally show himself to.

Pilate. Were I in Jesus’ sandals, I might be tempted to go to Pontius Pilate, the Roman official who had legal authority to approve of a crucifixion. Pilate was really wishy washy and gave in to the force of the mob in order to have Jesus killed by his own order. What might he do seeing that man he killed stand face to face? What might Pilate say? Could it be that all Pilate needed was to see Jesus once again? Would he believe differently then? Perhaps Jesus would have some new credibility in Rome and leverage the entire Roman empire for the sake of his mission. Why miss out on such a brief window of power?

But Jesus didn’t go to Pilate. Jesus never had much respect for the power of the Roman empire. He did not ever feel compelled to use any of its power for his mission on earth. In fact, although the power of Rome was vast in it reach and might, it failed to be the sort of power that would sustain the sort of movement Jesus was about. There is no military might, no geographical control, not economic power that is suitable to sustain the mission of Jesus. So Jesus had no motivation after his death to show himself to Pilate because at best there was going to be a divine, “I Told You So,” and frankly Jesus had better things to do.

Sanhedrin. If I were the resurrected Jesus I would have been tempted to go back to my own religious group and point out their errors and mistakes. I would have wanted show up in the religious gathering and shock them all. I would have looked the chief priest in the eye and asked him impossible questions. I would have wanted to rescue my own group.

But Jesus didn’t do this either. There was nothing there for him. Jesus knew that the Jewish religious system, the very system into which he was born (the one he initiated with Abraham), had become as corrupt as Roman politics. Each system had responded to his mission with murder – wouldn’t it just be more of the same response to the mission which had not changed in death?

No, Jesus had no time for Rome and no time for the Sanhedrin. They were not part of his mission before he was crucified and they were not part of his mission after he was crucified.

Friends. Instead of making his resurrected presence known with power political and religious leaders, Jesus went back to the nobodies he had been hanging out with for the past three years. He wanted his friends to know he was back. He knew that the people who believed in him and followed him, flawed a crew as it was, before he was crucified were going to be the people most likely to reproduce his subversive ways after he was raised. He also knew that they were the most likely to have nothing to lose. They had no split allegiances.

Had Jesus gone to appeal to the power of Rome, his success in his mission would not only have looked like Roman and taken on its power structures, it would have experienced the decline and fall of Rome and be done itself. Had Jesus gone to appeal to the power of the Jewish religious system, Christianity would never have been more then a Jewish sect.

Jesus did not come to bless the Jews only. He was not only the Messiah to the Jews, but to the entire world.

In short, Jesus couldn’t allow himself to think as small as Rome or as small as the Jewish religious system of the day. His vision was more grand than that of vast political and religious systems. His vision was something more enduring and powerful. Jesus started his mission with friendships.