Readings:
from A Death in the Family by James Agee
Throughout these days Mary had drawn a kind of solace from the recurrent thought: at least I am enduring it. I am aware of what has happened, I am meeting it face to face, I am living through it. There had been, even, a kind of pride, a desolate kind of pleasure, in the feeling: I am carrying a heavier weight than I could have dreamed it possible for a human being to carry, yet I am living through it. It had of course occurred to her that this happens to many people, that it is very common, and she humbled and comforted herself in this thought.
She thought: this is simply what living is; I never realized before what it is. She thought: now I am more nearly a grown member of the human race. Bearing children, which had seemed so much, was just so much apprenticeship. She thought that she had never before had a chance to realize the strength that human beings have, to endure; she loved and revered all those who had ever suffered, even those who had failed to endure.
She thought that she had never before had a chance to realize the might, grimness and tenderness of God. She thought that now for the first time she began to know herself, and she gained extraordinary hope in this beginning of knowledge. She thought that she had almost grown up overnight. She thought that she had realized all that was in her soul to realize in the event, and when at length the time came to put on her veil, leave the bedroom she had shared with her husband, leave their home, and go down to see him for the first time since his death and to see the long day through, which would cover him out of sight for the duration of this world, she thought that she was firm and ready.
It was when she came to the door, to leave this room and to leave this shape of existence forever, that realization poured upon and overwhelmed her through which, in retrospect, she would one day know that all that had gone before was nothing to this. The realization came without shape or definability, save as it was focused in the pure physical acts of leaving the room, but came with such force, such monstrous piercing weight, in all her heart and soul and mind and body but above all in the womb, where it arrived and dwelt like a cold and prodigious, spreading stone, that groaned almost inaudibly, almost a mere silent breath, an Ohhhhhh, and doubled deeply over, hands to her belly, and her knee joints melted.
Daily Little Deaths by Stanley Keleman
We are always dying a bit, always giving things up, always having things taken away. ...Life can be described as a migration through many formative loops, many little dyings. Growth, change and maturing occur by deforming the old and forming the new. ...There are no turning points that are not accompanied by feelings of dying. Each person handles them uniquely. Turning points evoke expressions of anger, pain, excitement, loss, sacrifice, grief and others. Becoming aware of how you handle turning points is. ..discovering how you live with little dyings. Living your dying is learning about the transformation arising from your turning points. (Living Your Dying, by Stanley Keleman p. 25)
Sermon
Dealing with Devastation, by The Rev. Sydney Wilde
In the aftermath of the devastation dealt to New Orleans, and the gulf coast by Hurricane Katrina and the continuing trauma inflicted by Rita many people, both those directly involved and those who have watched, find themselves engulfed by stages of grief: denial, depression, anger, bargaining, and acceptance – not necessarily in that order. Embedded within these categories is also pride, bitterness frustration, helplessness, hopelessness, compassion and transformation.
Like the “Two Old Women” of this morning’s story, victims of disasters are left with nothing, their lives are devastated – as are the lives of those who experience trauma, or lose someone who has meant the world to them. Some of us may recognize in the faces we see on screen or in a story, some devastation that we, ourselves have felt: abandonment, the death of our mother or father, the loss of a child to whom we have given our heart. Devastation comes in all shapes and sizes.
It is loss. Loss of a job, a home, a wife or husband or partner, loss of a dear friend. Loss of physical ability, our peace of mind or our future. Loss of our identity. Part of our fascination with disasters is the question always on our minds, “How would I fare in a situation like that?” “Would I survive? Would I get out? Would I conduct myself with dignity or fall apart?” I wonder if we consider transformation?
Whenever we lose a part of ourselves we have a choice: Do we give up and wither away, or do we move forward to become someone else. As Star, the younger of the Two Old Women, said. “We can die here, or die trying.” The choice to move forward is long and arduous. It requires that first we mourn what is lost. If we do not mourn we will not heal and whatever progress we make will be temporary, and will crumble beneath us, again and again. So how do we mourn?
First we have to come to terms with our loss. We must name it. We must cherish it, cherish it all, that which was good and comforted us and that which gave us pain. Most of all we need to discover what part of us we are missing.
Loss of a house or childhood home may rob us of our memories and our sense of place. Loss of a job or career not only endangers our monetary security; it challenges our identity and sense of self-worth. Who are we without a workplace? Who are we if we no longer provide.
When we lose a parent, a portion of us that was the child is forever gone. We find ourselves advancing into the older generation, our own mortality grows large. When we lose a sibling or an old friend we lose someone who knew us when . . . when we were young, when we grew up, when we changed; we lose someone who knew our story. Who are we when no one remembers our story?
When we lose our life partner not only do we lose companionship and our identity; we lose all those things that we gave to each other: The sentences we forget to finish because he did that for us; the feelings we no longer remember how to express because she was the emotive one; the social adeptness that allowed the other to serve the drinks and smile, the follower who always covered the leader’s back. We turn around and half of us is missing. Who are we when we cannot find all our parts?
When we lose a child, a part of our heart is torn from us. It is a pain that never goes away. It is a pain we must learn to live with. It is a pain that questions our sense of purpose and may drive us to work at something to redeem the future which we have lost. Who are we when the future is taken from us?
In order to begin a new life, first we must mourn the past. In the book Mourning as Mitzvah, by Anne Brener, the mourning that leads to transformation is described in three stages. The first stage is “contraction,” a turning inward. This is where denial and depression come in. This is where we mourn the past. We relive the loss over and over. We retell the story, to anyone who will listen.
Hurricane refugees will relive the horrors of the Superdome. They will relive the terror of clinging to rooftops or the helplessness as they watched loved ones torn away, unable to reach them, unable to save them. They will mourn their pets and search for them without any real hope.
Widows and widowers will recall the journey toward death, the illness or accident. They will wonder what more they could have done to prevent it. They will remember their beloved and their relationship, first the good parts and then the irritating parts. They will wonder why they were left behind and whether they should go on. I believe that it is the deeply buried source of human worth and dignity, that sustains us through this time of withdrawal, that and the surrounding human community . ?
The Two Old Women faced devastation and humiliation when the clan left them behind. Their first reactions were helplessness and denial that this could happen to them. Then even though they lived in emotional darkness they chose to “die trying.” Still bathed in hopelessness they wrapped themselves in what human dignity they had left and placing one foot in front of the other moved on.
According to Mourning as Mitzvah, the second stage of grief and transformation is “rending the garment to expose the heart.” This is the stage where anger and bargaining enter in. Feelings are no longer shrouded. Anger is there; hurt and pain are near the surface. It is a time of speaking out, naming feelings, and sometimes naming names.
Hurricane refugees will blame the government (justifiably so), but also Uncle Jack who took the car or their own stubbornness at not leaving sooner or stocking enough supplies or planning an escape route. Anger is everywhere because their life has been torn from them and they do not yet know what will become of them or who they will become.
Those of us who face other losses of family or friends, or of our places in the universe, also live with our feelings raw and near the surface. The pain is there for all to see and we become uncomfortable within our own skin. We want to get out of ourselves and move on. It is time for truth telling and a resolution to change. We turn outward to take a new look at the world outside which has changed around us as we processed our inner world.
The Two Old Women worked through this stage as they told each other their stories and voiced their bitterness and resentment and admitted that they had complained a lot, not recognizing the strength they had and leading the clan to see them as weak.
I also find myself working through this kind of grieving each time my arthritis flares and I begin to lose the motion in another joint. I always deny that it is happening again, and then I get depressed and wallow in hopelessness for a while. I may or may not do what the physical therapists tell me. Next, I get ticked at the doctors and try bargaining by trying all sorts of alternative medicines or routines. And, I whimper a lot (although, I try not to whimper too much in public, because that does not fit my image of myself as a cheerful non-whimperer – Dennis knows better, of course). Eventually, I get tired of myself and my situation and begin to face the fact that life has changed, and that I need to find a graceful way to live with this new stage of my life. One time many years ago, now, a doctor told me it was time to “snap out of it,” and I did!
Timing is everything. This last week, I was paddling along in water aerobics for seniors, when the woman next to me looked over and said, “You look as bad as I feel.” . . . “Yeah,” I said, “I feel awful today.” She nodded and proceeded to describe her own pain, which was pretty darn close to what I was feeling. I looked around us at all the ladies and two men. Some paddling on ahead of us and others lagging behind. “Hmmm,” I thought, “these folk are just as bad off as I am, probably worse. I guess I’d better ‘snap out of it.’” Which brings me to the third phase of mourning and transformation, healing.
Healing requires seeing the world in a new way, and recognizing, or perhaps forging, a new place in it for the new you. Healing also requires the comfort of community, which usually means that we have to let the community comfort us. In my early years of the Ministry, I was Associate Minister at our Cedar Lane Church in Bethesda. Sometimes the Senior Minister, Ken McLean, and I would make hospital calls together. Whenever the visit went well Ken would turn to me in the hall and say, “It is always so nice when they let us minister to them.” Over the years I’ve had many opportunities to reflect on his words. Sometimes, I think we enter the room at the wrong point in the process and they are either not ready for us or we have arrived too late. Everyone mourns and heals at their own pace and the trick is to be there for them at the right time. ?
For a caring community like ours, our community’s role is to be present throughout the process of loss, mourning and healing, but the kind of presence we offer changes. At first we are present to offer quiet support, to hold our friends without comment, to assure them of our love, and give them space even as we see them through the day to day routines. At their own pace our role will change to be compassionate listener, to hear the feelings and the anger and not turn away, even if they push us away. Eventually, again at our friends’ own pace, we will be needed to accept the new person as he or she has become. Often this is the tricky part because we always expect our friends to remain the same, but healing brings transformation, and it is our task not to push them back to the way they were. We must also be willing to change (at the very least to change our expectations) so that we can make room and welcome our renewed friend into our midst.
Sometimes, when we lose people after a sickness or a trauma, I think it is because we do not perceive the changes which have been wrought, and continue to welcome them only as they were in the past. Or, perhaps, it is that they fear we will not see their new selves or are afraid that if we do we will not like what we see.
When the Two Old Women were ready to reach out to their clan, reconciliation and forgiveness were essential to their healing and to the healing of their tribe. But they were no longer the same two women who had been left behind. They set the terms of their entry back into their community and when people offered to help them as they had in the past Chickadee and Star refused. They made it clear that they could take care of themselves now and instead took on the new role as wise women of the clan.
Those people who have been devastated by the hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, will require more than a community of compassion. They will require more than a helping hand. They will need a community that is willing to work with them to create a new place, a place that allows them to become, a place that does not push them back into old roles nor pushes them out all together. We will need to be the community that helps, and listens, that pushes for change and for justice, and keeps an open mind.
Great loss leads to great grief, and grief given its proper time and attention can bring transformation. But real transformation, be it personal or societal, requires introspection, self knowledge, enlightenment, hard work, painful change, and a willingness of the community to aid and abet the change by being transformed as well.