IT'S NOVEMBER. CAN WE GIVE THANKS?

The month of horror movies is over and it's November, when we give thanks.  Not yet time for the angels to sing, but time to gather for another year of reckoning over turkey and gravy. For what are you thankful?  

This morning, even before rising from bed, gratitude for what entered your sleepy mind first?  The sounds of your children?  The smell of coffee?  That you have lunch planned with a friend?  Or mom is doing better?  Or you are?  For me, daily, it is my husband's arm around me, a last warm embrace before I begin to carefully navigate my unreliable morning back.  

Some, like me, may be thankful that the pain is not today as it was yesterday, when a mere sneeze brought a yelp.  Instead, you may have a new challenge to inspire you. Or be grateful for a friend who did something brave.  Or that Election Day is over.  You may feel appreciated.  That's worth a prayer of thanksgiving.  At the day's close, you might sit outside by the fire pit, as we have been doing, watching the sparks fly and the stars come out, the nights earlier just now.  So many things to be thankful for.  

But what if you have to dig within to give thanks?  What if you're remembering someone lost to you and have only their blessed brief or not-so-brief life to be thankful for?  Worse, what if they just left you, even yesterday or so it seems?  What if the time to be the one you need to be now has not yet passed and you fear it never will and also fear you might forget, and which is worse?  Or what if you're just plain lonely, or sick, and have to dig deeper? 

Sometimes blessings do seem buried, hidden.  Sometimes it is easy to give thanks but sometimes, maybe more often than not, we have to find a way through pain or grief or worry or fear.  We have to scale boulders so high they block our way.  I can't imagine how we do this except through the grace of God.  How else do we survive our tragedies and traumas and losses and illnesses and things that, truly, have no upside?  

Together, of course.  We are never alone.  Lonely, yes, people are.  But not alone.  We have friends.  We have family.  We seek help.  We have those who share our faith.  We have God.  

The most fearful things--not the horror movies we watched over Halloween--but mental, emotional and even physical sufferings, never belong to us alone.  There are times I have wanted more than spiritual blessings.  When an illness strikes, I have prayed for healing, not acceptance.  Or "Dear God, make this not be true."  But God Himself has transformed the prayer into something else.  I have not yet been unable to accept life, and death, as it is.  And you too, is it not so?  

We don't give thanks for losses, or suffering, or meanness.  Sometimes we can't give thanks for anything.  But God takes even just a thought, or tear, takes it all.  God takes our lives and inchoate prayers and makes something of them, something to which He responds giving us strength and grace, endurance and love.  We are children who are known and treasured and beyond all understanding given not what we ask for (perhaps) but what we need.  I don't understand this.  But of all that is difficult to accept, this is not.  

This must be a prayer.  AMEN

"AFTER GREAT PAIN"

Madonna and Child
Vincenzo Foppa, 1480

"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans." Romans 8:26

This text was a recent Sunday's bible verse. 

Like some, I light candles before worship.  Some of the people I have intentions for, a simple prayer that they be well has not worked.  After many years, they are not well.  The Spirit needs to determine what is the best prayer.  A pray for healing can be unrealistic. But there are other prayers, like "Help, save, comfort and defend us Gracious Lord." There are many.

When someone young was dying, a close Catholic friend said to him, "When I come back next week tell me what you want second."  Perhaps we should all think about that.  

Some people pray for surcease from pain.  I do that only in moments when pain is acute, which does not happen too often.  Many people's daily physical pain is more than mine, many less.  As we grow older, some degree of chronic pain is common.  It makes me think of Emily Dickinson's poem:  

"After great pain, a formal feeling comes - / The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -" 

Many of us have had pain that hijacks our attention. When it passes the nerves are on edge, waiting. Is it over?  We treat our bodies tenderly.  Our nerves have been traumatized; like a baby, they need to be comforted.  We tiptoe.    

Mental and emotional suffering is another kind of pain.  It can arise when someone we love hurts:  our child, our spouse, our parent . . . would we even notice a bad back or hip or knee as we sat at the bedside of a loved one?   Or it can arise when we ourselves hurt from loss or betrayal, grief, trauma or the imminence of death.   

Some readers think Dickinson was writing about suffering, in other words, emotional pain.  In the law, with which I am familiar, physical hurt is called pain, emotional hurt, suffering.  If our leg is gone, we may have no physical pain at all.  But we may still suffer.  In her poem, Dickinson wonders whether Christ's pain was like ours or whether ours is like His.  

"The stiff Heart questions, 'was it He, that bore,' / And 'Yesterday, or centuries before'?"

She continues, " A Quartz contentment, like a stone / This is the Hour of Lead - " 

Some commentators think that the whole poem is about emotional or psychic pain.  But it is not.  It is about when pain ceases. " First chill - then Stupor - then the letting go."   There is a great surcease when we return to equilibrium.  The "letting go" is tangible.  We breathe easier.  Our muscles relax.  Our brows unforrow. 

The death of someone may be a surcease of pain.  It may bring relief, to them and to us.  We are grateful for their life; we are grateful for their death.  Haven't you experienced that?  The Spirit helps us pray when someone dies; when mental illness drives the cart; when a disc slips or a brain bleeds or a heart stops.   

The Book of Romans tells us that the Spirit intercedes through wordless groans.  My own groans may be no more than, "Oh please."  We want the pain or the suffering to stop.  Let us believe the promise that it always will.  AMEN

CLOSURE--WHAT IS IT?

Psalm 34:18
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

The simplest meaning of closure seems to be getting over something painful and moving on.  But what exactly does "getting over" mean and what is "moving on?"  Certainly, we've all ruminated over the past, sometimes wondering what happened and why, sometimes trying to figure out how to live with hurt.  Deaths, betrayals, broken hearts, losses of every degree and dimension, grief and sadness are no strangers.  So, yes, closure might be almost an everyday need.  

Some psychologists use closure to mean cognitively understanding why and how an event occurred, processing it, and finding meaning in it.  With a natural death, at a late-enough time in life, that may happen sooner rather than later.  We don't feel cheated, we're not traumatized.  Some people have brought us so much good over the years, that what they gave leaves us with meaning.  Good deaths, you might say.  Sudden or prolonged, we remember them daily and with gratitude.  We accept the absence and have a sense of peace about it. 

For me, with my mother, there was no unfinished business.  "We have no issues," I told her.  For my father, by the time his aged body let go, we also had no issues.  "Why have issues?" I thought.  With my son, young and with cancer, I knew from the moment of his diagnosis that the joy of having had him would outweigh even the devastation of losing him.  His loss was greater than mine--unbearable (except that we all bore it) until that moment when he walked with God, as he does today.  

We might think of closure as change, rather than an end.  A change into our new selves and in some cases a change to something good.  The untimely death of a spouse might, in some cases, lead to a new love just as special in its way.  Not a replacement, but a different person to share the overflowing love we are blessed with.  Divorce the same. 

Some events we'll never understand.  They seem to come from an evil confluence of the stars.  Surely addiction and mental illness qualify.  Abuse qualifies.  Betrayals of any sort are hard to fathom.  Sometimes we forgive without understanding; we reconcile--if there's repentance--without understanding; we continue to love without understanding; we do what's best without understanding; we continue to have wonderful lives without understanding.  Rather than closure, people of faith might call this the grace of God or the peace that passes all understanding. 

But even without a rational explanation for something painful, we can still address our emotions, what the literature calls processing.  Again, psychologists say that closure is a self-compassionate process.  Given how much is beyond our control, it needs to be focused on us.  What do we need to do to make this better?  Accept that it happened.  Accept our feelings about it, feelings of sadness or confusion or anger.  Take self-protective action.  Be brave.  Let some time pass.  And then, with the help of God if you are a believer, give yourself the gift of a self-compassionate conclusion to your suffering.  In that way, what feels at times as the sole defining event of our life to the exclusion of all else, becomes a part of a longer narrative, a life full of love and meaning and care.  

Isaiah 43:2
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.

 

 

 

DEEP PAIN, DEEP HEALING

 

Sometimes a pain is so deep that we have to repeatedly cleanse the wound.  This is what Letting go is about.  not denying a hurt or the reality of what caused it.  That doesn't work.  We can reframe a narrative but not without admitting, "Someone or something hurt me. Something I thought would never happen did happen. I can't change that fact."  

Letting go is a mental state where we no longer cause ourselves extra suffering.  A reminder, or trigger, is a stimulus that causes a painful memory to resurface. We don't bring them on ourselves.  They just happen. When they do, it can pull the past forward so that our body may react as it did then. If this has happened to you, you know how your breath changes, you lose focus, you may retreat.   

As time goes on, each reminder may reach deeper levels of sadness or trauma which we then let go by facing the mental weight of the former pain and letting it pass.  Miraculously all emotions do pass.  Such is how we are made.  We know that happiness and joy don't last forever, but sadness, fear, anger the same.  Yes, they may recur, but we let them dissipate again.  

This is not as bad as it seems.  It is not hopeless. Not at all. In fact, it can be transformative.  We note how the heavy weight of an event lessons.  Reminders that may have stalled us for days or weeks do not.  Our mental reserves replenish more quickly.  If we don't fight what is happening, we conserve energy; mental tension does not consume us.  We recognize how we feel but give it only the space it needs to move on.  we do not feed the flames.  We promise not to make ourselves feel worse.  It is a promise we can keep; we each have so many ways to cope.  (This writing is one.)

Letting go does not mean forgetting, not of what we wish we could forget nor of what we wish to hold dear.  For those of us who have lost someone, forgetting is what we most fear.  But letting go of grief is not letting go of those dearest to us.  For years I had a mantra I used with my despair over the death of our son whose name is Adam:  "More Adam, Less Grief."  Focus on him not my (and, Dear God, his) loss.  (Yes, writing this my breath has changed.) 

In a different scenario, if you have forgiven someone their hurt, let that thought come forward.  There is a reason you forgave (or were yourself forgiven).  It was a choice you made listening to your heart and to God.  That's where the transformation comes in.  That's where the narrative can be reframed, and honestly so.  "I was brave when I took the steps that led to forgiveness."  "I save what matters most to me."  "Dear God, thank you."

There may also be something to forgive yourself for and heal.  I would like to forgive myself for not sitting with my father the entire day that he died. His last months were hard on him but on me too.  the death of a Parent can be like that.  Sometimes neither of you is much good at comforting the other. When I returned to his side at 3 pm it was hard to tell death from life.  After an hour and a half of checking, the hospice nurse said he was gone.  

So, we have deep pain and need deep healing from many things in many ways.  We have wounds to cleanse and emotions to survive.  And we do.  We know that just a sigh can be a prayer that is answered.  We don't deny or avoid our feelings and we don't accept minimization from others.  In these ways we follow the nature God has given us.  

And we do so much more than survive.  We become role models.  We nurture others.  We take care of ourselves.  We take every gift we have been given and use it for good.  We count our blessings and at the end of the day live in joy.  

I think I will say, Thanks be to God.        Nina Naomi