Flotsam

It has been too long since I have been regularly at this, and while I have been collecting thoughts about what to write about, I haven't been getting them processed and out of my system! Thus we come to what is essentially a "mind-clearing" column. I'm going to "sweep" through, and see if I've anything worthwhile to say about a number of different things...

Here we go:

...A friend of mine is recently returned from a few days of study with a REAL bereavement professional, and I was gratified to hear that much of what he taught her at least coincides with what I teach, poseur though I may be! (I know, people get upset with me when I disparage my own skills and say I don't know very much about grief. I don't mean to be falsely humble, just true to the facts of the matter. I have no real, academic training in bereavement as a specialty, as opposed to the man my friend went to study with. All I have done is listen to people-- and guessed right about what they meant! It is gratifying to know that I'm more or less in line with folks who really DO know what they are doing!)

Anyway, she came back with a quote, indeed a Truth: "Life is lived going forward, and only understood backward." Or words to that effect...

I was thinking about this in the context of my present life before my friend brought this summation, only the terms I was thinking of it in were these: I was telling myself that I was not sure why all of this was happening to me now, and I sure was not sure what it meant, but I knew I would one day, and I looked forward to the time when, looking back, I could see the hand of God in all of this, too! A lot more complicated, I know, but essentially the same thing. For we only see the hand of God most clearly when we look back over our lives. Meanwhile, we just have to trust, i.e., have faith, that God is working His Purpose out!

But there is affirmation in this point of view, too, for the dreadful way my previous employer behaved. Did they have to act like the twin angels with the fiery swords that kept Adam and Eve from going back into Eden? Maybe. It saved me, truly, from any delusions of return...

...On Friday, the 24th, my previous employer changed their minds and allowed me to return "after hours" to clean out my stuff from my desk, bookshelves and file drawers. Ten years means a lot of accumulation!

There is more to say, maybe, about the pain of that, the surgery of that, the descent back into Hades of that (an Orphean journey if ever there was one!), but now I just want to observe this:

I looked into the faces of those I'd known for ten years and more, and saw soul-less eyes.

I tried to shield my own eyes, too, to hide my own soul, lest I let them see my pain. Not in the least did I trust them with my humanity.

But I had to ask myself after: Did I not see their humanity because I did not allow mine to be seen? Or would they have appeared to me to be the soul-less zombies they were when I was dismissed with shaming and cruelty? Here I am, a person who prides himself on being able to embrace anyone's humanity-- and yet I found none in my previous colleagues? Nor, perhaps, did I show any of my own...

How truly bizarre and even inhuman it is to be polite!

...In contast, I remembered my time with Lizzie, my granddaughter, and how very differently she looked at me whenever her eyes opened: without focus, she was, yet her eyes were undisturbed pools in which swam an unperturbed soul. I longed for her to see me. I wanted to see and to be seen.

When she was awake! When we wanted her to be sleeping, when sleep was something she wanted for herself but could not seem to find, it was not a matter of her opening her eyes and self at all! Quite the opposite...

At one point she was my charge, my gift while her mother showered and otherwise caught a few moments to herself and recovered a brief interlude of being an adult, instead of an infant's appendage. So I walked Lizzie. I held her, I rocked her, I swayed with her, and I walked her. I remembered: her mother loved the songs I would sing her, made up on the spot songs full of love and also emploring her to sleep! I was not that desperate with Lizze: it was mid-day, not mid-night. And for some inspired reason, a hymn came to me: Just a closer walk with Thee! Grant it, Jesus, if you please... Etc. So I'm walking Lizzie, sometimes waltzing Lizze, around my daughter's Great Room, singing her this old, tried and true hymn. And she slept! She slept, well, like a baby! More, she slept like my parishioners used to sleep through my sermons! She slept... a peace-filled sleep of Grace...

And as I sang to her, I sent up a prayer of my own: "just a closer walk with Thee; grant it, Jesus, if you please..." For while Lizzie was in need of sleep because I and her mother were in need of her sleeping-- I was in need of a "closer walk..." Indeed...

...I found myself opining the other day about the difference between "stress" and "challenge."

"Stress," I said was a choice-- a negative choice. As opposed to "challenge," which one could see as a positive choice. Stress we let into ourselves, and it wears on us. Challenge we rise up to meet; we engage with it. It doesn't happen to us, we happen upon it!

More, when we are stressed, we feel like circumstances have gotten the better of us. THEY are defining us, or we are defined by our circumstances. We are diminished by stress.

But challenges are circumstances WE define. In fact, we define ourselves by the challenges we have faced-- regardless of how we faced them. Our sense of ourselves grows as we face challenges, and gradually we look forward to facing more. For our confidence in ourselves grows, the more and greater challenges we face.

On the other hand, no one looks forward to taking on more stress! Just talking in those terms makes us shrink from the otherwise neutral circumstances which come our way.

So I had a new prayer: Lord, save me from my stresses. And continue to bring challenges, through which I can grow, and see Your hand in shaping me!

...Finally, for this blog at least, a series of thoughts about "companionship," again spurred by my friend's experiences at the foot of the true Bereavement Professional:

You notice that this blog says that I "companion" people. I like the verb, or the verb-making of the noun! The Bereavement Professional teaches that this is what those who are mourning need or want: companions through their grief.

Like him, I know the roots of "companion:" it means "bread sharer," or one with whom one shares bread.

For me, a companion has Eucharistic significance: Jesus says, "This [bread] is my body, given for you." Thus to be a "companion" is to share "bread" with another, in a way like unto the sharing of one's body, one's physical presence, oneself.

Most of the time, the way we do this with others, the way we practice companioning as Communion, is to share stories. Our stories are all we have of ourselves to share, really. Once you have told me your story and I have told you mine, we have become "companions" to each other. We have nourished each other on the "bread" of our own lives. We have "communed." We have celebrated a quiet Eucharist together. The sharing of stories is that holy.

I put this whole and holy exchange in form of a verb, "to companion," because it is an active and mutual engagement. People "companion" each other: they share the "bread" of themselves, the "stuff" of themselves, and each are mutually nurtured and enriched.

This does not happen only when people are grieving, but maybe it has more sacred significance at that time because people need each other through mourning in order to heal. It is a sacred process, this healing through mourning, abetted by the companioning of others. We give each other our "bodies" in giving each other our stories-- and we all are healed in the process.

Note that I did NOT say "we heal each other in the process!" Because, we don't. This is not an inter-human phenomenon, this healing. Healing always involves the Transcendent. Thus God heals us, as we share, as we companion, as we participate in the intimate Communion of sharing our lives and stories with each other.

Thank you for letting me share a little of myself with you... Thank you for the companioning we do of each other... Thank you, God, for the healing that You bring us, as we companion each other, through darkness or light. Amen.