The classic Buddhist tale we heard during our lesson for all
ages, “The Mustard Seed” reminds us that each and every person on this earth
has experienced loss. And like the heartbroken mother in our story, we may think
some times when grief comes over us that we are alone in our grief, that the
smiling chatty folks around us, the folks doing the work of living day to day don’t
know…but of course they do. Not everyone knows the excruciating grief of losing
a child, as Kisa Gotami did, but being alive in this mortal world means knowing
loss.
And grief, grief is the process by which we heal those holes
left in our life through relocation, through divorce, through death. We mammals
are designed to feel acutely the loss of one we love, it is a survival mechanism
that binds parent to child, that binds together family group and tribe. The
more we bring people into our hearts, the deeper the hole they leave if they
are taken from us.
I think that we in this age have more trouble with the
process of grieving, because we like to move through things quickly. In the classic
Jewish tradition mourners take a week to sit quietly with family and friends
and observe their grief . They are not to work, they have no other social
obligations during this time. They cover the mirrors in their homes to relieve
the responsibility, the anxiety about literally “keeping up appearances.” For
the most acute losses they observe a period of mourning for a year, as a
reminder to themselves and their community that grief ebbs and flows long after
the religious services are over. My colleague Craig, who will be coming here to
preach in 2 weeks, described grief as an ocean, along whose shore we walk. At
any time the waves may come in, wetting the bottoms of our feet and receding,
or knocking us over with their power and pulling us under water. When those
waves come it is challenge enough if we are in a safe place were we can
surrender to our grief, but often times they come while we are driving our car,
at our job, at a dinner party, we are disoriented and confused and overwhelmed.
Grief takes many forms- it is as variable as humanity
itself. Tears, sadness, we expect. But other emotions like anger? Or numbness?
These often take us by surprise, and maybe go unrecognized as grief. We may
even notice guilty feelings arising if we imagine we are not grieving the
“right way,” for example the very common feeling of relief experienced by
survivors when someone who has been struggling for a long time finally dies and
has an end to their suffering. Sometimes we are surprised by anger at the
person who has left us. Maybe we regret things done or left undone, said or
left unsaid. But all these feelings are possible and important and real. Counselors
during the peak of the aids crisis noticed that some folks were losing so many
friends and loved ones that they had sort of a grief fatigue, that began to
grow numb and felt incapable of grieving any more. And so they encouraged those
facing these many losses to put on a sad movie and grieve those many losses. Whether
it takes the form of tears or irritability, or rage --whether you feel
completely numb and empty --all of this is grief, and no one way of grieving is
better than another.
I want to acknowledge we grieve not only the relationships
that gave us comfort and joy, we also have to grieve the difficult
relationships. When we grieve, for example, the loss of a friend or relative
from whom we had drifted apart. We grieve not only the loss of what was, but
also of what might have been. Perhaps we always assumed that some day we would
reconnect, and now we have come to an
ending with things still unsaid and undone. We grieve the loss of a
future together. We need to grieve even
the loss of those who were abusive to us. Maybe we feel rage for how we were hurt,
sadness for the healthy relationship we deserved, perhaps guilt that we had
wished that person would finally leave our lives. This kind of compound
grieving can be hard to navigate, hard to express, and still I think the best
we can do is to observe it, to witness each facet as it is uncovered, as it
washes over us.
When waves of grief come, however they come, I believe that
the best wisdom of the Buddhist teachers is to simply observe it, not to
struggle against the undertow, but to let the grief do its work. To let go. The
Buddha taught that pain was inevitable, loss was inevitable, but suffering is
optional. By
that he meant that it is the act of fighting against the current, the big
waves, that causes suffering. By holding on to our grief, or by pushing it
away, stuffing it down, ignoring it, these are what cause us to suffer. When
the waves come, small or overwhelming, I encourage you to pay attention, to
give it the time it needs. We don’t always have the luxury of saying “I’m
taking the afternoon off because I need to grieve.” But pull over to the side
of the road if you are driving. Stand up from your work and take a walk or find
a place to sit undisturbed for a few moments, or a few hours. The pain of grief
is not like the pain of getting your hand too close to the fire, which tells
you to pull away, it is more like the pain of a wound healing.
Grief is the process of knitting back together those holes,
those empty places where our loved ones used to be. We wove them so carefully into
our lives, and now that they are gone we feel we may unravel without them. My
theology professor told us, years after the death of his wife, that he
experienced one of the most acute moments of grief as he was ready to leave a
party, and looking around for his wife as he had done at the end of every party
for 40 years. That hole where our loved ones used to be cause us to stumble- to
wonder how can we live each day without them. Loss creates a change in the
terrain of our lives, and grief is the process of re-forming our lives,
transforming our lives into a new wholeness. Even those waves that drag us
under are helping us transform our lives. Those waves are part of the slow
process of washing us clean of what is gone, of what we have lost. And so
instinctively we struggle, because that pain binds us to what we have lost.
Says Dr. Earl A. Grollman, one of the great teachers about death and loss:
“Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign
of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price
you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.”
Lest we be washed out to sea, we need anchors or touchstones
to keep us tethered to all that is still alive and growing in this world. A
favorite movie or poem or piece of music can be a touchstone to bring us back
to ourselves. If walking in the woods or gardening restores your soul in
ordinary times, when you are awash in grief, you need these things more than
ever. For some work can be that anchor, but we must be careful not to use work
as a way of blocking out or avoiding our grief. This is not the time for big
ambitious projects, but the simple actions that pull you back to yourself, like
putting your hands in the earth, or in a dishpan of soapy water. The key is not
to expect that this time of grieving will be like other times, but to witness
and notice- today I washed 2 dishes and even that was hard. Today I walked in
the woods and everything reminded me of her.
The most important touchstone, or anchor, is compassion -- compassion
first for your self if you are grieving. When you are not as productive as you
might normally be, or patient, or witty, or when you just have trouble putting
words together, be compassionate, be kind to yourself, as you would to a dear
friend who was grieving. Don’t let your grief come between you and the people
who love you. It can be hard to connect with others when those waves come, it is
easy to isolate yourself when you are grieving. Because truly, no one can
really understand what you are feeling, no one can take your pain away. But no
living being can survive in isolation. We need one another.
In his novel Hannah Coulter about a small rural community experiencing the losses of World War
2, Wendell berry writes:
“I need to tell about my people in their grief.
I don’t think grief is something they get over or get away from. In a little
community like this it is around us and in us all the time, and we know it. We
know that every night, war or no war, there are people lying awake grieving,
and every morning there are people waking up to absences that never will be
filled. But we shut our mouths and go ahead. How we are is ‘Fine.’” [p. 61]
I think we are blessed in this beloved community to know
that if we say we are “fine” that folks around us will respect our solitude,
our privacy, but we are also a congregation that speaks its joys and concerns
out loud. Ours is a community where we have the honor of being present to one
another’s grief. Berry
continues
“and yet the comfort somehow gets
passed around: a few words that are never forgotten, a note in the mail, a
look, a touch, a pat, a hug, a kind of waiting with, a kind of standing by, to
the end.” [p. 62]
Whether we are the sort who is comforted by talking about
our losses with someone we trust, or whether we feel more comfortable when we
“shut our mouths and go ahead.” Still we need on another, and comfort is
somehow passed around.
Being with one another in grief is difficult. It is
difficult because it may bring our own grief back to us in a fresh way. It is
hard because we can never really ease the grief of another- only the miraculous
restoration of the one lost could truly fill the hole in their lives. It is difficult
because we know how tender the heart is when it is grieving, and sometimes we
just say or do the wrong thing, maybe the very thing that would bring comfort
to us is painful to our companions. A colleague once told me the cautionary
tale of going into the hospital room of a young man dying of aids. She asked
him “How are you?” and he replied in fury “how do you think I am! I’m dying!”
The lesson my friend took from this moment is to never ask “how are you” but I took a different lesson from it, that
if you ask how someone is, you must be ready to listen and stay present with
however they really are, whether that is rage, or sadness, or despair, or a
need for solitude. I confess to you that despite the training I had in pastoral
counseling, when I enter into a conversation with someone who is grieving, I am
a little nervous, wondering if my presence will sooth or agitate, whether I
will say the wrong thing, but I have made up my mind that I would much rather
have a grieving person go away from our conversation saying “That minister is a
bumbling idiot” than “Why does no one reach out to me when I need them the
most? I feel so terribly alone.”
Any attempt to smooth over the loss will fail- must fail-
“he’s in a better place now” or any variant on “it’s for the best” or “life
goes on” is an attempt to bring
premature closure. It is not developmentally appropriate in acute grief.
Usually it speaks more the well-wisher’s discomfort with the depth of grief.
Our goal as supportive neighbors, family or friends is not to sooth, not to
smooth over, but to be present with the truth of what is. To say simply to a
neighbor or friend “I heard about your loss”
and “I’m sorry” gives the mourner a chance to speak about their loss if
they choose, or just to know they can number you among those who will
understand if you are not quite yourself. . As we are present with our own
grief, so we can be present with the grief of another, “a note in the mail, a
look, a touch, a pat, a hug, a kind of waiting with, a kind of standing by, to
the end.”
I believe this is the most precious gift we can give to
someone who is grieving, our simple presence. Without trying to fix the person,
without offering advice, without trying
to talk them out of their difficult feelings, just to be a compassionate
presence for them, however they are in that moment.
The message we often get from our society is to try not to
show our grief to one another, to not “be a downer” to stay productive. Even as
those waves wash over us we feel like we should stay “productive.” But remember
Kisa Gotami walking with her grief cradled in her arms, comforted finally by
not only the knowledge that grief is part of the fabric of every being’s life,
but also that if we can acknowledge, share, observe grief, we will better
remember that we are not alone. We grieve because we are creatures who connect,
who love, and therefore, we know loss. Writes Wendell Berry: “Grief is not a
force and has no power to hold you. You only bear it. Love is what carries you,
for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out
at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery” [p. 50]
