There was another funeral yesterday. In a congregation with a large percentage from the "World War 2 Generation," funerals aren't uncommon. But the ones we have been having lately have been for pillars -- ones on whose shoulders the congregation is supported, if not actually the building. Yesterday's service was in that category -- a faithful disciple who was on the search committee when I moved here 14 years ago, who has participated in every Bible Study I have ever taught, who has served as an elder, spiritual mother, organized countless funeral lunches, and whose devoted volunteer contributions to the administrative side of congregational life can be fairly represented by the fact that she had her own office. She came to staff parties. She had her own set of keys.
And hers is only the most recent in a string of deaths in our congregation the pain of which is too numbing for tears.
It is, I am discovering, one of the great liabilities of a long pastorate. It would have been emotionally simpler to move on after a few glad-handing years -- before I fell in love with so many people; before I allowed them to work their way into the very cellular structure of my heart. But it is much too late late for that. I came. I grew roots. I fell in love. And as a result, I have been here long enough to feel whole pieces of myself go away as caskets are lowered in the ground.
There has to be some mental, emotional, spiritual adjustment to make that would change this net effect. Surely there is a way -- short of disinterested aloofness -- to react to these deaths (what, after all, are perfectly natural eventualities) in a healthier, less traumatic way. Surely there is a way to find grateful reverence in these grievings to such a degree that what remains is a celebration of the gifts they have brought to my -- and our -- living and serving; that what is internalized is a holy appreciation for, and integration of, the contributions they have made to my experience of the world, rather than this silencing, debilitating sense of depletion.
Surely there is a way.
I just haven't yet found it.
And as a result, with every death I feel more and more like a stem whose flower is one-by-one losing its petals. How long before I become merely a thin and naked strand?
What I am expressing is not despair. Only grief. I am not hopeless -- about myself or these beloved dead. They, I trust beyond a sliver of doubt, rest secure. And I know -- and experience -- myself to be held secure, with human hands and divine ones. Theology is not the problem. It's my heart.
How often can it survive the breaking?
And hers is only the most recent in a string of deaths in our congregation the pain of which is too numbing for tears.
It is, I am discovering, one of the great liabilities of a long pastorate. It would have been emotionally simpler to move on after a few glad-handing years -- before I fell in love with so many people; before I allowed them to work their way into the very cellular structure of my heart. But it is much too late late for that. I came. I grew roots. I fell in love. And as a result, I have been here long enough to feel whole pieces of myself go away as caskets are lowered in the ground.
There has to be some mental, emotional, spiritual adjustment to make that would change this net effect. Surely there is a way -- short of disinterested aloofness -- to react to these deaths (what, after all, are perfectly natural eventualities) in a healthier, less traumatic way. Surely there is a way to find grateful reverence in these grievings to such a degree that what remains is a celebration of the gifts they have brought to my -- and our -- living and serving; that what is internalized is a holy appreciation for, and integration of, the contributions they have made to my experience of the world, rather than this silencing, debilitating sense of depletion.
Surely there is a way.
I just haven't yet found it.
And as a result, with every death I feel more and more like a stem whose flower is one-by-one losing its petals. How long before I become merely a thin and naked strand?
What I am expressing is not despair. Only grief. I am not hopeless -- about myself or these beloved dead. They, I trust beyond a sliver of doubt, rest secure. And I know -- and experience -- myself to be held secure, with human hands and divine ones. Theology is not the problem. It's my heart.
How often can it survive the breaking?
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3 comments:
I guess I'd see it kind of like "pinching flowers" -- dead blossoms that thrived with color and life are removed to make room for and bring on new blossoms. The plant continues to thrive, and new flowers emerge to add color and life to the plant, following those that "showed" the way prior. Each new flower can bloom, full of life, only because of those that have already bloomed. Losing petals, broken hearts, fond memories, new flowers, it is the cycle of life... and though sometimes painful, it is good!
A heart broken - - broken open - - to even more love.
How beautiful that you care so deeply about those to whom you minister.
May the Lord bless and keep YOU, may He smile upon YOU and comfort YOU, may He give YOU peace.
It seems like so much of life is prism-like -- turn it just a bit, to see it in different light and from a different angle, and everything suddenly looks different. I appreciate hearing shifts to my metaphor that help me engage the grief in a different spectrum of light.
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