It's been over a month since we buried my mother. I'm not proud to admit it, but it's taken me all this time to even think of writing something about the experience of her dying and her funeral. In recent years especially, I've become aware of how much anger at her I've carried for most of my life. And I want to tell you what's happened to that anger and how my relationship with her has been changed.
My mother was many things, but chief among them was the fact that she had a major problem with alcohol much of her adult life, and she regularly practiced the attitudes and behaviors that go with that problem. What her last day on earth and the experience of her wake and funeral taught me was this: however true the alcohol piece was about her life, it didn't define her and my response to it doesn't have to be the main fact of our relationship. I can't tell you how liberating it feels to say that.
Somewhere in my young childhood, alcohol and other chemicals began to become a major way for my mother to cope with what she called her "nerves." She herself had grown up with alcohol problems being a major part of her extended family life. The social life of lower middle class Boston suburban families often revolved around occasions when alcohol was at the center of things. When we moved to Milton into our first single family home, my father re-did the basement in knotty pine, including a carefully designed home bar for parties -- and there were plenty of parties. Every day, as time went on, the excuse of a party was not needed for my mother to consume enough alcohol to pass out (or "fall asleep" as we euphemized) every night. The run ups to those moments were some of the worst hours of my life. Sarcasm. Loud fights. Outrageous demands. Habits and and occurences too embarrassing to risk friends visiting -- I learned to get out of the house as soon and as often as I could. What I carried out of the house was my own mostly buried anger and a huge chip on my shoulder I didn't even have a clue was there.
When I began to live more away from Boston, starting with my college years, I was unconsciously fleeing chaos, pain, rage and a boatload of sadness and grief over what had gone down in my family home that I didn't have a clue as to how to deal with or even that I needed to deal with. Not surprisingly, I developed my own disordered relationship with alcohol and cut my own swath of chaos, internal and external. Just a few years after my mother entered an often rocky relationship with recovery, I began my own recovery journey to deal with my very own alcohol problem.
Years of recovery, therapy and painful acceptance of my own flaws led me to a place where my anger surfaced and made me very impatient with my mother. And then something shifted. On the last day of her life, my mother was aware and troubled enough to ask my sister and I, "Was I a good mother?" with such genuine and sincere regret that we could only answer, "Yes, you were." She smiled hesitantly, and visibly relaxed. That moment opened me to be able to hear the wonderful things my children and others said about my mother as the wake and funeral unfolded. Her gifts of warmth, humor, hospitality and fierce loyalty to her own became crystal clear.
Dr. Ira Byock, end of life specialist, quotes theologian Paul Tillich:
"Forgiveness presupposes remembering. And it creates a forgetting, not in the natural way we forget yesterday's weather, but in the way of the great "in spite of" that says: I forget although I remember. Without this kind of forgetting no human relationship can endure healthily."
(THE FOUR THINGS THAT MATTER MOST: A Book About Living)
Thanks be to God for Margaret Agnes Lawless. Her legacy lives on in the lives of the people she shaped and touched, especially her children, grandchildren and friends. We remember. And we forget. Go with God, Mother.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Signs and Metaphors II
A lot of people my age take health issues more seriously than the bigger moral, political and religious issues. The prospect of mortality will do that. When I or someone I love gets a serious diagnosis, I typically go into survival mode and try to soldier on regardless -- but that's followed sooner or later by cold fear and deep anxiety, and it takes a lot to shift out of those places. What helps? In my experience, three things help: information, time, and perspective. The more information I have, the more powerful I feel, especially if the knowledge comes with options. As to time, even bad news loses some of its punch as time passes. Perspective? Viewpoint can be everything sometimes; the day before my 82 year-old Irish grandmother died, my mother told her to hurry up and get well, "so we can take a trip to Paris." Not missing a beat, my grandmother replied, "Sure, and I can buy a bikini!" Her wit and attitude seriously helped us cope with our grief and sadness.
Does faith help? I think so. Experience suggests to many of us that bad things pass. Good may come out of bad. And, sadness diminishes (even if only bit by bit). Is there good reason for our faith and hope that losses aren't the last word? In the late 1990's and early 2000's, I taught a class at Fordham entitled, "Faith and Critical Reason." I used to tell each new group of students that my personal governing asumption for the course was, "faith is not non-sense." Together we read Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Nietszche and Bertrand Russell and The Humanist Manifesto -- that latter document a powerful and creditable path of belief although it unecessarily caricatured "the supernatural" in an effort to promote a vigorous appreciation of the natural world. In the course, I didn't grade for opinions, but for intellectual honesty and courage in tackling the Big Questions. Tackling the conversation at all without caricaturing people of different views seems a rare commodity in this age of instant messaging and debate by sound bite. And I wanted the students to consider giving theism as much weight as atheism and agnosticism as intellectual choices.
A college course is a bit of a hot house environment, rareified in atmosphere and tone, not quite like the booming, buzzy stuff of everyday life. I think we can get closer to our daily experience to look at faith and belief as viable options. Here's one of my favorite stories:
An exhausted father is awakened in the wee hours of the morning by his crying and frantic 5 year-old son coming out of a kiddie nightmare."Everything's going to be all right," the father says soothingly as he hugs the distraught child and rubs his back gently. After a few minutes, the father, desperate to return to bed, says, "OK, now, son... time to go back to sleep. I'm going to tuck you in, turn out the light, and go back to bed." The boy immediately bursts back into tears and says, "No! No! Don't shut off the light -- I'm afraid of the dark! I don't want to be alone!" Near the end of his patience and definitely on his last nerve, the father pulls out one of the Big Guns of parental rhetoric: "You're not alone son... God is with you." The little boy looks up at his father and says, "Where's God? I don't see God!" Praying for patience and hoping against hope, the father says. "Of course you can't see God, son... He's invisible." The boy looks skeptically up at his Dad and says, "I want a God with skin on!"
To be continued.
Does faith help? I think so. Experience suggests to many of us that bad things pass. Good may come out of bad. And, sadness diminishes (even if only bit by bit). Is there good reason for our faith and hope that losses aren't the last word? In the late 1990's and early 2000's, I taught a class at Fordham entitled, "Faith and Critical Reason." I used to tell each new group of students that my personal governing asumption for the course was, "faith is not non-sense." Together we read Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Nietszche and Bertrand Russell and The Humanist Manifesto -- that latter document a powerful and creditable path of belief although it unecessarily caricatured "the supernatural" in an effort to promote a vigorous appreciation of the natural world. In the course, I didn't grade for opinions, but for intellectual honesty and courage in tackling the Big Questions. Tackling the conversation at all without caricaturing people of different views seems a rare commodity in this age of instant messaging and debate by sound bite. And I wanted the students to consider giving theism as much weight as atheism and agnosticism as intellectual choices.
A college course is a bit of a hot house environment, rareified in atmosphere and tone, not quite like the booming, buzzy stuff of everyday life. I think we can get closer to our daily experience to look at faith and belief as viable options. Here's one of my favorite stories:
An exhausted father is awakened in the wee hours of the morning by his crying and frantic 5 year-old son coming out of a kiddie nightmare."Everything's going to be all right," the father says soothingly as he hugs the distraught child and rubs his back gently. After a few minutes, the father, desperate to return to bed, says, "OK, now, son... time to go back to sleep. I'm going to tuck you in, turn out the light, and go back to bed." The boy immediately bursts back into tears and says, "No! No! Don't shut off the light -- I'm afraid of the dark! I don't want to be alone!" Near the end of his patience and definitely on his last nerve, the father pulls out one of the Big Guns of parental rhetoric: "You're not alone son... God is with you." The little boy looks up at his father and says, "Where's God? I don't see God!" Praying for patience and hoping against hope, the father says. "Of course you can't see God, son... He's invisible." The boy looks skeptically up at his Dad and says, "I want a God with skin on!"
To be continued.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Signs and Metaphors I
It's been a very strange winter, oddly mild and lacking the snow and ice whose bite I seem to feel more acutely the older I get. I don't know about you, but even the mild version of the winter we've enjoyed can still get me yearning for warm beaches and warm water to swim in. My version of heaven includes water I can walk into without shivering!
The days are getting longer, even warmer, without doubt. But there are still enough gray, cold days and nights left that feel oppressive in the anticipation -- and that get me to muse on the sadder or more difficult sides of life. The dean of my theological graduate school once remarked that climates like the northeast were the most conducive to theological thinking. He thought that because we were located in California, our thinking might be watered down because we had it too easy! His point was sort of made that Christmas when I stepped outside my Berkeley apartment to toss a Frisbee. When you're that comfortable, John Calvin or Soren Kierkegaard lack some of their characteristic heaviness. If cloudy, cool days helped produce more than a few solid spiritual thinkers, perhaps these same days have some gifts for us, especially in the areas of meaning and symbol.
The gardeners and landscapers among us know that this is a season of hidden energy and of expectant waiting. Several months ago, trees and shrubs pushed forward buds that "wintered over," and in the coming spring those buds will become the blossoms and fruit of the high season. Bulbs in the ground need the long, cold and dark "burial" of winter time to become the tulips, daffodils, gladioli and irises we love so much. And the seeds released by so many plants last summer "died" in the soil they landed in to resurrect later this year as the children and grandchildren of those original plants.
In the Gospel of John, the writer portrays Jesus using a similar metaphor about himself and the death he volunteers to undergo:
"... unless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it remains
only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest... " (John 12:24)
Written several decades after the events the gospel describes, these words form part of a tradition of important sayings attributed to Jesus. But they are also meant to comfort and inspire the generation of listeners who first heard them -- that community of believers then facing likely persecution by the Roman authorities and denunciation to those authorities by religious adversaries. Roman arrests, trials, and executions were purposely very brutal and very public as a means of controlling conquered peoples and the general citizenry. The metaphor of the seed of grain that dies to bring forth greater yield would have helped those early Christians cope with what must have been hardly bearable. "The blood of martyrs is the seed of faith," the saying went.
As helpful as that metaphor may have been, I imagine it would still have been terrifying to those early Christians to face possible arrest, torture and execution as religious outlaws. Bringing it to our time, how do we make sense of the horrors done to others throughout the world or that we could see ourselves facing? How do we deal generally with the wounds to psyche and spirit that life inflicts? How can we rebound from the worst life can throw at us?
We'll start to try to answer those questions in the next entry. Peace.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Radical Acceptance
I was talking with a client the other day who suffered the grevious loss of a loved one some while back. There was and is no way to sugar coat something that hard and mean feeling. Sometimes things happen that just suck. How we handle things like that is one of the great issues of living.
The client struck me as a person of generous heart who was open with himself and me, so he didn't pretend that he wasn't hurting in that moment. In response, I couldn't pretend I had some great over-arching Big Thought that would change his feeling or make the situation all better. Cheap grace nostrums ("it's all for the best!" or "God wanted him so he called him home") strike me as obscene responses to the toughest moments we face as human beings. We all deserve better.
The one thing I believe we deserve is fellow feeling. Perhaps the biggest gift we give each other is real compassion, which literally means feeling what the other is feeling or feeling something close to that. Maybe not exactly the same pain, but something like it. I can look you in the eye and can let you know by my words, my body-language, my bearing and my reactions that I have some idea of what you're experiencing; and that is an amazing human moment. Suddenly, you and I are not so alone.
Right in that moment of shared compassion, a possibility opens up that dashes past the temptation of hurtful cliches and empty slogans. In that connecting moment we each accept the reality of the loss and the reality of the shared experience. To radically (meaning "at root") accept life as it is in that moment, even an awful moment, unites us at a time when part of me just wants to scream or collapse. "To bear the unbearable sorrow," goes the lyric in Man of La Mancha. We can do it together. We can accept the worst life throws at us. We're not alone.
The client struck me as a person of generous heart who was open with himself and me, so he didn't pretend that he wasn't hurting in that moment. In response, I couldn't pretend I had some great over-arching Big Thought that would change his feeling or make the situation all better. Cheap grace nostrums ("it's all for the best!" or "God wanted him so he called him home") strike me as obscene responses to the toughest moments we face as human beings. We all deserve better.
The one thing I believe we deserve is fellow feeling. Perhaps the biggest gift we give each other is real compassion, which literally means feeling what the other is feeling or feeling something close to that. Maybe not exactly the same pain, but something like it. I can look you in the eye and can let you know by my words, my body-language, my bearing and my reactions that I have some idea of what you're experiencing; and that is an amazing human moment. Suddenly, you and I are not so alone.
Right in that moment of shared compassion, a possibility opens up that dashes past the temptation of hurtful cliches and empty slogans. In that connecting moment we each accept the reality of the loss and the reality of the shared experience. To radically (meaning "at root") accept life as it is in that moment, even an awful moment, unites us at a time when part of me just wants to scream or collapse. "To bear the unbearable sorrow," goes the lyric in Man of La Mancha. We can do it together. We can accept the worst life throws at us. We're not alone.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Holidays - The Good Bits
This time of year is hard on us in many ways. To the regular stress of making a living and dealing with the challenges of life we add some sky-high expectations of peak experiences that make Norman Rockwell look like a piker. What to eat, what to wear, who to give to, how much etc. We stress over eating and drinking too much. Dire warnings issue from newsrooms if we consumers don't get out there and bust through some target numbers to show that our economy is not going into the toilet. I can get caught up in that most durable of illusions that this product or that product will absolutely, positively make me happy -- until it doesn't. Gautama Buddha said the root of all our suffering is desire -- meaning craving, the illusion that we must have something to feel happy. Jesus spoke of the kind of treasure to have that doesn't decay. We forget such wisdom too easily. Many clients I've had over the years can't wait for the holidays to be over so they can go back to a more manageable level of stress and pressure.
The best holiday celebrations I've ever experienced usually have involved people I love, in a setting that allows for some conversation, and often some rituals, religious or secular, that remind me of what we are actually celebrating. The final credits of the movie "Love, Actually" are enhanced by a flurry of real airport reunions and homecomings, another great aspect of holidays -- people coming from far and near to connect with each other. Just catching up with each other is a great ritual -- to talk and to listen can be so healing in a life where anxious aloneness all too often feels like the norm.
A Jewish friend reminded me recently that her best appreciation of Christmas came when she spent the season in Naples and Rome. Her experience was that the people of those great cities enjoyed family meals and some religious services as the heart of the holiday, with a few small gifts, especially for the children. The famous nativity figures made in Naples were all over that city during the season, depicting not only the familiar cast of characters in Bethlehem but also hundreds of folk characters, laborers, artisans, ordinary people from a bygone age, reminding people that the Good News was for everybody. People love the famous Rockefeller Center tree in New York City, but there's a less famous tree in the Metropolitan Museum of Art called the "angel tree." Those same Neopolitan folk figurines surround a towering tree with ranks of beautifully rendered angels descending to an earthy scene of people working and laughing and living life -- and in their midst a rude stable where a Babe is born and honored.
Quiet music fills the big hall and the museum-goers seem to naturally slow down and get a little quiet as they admire the beautiful scene .
May your holidays be filled with some quiet beauty, some loving family and friends, a good meal or two, and perhaps a few moments to recall things you're grateful for. If there's a lonely person you can visit or call, or a family in need you can reach out to, or a military member overseas you can contact, this is a great season to get out of oneself and let someone know that they're cared for. That will make the season brighter for them and for you. Happy holidays.
The best holiday celebrations I've ever experienced usually have involved people I love, in a setting that allows for some conversation, and often some rituals, religious or secular, that remind me of what we are actually celebrating. The final credits of the movie "Love, Actually" are enhanced by a flurry of real airport reunions and homecomings, another great aspect of holidays -- people coming from far and near to connect with each other. Just catching up with each other is a great ritual -- to talk and to listen can be so healing in a life where anxious aloneness all too often feels like the norm.
A Jewish friend reminded me recently that her best appreciation of Christmas came when she spent the season in Naples and Rome. Her experience was that the people of those great cities enjoyed family meals and some religious services as the heart of the holiday, with a few small gifts, especially for the children. The famous nativity figures made in Naples were all over that city during the season, depicting not only the familiar cast of characters in Bethlehem but also hundreds of folk characters, laborers, artisans, ordinary people from a bygone age, reminding people that the Good News was for everybody. People love the famous Rockefeller Center tree in New York City, but there's a less famous tree in the Metropolitan Museum of Art called the "angel tree." Those same Neopolitan folk figurines surround a towering tree with ranks of beautifully rendered angels descending to an earthy scene of people working and laughing and living life -- and in their midst a rude stable where a Babe is born and honored.
Quiet music fills the big hall and the museum-goers seem to naturally slow down and get a little quiet as they admire the beautiful scene .
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Vermont III - FAMILY
Once again this morning, I walked the half mile up to the monastery, this time by myself. My retreat brothers and sisters, perhaps saner than me, opted for warm beds. It was a cold pre-dawn darkness, but once again there was a soft light from the half-moon still risen in the southern sky. Sounds just out of recognition filled the woods on either side of the gravel road and I added the sound of my breath and my boots crunching with each step. And just as the two mornings before, the priory bell rang through the darkness to announce that day's prayer.
I arrived at the chapel with the skin on my face refreshed by the cold air of the walk. The only other people in the chapel were two women up from Massachusetts we had met the evening before. The brothers came in randomly over the next few minutes. This morning the Sunday service of morning prayer began with Brother Alvaro lighting a taper in the rear of the chapel and bringing the light forward to several candles -- it was reminiscent of the Easter Vigil light ritual. This morning, we sang to Christ, light of our hearts and sign of God's love. The psalms flowed back and forth in easy chant.
The Gospel for this Sunday was the familiar, awful parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25). "When did we see you hungry, naked......." the people ask and Jesus gives that most touching of responses: "Whatsoever you do to the least (the weakest and most "unimportant") of my brothers and sisters, you do to me." In a world of 99% and 1% class and economic divides, here's a reminder that God is not about effete abstraction, but about standing for the poorest and most undefended among us. And that makes us family with each human being.
These brothers of Saint Benedict are an intentional community of commitment and choice, an alternative kind of family. If "friends are the family we choose," this particular family has chosen to live a life up in these woods that is steady, modest and full of meaning. They are "perfectly imperfect" men whose witness to the gospel call is genuine and compelling enough to bring visitors and fellow pilgrims like us to share, very briefly, in their lives of faith and worship. They remind us all of what's important in a way that's not fussy or so strange that we can't see ourselves in them. I return to my own family blessed and strengthened by theirs. And I'm grateful.
I arrived at the chapel with the skin on my face refreshed by the cold air of the walk. The only other people in the chapel were two women up from Massachusetts we had met the evening before. The brothers came in randomly over the next few minutes. This morning the Sunday service of morning prayer began with Brother Alvaro lighting a taper in the rear of the chapel and bringing the light forward to several candles -- it was reminiscent of the Easter Vigil light ritual. This morning, we sang to Christ, light of our hearts and sign of God's love. The psalms flowed back and forth in easy chant.
The Gospel for this Sunday was the familiar, awful parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25). "When did we see you hungry, naked......." the people ask and Jesus gives that most touching of responses: "Whatsoever you do to the least (the weakest and most "unimportant") of my brothers and sisters, you do to me." In a world of 99% and 1% class and economic divides, here's a reminder that God is not about effete abstraction, but about standing for the poorest and most undefended among us. And that makes us family with each human being.
These brothers of Saint Benedict are an intentional community of commitment and choice, an alternative kind of family. If "friends are the family we choose," this particular family has chosen to live a life up in these woods that is steady, modest and full of meaning. They are "perfectly imperfect" men whose witness to the gospel call is genuine and compelling enough to bring visitors and fellow pilgrims like us to share, very briefly, in their lives of faith and worship. They remind us all of what's important in a way that's not fussy or so strange that we can't see ourselves in them. I return to my own family blessed and strengthened by theirs. And I'm grateful.
Vermont II - Out On A Cold Morning
Once again this second morning in Vermont I walked out before dawn. Another man on the retreat joined me, and the two of us walked through the cold and dark. The light of the stars and a half moon created a wonderful soft light as we walked up the country road, woods on either side, with the gravel crunching under our feet. Once again, the sound of a bell flowed through the darkness, sounding the call to morning prayer.
The monks at whose priory we stay when on retreat sound that bell several times each day, all the year round. Whether or not outsiders come, and they usually do, these brothers of Benedict gather to sing and pray the ancient psalms and listen to the Word. Why? What might they be teaching us?
We met yesterday with two of the brothers. Our group's custom has been to determine a serious question we have about life and living, and then ask for any wisdom or insight the brothers might have. This year's question went something like this: how can I come to accept my dark side and so be more able to connect with others who may be hurting? How can my failings and imperfections actually draw me closer to others? It's a great question, and the two older brothers who gave us an hour of their time certainly rose to it. One brother (I swear he has "merry" eyes!) has always struck me as having something to say worth hearing, and he didn't disappoint this time, either.
The brother said that whenever he experienced conflict and division with his fellows, he liked to remember to go back to beginnings...... by that he meant the "why" of the relationship. He observed that each of us first experiences connection by feeling the heartbeat of our mother right in the womb -- not a word, but an experience of connection, physically felt. When he is in conflict with a brother monk, he told us he remembers the original commitment they made to each other -- to be brothers in the service of their spiritual calling. That's a beginning remembered, and helps sort things out. Not a bad standard.
What are the beginnings in my relationships? What do I need to remember? Most importantly I remember the choice of my wife (and hers of me); the choice to be a parent; my choice of profession as counselor, teacher and writer; and my choice of a spiritual path. All these beginnings remind me of what's important. If I've given my word to do or be something, that's a beginning that needs to be affirmed when life frays and sometimes tears like worn fabric.
What those Benedictine brothers stand for as they return to that chapel several times a day seems clear: connection, community and purposive commitment all matter and are worth celebrating. So it's also worth a cold morning's walk to witness and briefly join them in their way of choosing life and mending what's frayed.
The monks at whose priory we stay when on retreat sound that bell several times each day, all the year round. Whether or not outsiders come, and they usually do, these brothers of Benedict gather to sing and pray the ancient psalms and listen to the Word. Why? What might they be teaching us?
We met yesterday with two of the brothers. Our group's custom has been to determine a serious question we have about life and living, and then ask for any wisdom or insight the brothers might have. This year's question went something like this: how can I come to accept my dark side and so be more able to connect with others who may be hurting? How can my failings and imperfections actually draw me closer to others? It's a great question, and the two older brothers who gave us an hour of their time certainly rose to it. One brother (I swear he has "merry" eyes!) has always struck me as having something to say worth hearing, and he didn't disappoint this time, either.
The brother said that whenever he experienced conflict and division with his fellows, he liked to remember to go back to beginnings...... by that he meant the "why" of the relationship. He observed that each of us first experiences connection by feeling the heartbeat of our mother right in the womb -- not a word, but an experience of connection, physically felt. When he is in conflict with a brother monk, he told us he remembers the original commitment they made to each other -- to be brothers in the service of their spiritual calling. That's a beginning remembered, and helps sort things out. Not a bad standard.
What are the beginnings in my relationships? What do I need to remember? Most importantly I remember the choice of my wife (and hers of me); the choice to be a parent; my choice of profession as counselor, teacher and writer; and my choice of a spiritual path. All these beginnings remind me of what's important. If I've given my word to do or be something, that's a beginning that needs to be affirmed when life frays and sometimes tears like worn fabric.
What those Benedictine brothers stand for as they return to that chapel several times a day seems clear: connection, community and purposive commitment all matter and are worth celebrating. So it's also worth a cold morning's walk to witness and briefly join them in their way of choosing life and mending what's frayed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)