A SEED HAS SPROUTED Please pray with me: Eternal God, let the memory of those who have gone before us be held and cherished eternally in your presence that no one who belongs to you may be forgotten. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. Let me welcome you to our 2014 “Praying Our Goodbyes” service. First, a short introduction for those who may be attending for the first time. Here at the Episcopal Parish Church of Saint Michael & All Angels in Corona del Mar we have recognized that difficult memories and associations often diminish the joy of the upcoming holiday season for those still dealing with the pain of loss. For many of us, Advent and Christmas are bittersweet times of the year, or just plain difficult as we remember people and events that have been a part of our lives in the past but that are now gone or changed. This is the time of year with the longest nights and, most hard to take, the persistent and cloying holiday cheer that’s all-around us. In the midst of jingle bells and Yule logs, many of us appreciate quiet, meditative worship that makes time for remembering, sharing our hurt places with God and preparing our hearts for the coming of Christ. The Rev’d Sam Candler, dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta, said it this way in a recent Thanksgiving post to his parishioners: “As Thanksgiving rolls around this year, some places at the table will be empty. Some good people died this year, some truly good people died. Some of us lost a marriage recently; even if we knew divorce was necessary, we still lost something. Some of us had children leave home, or friends leave town. “Some of us lost jobs this year, even as the economy was trying to sputter back to life. Some of us had business deals fall through, sales that didn't happen. Some of us lost cases, or made poor investments, or lost our appeals. “And some of us simply lost a few inspiring dreams and hopes. What we expected in the spring has faded in the fall. What we hoped for in the summer, even if we knew it was a long shot, is cold and forgotten as winter arrives. We live with as many lost hopes as we do lost realities.” Tonight we offer this service with the hope that it will bring some comfort in the days ahead. The title of the service, “Praying Our Goodbyes” comes from a book of the same title written by Sister Joyce Rupp who offers a spiritual approach to coping with the inevitable goodbyes that we all must face in our journey through life. "We say goodbye,” she writes, “to parents, spouses, children and friends, sometimes for just a day or a year, and sometimes until we meet them on the other side of this life.
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"We leave familiar places and secure homes. We bid farewell to strong, healthy bodies, burdenfree spirits or minds… . We place parents in nursing homes, allow our children to experience risk-taking and growth… .” Tonight we pray about these goodbyes, and losses and the profound personal grief that they can bring us. We share our service again with the St. Michael’s Friends of Music “First Sunday at Four” program and we thank our minister of music Ray Urwin and our performers for bringing us today’s music. A couple of notes: the offering from this service will, as it has for the past 15 years, be donated to the HIV/AIDS Project at St. Dunstan’s Cathedral in Johannesburg through the Anglican Communion’s international mission organization the Compass Rose Society. It will help fund the purchase of coffins for AIDS victims whose families cannot afford them. Offering baskets are in the back of the church. And I’d like to remind you that our parish is fortunate to have a beautiful memorial garden -the Garden of the Good Shepherd -- which is located behind the wall on your left as you walk out to the parking lot. To date, there are 97 memorials there. There’s more information about the garden in your service leaflet or if you have a personal interest, you can contact our rector, The Very Rev’d Canon Peter Haynes. And a final note before I begin a brief meditation, the “Praying Our Goodbyes” homilies that I’ve given over the past 15 years are collected in a small book called “Live as Children of Light” with an introduction generously written by our rector and it’s available in the back of the church. Please help yourself to a copy – or even to several copies to share with someone —on your way out. If you’d like to donate $5 to help with our ministry in South Africa that would be nice, but it’s not necessary. The books are there for the taking. *** As a text for tonight, I’d like to read you a few lines from a poem entitled Gabriel, by Edward Hirsh that St. Mike’s parishioner Peggy Montgomery was kind enough to share with me. Hirsch lost his 22-year old son, Gabriel, to the side effects of drugs. Hirsch wrote: I did not know the work of mourning Is like carrying a bag of cement Up a mountain at night The mountaintop is not in sight Because there is no mountaintop Poor Sisyphus grief
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I did not know I would struggle Through a ragged underbrush Without an upward path Because there is no path There is only a blunt rock With a river to fall into And Time with its medieval chambers Time with its jagged edges And blunt instruments I did not know the work of mourning Is a labor in the dark We carry inside ourselves As I mentioned in my introduction, Joyce Rupp’s Praying Our Goodbyes: A Spiritual Companion through Life's Losses and Sorrows—that’s the book’s full title—is the namesake of tonight’s service. Each year as I prepare this homily, I spend a few minutes with it looking for new insights about grief to pass along. And I’m continually impressed about how durable her work is. It was first published in 1987, had its 10th printing in 1999, was revised 2009 and to date has sold more than 250,000 copies, according to the publisher’s website. In the author’s words, a very brief summary of the book reads like this: “We may be harshly bruised by life's farewells, but it is possible to be healed. We can become whole again. I believe that if we are willing to move inside the heart of the experience, to live patiently through the process even as we acknowledge the difficult, painful emotions, we can experience the wonder of spiritual growth and the marvel of new depths of faith in our relationship with God and with others.” It’s one of those books that you can dip into at any random page, start reading, and learn—or relearn—something. And while at this service we focus on bereavement—grief in response to the death of a significant other—the book’s scope goes well beyond that. More from the publisher’s webpage: “Everyone has unique goodbyes—times of losing someone or something that has given life meaning and value. Joyce Rupp offers her wisdom on these experiences of leaving behind and moving on, the stories of union and separation that are written in all our hearts.’ Praying Our Goodbyes, Rupp says, is about the spirituality of change.”
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I love that concept: the spirituality of change. Change is always with us and learning to deal with change spiritually can help us through it as we live out our lives from, as Sister Rupp says, repeated goodbyes followed by repeated hellos. When a major change comes with the death of a loved one, one question I often hear is, “How long will I grieve? “ An informed and up to date answer comes from psychologist George Bonanno who wrote this in his 2009 book, The Other Side of Sadness: "The good news is that for most of us, grief is not overwhelming or unending. As frightening as the pain of loss can be, most of us are resilient. Some of us cope so effectively, in fact, we hardly seem to miss a beat in our day-to-day lives. We may be shocked, even wounded by a loss, but we still manage to regain our equilibrium and move on. “That there is anguish and sadness during bereavement cannot be denied. But there is much more. Above all, it is a human experience. It is something we are wired for, and it is certainly not meant to overwhelm us. Rather, our reactions to grief seem designed to help us accept and accommodate losses relatively quickly so that we can continue to live productive lives." Edward Hirsh said it this way: “There is no right way to grieve, and you have to let people grieve in the way that they can. One of the things that happens to everyone who is grief-stricken, who has lost someone, is there comes a time when everyone else wants you to get over it. Bit of course you don’t get over it. You get stronger; you try and live on; you endure, you change; but you don’t get over it. You carry it with you.” Bonanno found in his research that grief isn't a single track, but a long private journey that splits along three rough paths. Ten percent of us experience "chronic" and relentless grief that demands counseling. Another third or so plunges into deep sadness and gradually begins recovery. But most of us— "between 50 and 60 percent," Bonanno says—quickly appear to be fine, despite day-to-day fluctuations. Scientists used to think that those so quickly recovered were just actors who pushed their true feelings deep inside themselves where they would emerge later in life with harmful consequences. But Bonanno disagrees: "If you think you're doing OK," he said, "then you're doing OK." "I'd look to the ancient Asian cultures,” he elaborated. "They have the idea that the person isn't really gone, that the afterlife is porous, and that you can still have a relationship with that person." I’ve recently experienced that porous afterlife with both my late father and my late wife Susan. When the retired baseball star Tony Gwyn died earlier this year, it was reported that he was 54 years old. That fact sparked sudden memories of my dad’s death—he died at the same young
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age. There followed several days of not only grief, but also reminisces with him and we’ve been chatting quite a bit since. And when our organist Ray Urwin played Ave Maria at Joan Short’s celebration of life this summer, I had the chance to silently offer that work to Susan who always wanted it played at her service, but which we couldn’t do because it was a graveside service. I think she enjoyed it. And I finally could grant her wish. Yes, the relationships can continue. Every time I pick up Sr. Rupp’s book, I find that her chapter titled “New Melodies Break Forth from the Heart” continues to offer me some support. At the beginning of the chapter she quotes the poet e.e.cummings who wrote, “I who have died am alive again today” and she goes on to say, ”There are people who felt that all the songs in their heart had died, that all the roads they knew were wiped out and they could go no further. Then a kind of resurrection happened within them and they discovered ‘new melodies’ and the wonder of ‘new roads.’” When we move on from painful goodbyes, we have a good deal in common with the gospel stories of the resurrection. And like the disciples, a Pentecost eventually emerges where we can look back and know that we have finally ended our goodbye. This process requires letting go of the past which is sapping our strength and our potential for growth; for healing and hope. As we move from goodbyes to hellos in our lives, we may need to let go of a person we’ve lost, of unmet expectations, of dreams and goals, of old injuries of the heart, of old securities or even our riches. And to do this, says Sr. Rupp, requires surrender to God and, a kinship – a deep communion with another not unlike the bond that Jesus while dying on the cross had with Mary and John: the gift of one to the other. John 19:25-27 says: “Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” I said earlier that I was impressed with how durable Praying Our Goodbyes was. Part of this is because I keep hearing echoes of it in the secular media. Take these conclusions about suffering from New York Time columnist David Brooks. “Recovering from suffering is not like recovering from a disease,” says Brooks. “Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different. They crash through the logic of individual utility and behave paradoxically. Instead of recoiling from the sorts of loving commitments that almost always involve suffering, they throw themselves more deeply into them. Even while experiencing the worst and most lacerating consequences, some people double down on vulnerability. They hurl themselves deeper and gratefully into their art, loved ones and commitments. The suffering involved in their tasks becomes a fearful gift … “ Praying Our Goodbyes 2014
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This sounds a great deal like what Sr. Rupp would have us experience … and, with God’s help, become. A closing prayer from Sr. Rupp: Somewhere within me the seed has sprouted. I can feel its movement: I can sense its energy. Somewhere within the rainfall has reached. My desert is gone, my dryness has disappeared. Somewhere within I’ve been given life again. I can say goodbye to emptiness: I can say hello to fullness. Somewhere within my yearning has been met. The God of graciousness has graced, the God of tenderness has blessed. Somewhere within I feel at home again. I have enthusiasm; I want to dream. And so the circle of my life journey has once more come into its season of spring. Grace, Mercy and Peace be with us all. *** A final note: This is the 16th consecutive time I have delivered remarks at the Praying Our Goodbyes service here at Saint Michael & All Angels, Corona del Mar. It’s now time—perhaps well past time—to give someone else a change to offer their thoughts about loss and grief, and I like to ask anyone in the congregation who would like to do so in subsequent years to contact me or Fr. Haynes to discuss it. References: The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss, Basic Books; First Trade Paper Edition (September 22, 2009). http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/the-secret-life-ofgrief/281992/?single_page=true http://sevencounties.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=35161###: An interview with George Bonanno on Bereavement An excerpt from Gabriel by Edward Hirsch. Copyright 2014 by Edward Hirsch. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC Norris Battin Praying our Goodbyes November 2, 2014
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