Tag: Grief

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Letting Shame Give Way to Grief

“Shame can never do what grief can do.”

I once heard a wise woman speak these words, before sharing stories about her family’s experiences during and following the Nazi regime in Germany. The collective shame over the Holocaust had enormous impact on the next few generations.

She shared an image of a propaganda poster from the occupying Allied Forces at the end of the war. It depicted the gruesomeness of the concentrations camps and bore the headline, “These Atrocities – Your Fault!”

Her grandparents contended with shame throughout the latter years of their life. Their happiest memories (falling in love, marrying, and raising their children) felt forever tainted because so much of their comfortable lifestyle coincided with Hitler’s rise to power, and was in part made possible by his willingness to oppress and exploit the vulnerable. When the war was over and the evils were more fully exposed, many felt like they had colluded to some degree. There had been warning signs of the atrocities being perpetrated. Some had ignored the cues; others felt powerless to do anything to change it. The result? A culture of shame that pervaded many families for three to four generations. When children are fed with guilt and watered with shame, they will struggle to bear joyful fruit later in life.

As I listened to her sharing, I wept with empathy. I felt the connection of her family story and my family story. My great-grandfather in Poland was executed by the Gestapo. Two of my grandfather’s brothers survived a concentration camp. My great-grandmother died amidst all that heartache before the war ended, not living to see the day of her sons’ release. My grandfather learned of all these events from afar, having moved back to the United States in the late 1930s (he and his older brother were American-born citizens shortly before the family moved back to Poland in 1918). No doubt, he contended with his own unspoken “survivor’s guilt.”

Tears flooded me as I imagined her grandparents and my grandparents, her family and my family, all of us still suffering in the wake of those two great wars. I found it easy to feel compassion. I found it healing to perceive everyone involved as normal human beings, bearing God’s image, both beautiful and broken. I felt her invitation into grief over what it really was like for everyone.

When betrayal or heartache feel crushing—especially when there are feelings of collusion with an abusive perpetrator—shame often steps in. Shame pretends to be powerful, as though it can prevent bad things from ever happening again. This was the motive of the propaganda posters – if we stir up enough collective shame, it will unthinkable for the unthinkable to happen again.

There are two problems here, one more obvious and one more subtle.

The more obvious problem is that bad things still happen. No amount of shaming or fear-mongering can stop them from happening. It’s a hard-to-accept truth that our human existence in this fallen world is indeed that vulnerable that we cannot actually stop bad things from happening.

The more subtle problem is the opening line: “Shame can never do what grief can do.” In the face of unspeakable harm, it feels far easier to seize control of the situation with shame and fear. But shame and fear do not allow space for grieving to happen. Maybe that’s why they are so appealing to so many for so long.

Neither this woman nor I are faulting the massive wave of shame that tends to follow the storms of trauma. How do you face the heartache of something as big as the Holocaust? It feels impossible. It’s easier to cast blame or to attempt seizing power over the situation. These ways of coping and bypassing the atrocities make sense – for a while anyway. Over time, they become increasingly unbearable. Healing cannot happen without facing and grieving the harm and the loss.

There is a reason why we Catholics fruitfully meditate on the “Sorrowful Mysteries” rather than the “Shameful Mysteries.” Shame can never do what grief can do. Our tears and grief become the very path of redemption and restoration. There are no Glorious Mysteries without the Sorrowful Mysteries. There is no Resurrection Sunday without the agony of Good Friday, and without the waiting of Holy Saturday.

In the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:4), Jesus teaches that those who grieve and mourn will be comforted. The Greek actually says “paracleted.” The Holy Spirit anoints the brokenhearted, if we will allow ourselves to abide in our heartache and receive divine remedy. He brings comfort, encouragement, and peace. God’s love heals.

This healing does not mean that the heartache goes away! It brings love and truth, meaning and purpose into the midst of what had seemed to be only chaos and absurdity. Jesus reveals himself as Lord even in the darkest places of our heart. I find, in fact, that the more glimpses and tastes I receive of the goodness of God, the more I will suffer in aching for more. I see the same experience in the lives of the Saints and the prayer of any great mystic in our spiritual Tradition.

So what does happen when others kindly witness my heartache, and the Holy Spirit anoints me in my grief? The most important change is that I am no longer alone. What once was trapped in isolation and fragmentation is now set free. What was frozen begins to thaw (which sometimes hurts!). What was rigid and inflexible can now flow and move toward wholeness and connection. I begin to experience love and communion in places which (I thought) love could not possibly enter. Only love did enter. That’s the entire point of Jesus’ rescue mission – to become flesh and go to the deepest places of human agony, conquering with a love that is both human and divine. Jesus duped the devil, concealing his glory in human flesh and bringing his love into the depths of sin and death.

Without Jesus’ suffering, death, and burial, the dark side of our human existence is indeed unbearable. Now, however, no matter how deep I go into my own heartache or the heartache of another, I will discover that Jesus is already there. He’s already descended deeper. He’s already issued the summons to come to the heavenly wedding celebration, in which all God’s scattered children, and all the scattered fragments of our hearts, will be gathered at table for the feast. Then, at long last, there will be no more weeping and no more death.

In the meantime, on our pilgrim journey through this “valley of tears,” grief becomes a guide far more reliable than shame. Shame will show up – especially in the wake of abuse, betrayal, or atrocity. Shame helps us to survive – for a while. Then it begins to isolate us, exhaust us, deplete us, and slowly kill us. We can appreciate how hard our shame has worked to try to protect us from agonizing heartache. Then, if we dare, we can ask it to take a seat and allow grief to do what only grief can do.

Blessed are those who grieve. They will be comforted.

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There is a River

I am from the river.

When I was one, my family moved back to Wisconsin and purchased a little house along the Wisconsin River.

I could see the river from my bedroom window, pulled open on sweaty summer nights, or through the ice that clung to the curtains in January. The river beckoned, beautiful and dangerous: frozen yet fragile in the winter, rising and rushing in the spring, serene in the summer, reflecting bright bursts of color in the fall.

I spent thousands of hours, endlessly exploring in our backyard, between the deck and the dock I had helped my stepdad build. There, near the river, I would catch toads or turtles or grasshoppers. I would dig up worms for fishing, or get grass stains in my pants as I touched and tasted the flowers (the violets were by far the best!). More than once I wistfully watched as a ball plunged into the waters and floated away, eluding the reach of branch or cane pole.

As Heraclitus once suggested, you cannot step into the same river twice. Visiting home elicits a mixture of emotions. It’s the same basic house and yard, but remodeled, refurnished, and rearranged a few times over. The town has the same streets and many of the same buildings, yet feels noticeably different. For many decades, it was a booming paper mill town. Then they witnessed the loss of hundreds of jobs in the early 2000’s, followed by a total shutdown in 2020. What a change from my childhood and teen years, when Consolidated Papers was a Fortune 500 company and invested $400 million to build the state’s largest paper machine.

This fall, I am facilitating a few dozen listening sessions throughout my diocese, inviting our 156 parishes to pivot from maintenance to mission. For many parishes that are struggling, the invitation is felt as an immediate threat. Are we going to close?? What are we going to lose?

The Lord has often surprised me in this process, especially when I feel overwhelmed, fear failure, or put pressure on myself. It happened again a few weeks ago.

My friend showed me a brand new book by Robert Enright, Forgiving as Unity with Christ. I quickly realized – “O, this is going to be one of those books.” It’s going to take me at least six months to meander through the journaling and meditation prompts, which have already tapped deep places in my heart.

So there I was, working on wounds of resentment and unforgiveness (which include my avoidance of feelings of anger). The exercise invited me to remember a time when I received unconditional love from another human, and to enter vividly into that moment. Memories of 1999 cascaded into my imagination. At that time, I received remarkable compassion and kindness from a few friends, especially Peter. It was healing to recall the lovely ways that they attuned to me, drew near to me, held space for my raw pain, and showed empathy.

My gratitude and consolation were interrupted by the memory of how awful it was to lose Peter that November. He was only five months ordained when he unexpectedly and inexplicably died in his sleep.

Out of nowhere I found myself recalling Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” It opened some of my deepest wells of grief, and I sobbed, not for the first time, and probably not for the last. I was not only feeling that sudden loss of a friend, who indeed glittered like gold. I was connecting with the universal human experience expressed in Frost’s poem. In this post-Eden world, the most amazing and beautiful moments never linger. It is agonizing. We were not meant for endings.

How painful it is to be like the poets or prophets – to have huge imagination and perceive beauty and goodness where many do not. It’s thrilling and delightful. You are eager to share the goodness with others. It’s awful because, often and even inevitably, the delight evaporates. Or it gets crushed, ripped away, or (perhaps worst of all) dismissed or spurned by others, who could have delighted in it. I think here of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem (Matthew 23:37). He imagines and desires so much more goodness for them – but they don’t want it. Or, if they want it, they are unwilling to repent and receive it.

As I continued to pray, I realized the connection between my own intense feelings in the moment and what Jesus is inviting all of us into in the Rebuild My Church Initiative in my diocese. I often feel unsettled and fearful in the face of future unknowns. I keep catching myself trying to manage or control the process, fearing failure. The Lord keeps reminding me that the people of the diocese doesn’t need a project manager; they need my heart. My own experiences are a microcosm of what I’m inviting everyone else into. I have all my familiar survival strategies that feel so much more appealing than trusting and following the voice of the Good Shepherd into more abundant life.

When people first hear about “reimagining the structure of their parishes” or “pivoting from maintenance to mission,” their reaction is often one of fear, suspicion, and self-preservation. I am listening to them in their fears, while inviting consideration that we need not live our lives out of fear.

But the Good Shepherd has been prompting more in my heart. It’s not only the unknowns or the potential losses of the future that are unsettling; it’s what has already changed and changed again, but remains ungrieved. When hurts are unhealed and losses are ungrieved, our human tendency is to fight to hold on to what is already lost, perhaps even finding a scapegoat to blame for the struggles.

Case in point – the loss of Christendom. Fifty years ago, Fulton Sheen prophetically proclaimed, “We are living at the end of Christendom – not the end of Christianity.” Yet so many Christians and churches want to fight culture wars and save Christendom. Rather than weeping over the ruins and rejoicing that new growth is sprouting up, we are fantasizing that we can still stop the collapse – not unlike the Japanese soldiers on Pacific islands who had not yet heard that the war was over.

I’ve been inviting the participants at these listening sessions to reflect upon changes and losses in their families, communities, and churches that have already happened, but are hard to accept. If we don’t mourn those, we will be less capable of heeding the voice of the Good Shepherd, being surprised with resurrected life, and following him into green pastures and new experiences of more abundant life.

In addition to Robert Frost’s poem, my prayer prompted a recall of the 1990’s movie A River Runs Through It. I remembered my curious discovery in Mexico twenty-five years ago. I spotted the movie in a storefront, only the title in Spanish was Nada Es Para Siempre (“Nothing Lasts Forever”). You can’t step into the same river twice. Nothing gold can stay.

Interestingly, in Spain, the same movie bears the Spanish title of El Rio de la Vida (“The River of Life”). There is a river that gladdens the City of God (Psalm 46), running through the heavenly city of Jerusalem. That river brings healing and life and new fruitfulness (Revelation 22).

Whenever I imagine receiving from those saving streams, I sometimes sob. I feel the parched places in my heart soak in the superabundant goodness. It is wonderfully consoling and intensely painful at the same time. My desires awaken, allowing me to drink in divine life. Then, in receiving more, I ache for still more – and know that I still have to wait, mostly because of God’s kindness allowing me to go at my own pace.

In these listening sessions, the hardest questions for people to reflect on have been questions about Hope. Many of our parish communities, not to mention many of our priests, feel listless or lost! They watch their numbers diminish and fear for their very existence, feeling powerless to change. A few of them, I find, have lost all imagination for more. The felt fear is so intense, and the grip on self-preservation so tight, that there is no longer an imagination for what abundance could look like. It feels too painful and too risky to dream of a feast when you are unsure whether you will eat today or where your next meal will come from. Survival mode and scarcity tend to cling to each other.

When I am tempted to feel frustrated or judgy about this narrow-mindedness, the Lord gently reminds me of how patient and kind he has been with me in the very same attitudes. It is truly sad when I or others don’t desire the goodness or abundance that is right in front of us. Or, more accurately, we bury that desire beneath a hardened façade.

It is very much like the story told in the Pixar film Encanto. As with the Madrigal family there, it can be terrifying when the cracks of our façade begin to show, and the “identity” we had falsely propped gets exposed and collapses. But it’s always an opportunity to access the living God anew and remember who we really are. We get to go to the Cross and drink from the life-given stream that flow from the pierced heart of Jesus. He is the Good Shepherd who promises to lead us into more abundant life.

Yes, there is a river that flows through the Heavenly City. That river, too, is beautiful and dangerous. I ache for it and avoid it. That river runs through my divided heart, much like the river that divides my home town.

I am from the river.

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More Than We Can Handle?

“God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.”

At least that is what many Christians say in the face of trial or loss. But is it actually helpful? And is it true? I believe it is rather unhelpful, and only partially true.

I’ve written before on the importance of learning to sit with sadness – something we tend to avoid! It’s hard enough when it’s our own sorrow. We’d rather plunge into busyness or fixing or numbing rather than face our grief. But it’s especially hard when we are in the presence of other people’s pain. That’s when the advice or clichés come out!

First, we’ll try to fix it – if there seems to be a way of fixing. We’ll be “generous” and offer to help; we’ll make suggestions for books or podcasts; or we’ll compare this person’s pain with our own or that of a friend – anything to help make the pain go away, because we don’t like to feel it, and we definitely don’t like to feel powerless.

In some cases (tragedies or definitive losses), there is nothing we can do. When fixing doesn’t work, we start grabbing for clichés. Surely one of them will be the magic wand that will make this feeling of powerlessness go away! Surely one of them will help this person feel better so that I can feel better.

Are these clichés helpful? No, I would say not. They often have the effect of “blaming the victim” or shaming others for feeling the way they feel. Rather than compassion (“suffering with”), clichés are a way of stepping back from the pain of others and leaving them to suffer alone.

I suppose there is a time and a place for distracting or diverting from pain. Perhaps we are in a survival situation and lack the time, resources, or energy to engage head on. If mere survival is the best we can hope for at the moment, then we can indeed turn to our arsenal of distractions and find ways to minimize the pain.

Even when we are ready to face heartache, we are still human, meaning we are limited. We can’t face it all the time. It can be appropriate to take a break from our grieving, laugh together at a joke or a movie, plunge into a hobby or game, and so forth. A cliché could be helpful as permission to take a short break from the pain.

But if our Christian families and communities are unable or unwilling to accompany people as they face pain and heartache, then where can they go? Jesus does not want his Church to be a place of mere survival, but God’s own hospital in which we experience healing, redemption, restoration, and total transformation. That only happens by facing our heartache, taking up our Cross, following Jesus, dying amidst our powerlessness, watching and waiting, and experiencing the newness of the Resurrection. If we desire to be “helpful” to those in pain, we must first walk this path ourselves – as Jesus did. We can’t give what we ourselves have not experienced.

Is there any truth to this expression, that “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle”? Sort of.  Here is what the apostle Paul says:

“No trial has come to you but what is human. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

As you can see, the cliché is an oversimplification and distortion of what Scripture actually says.

Paul doesn’t attribute our trials directly to God’s agency. God permits or allows us to endure trials, but they are human. They are the result of a misuse of human freedom – by our first parents, by others who have caused harm, and by our own sins. Directly or indirectly, all trials in this life are the result of human sin. God allows these consequences because he has entrusted us with dignity, freedom, and  real authority amidst our stewardship.

God is faithful. He is absolutely committed to accompanying us through every trial. He will never abandon us, and will never leave us without every means of assistance that we truly need to move through the trial.

God provides a way out. There is a true exit to the trial. We tend to hunker down in our panic rooms, avoiding the heartache – and ultimately getting stuck. But Jesus himself, God’s own beloved Son, has plunged into our trials. He has gone there first, and has opened up a path to new life. If we follow him faithfully, if we share in his suffering and death, we will experience a radical newness and expansiveness – and not just “one day” in heaven.

As we see in the saints, there is an amazing foretaste of this newness that comes even in this life. If you study their lives, you will find a stunning diversity of humans, all with two common features: (1) They endured enormous trials; (2) They were incredibly joyful followers of Jesus.

Like them, we will be able to bear our trials: because God is faithful to his promises, because Jesus has blazed a trail for us, because he accompanies us, and because he won’t allow us to be tested beyond our strength. Therefore, we can hope.

Hope is the answer in the face of heartache. Hope refuses to be killed by suffering (or by clichés!). Hope perseveres – not by naïve optimism, not by secular stratagem, but by waiting persistently for our faithful God to fulfill all his promises. This is the hope of mother Mary standing at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday and at the tomb on Holy Saturday – believing God’s promise, staying present, enduring, pondering, and waiting. The joy of resurrection always comes to those who abide in hope.

May we be people of hope, this Lent and always!

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Resuscitation ≠ Resurrection

Resuscitation and Resurrection are not the same thing. As disciples of Jesus, our true Hope lies in the Resurrection, but we often cling to a much lesser hope of mere resuscitation.

Resuscitation means temporarily going back to how our life was. Jesus called Lazarus from the tomb and gave him back his earthly life. Astounding though it was, a glimpse of things to come, Lazarus’ new lease on life was still only for a fleeting time. He was not yet ready for the glory of the Resurrection.

The Resurrection is something entirely new. Death is definitively conquered.  Jesus, once raised, will never die again. He invades hell and conquers. Beginning on Easter Sunday, he starts appearing to his deeply discouraged and disheartened disciples – astounding and surprising them with unimaginable joy.

Resuscitation does not last. It is not definitive. It does not change the underlying problem. Nonetheless, it has great appeal. Not only does it temporarily extend one’s earthly life, it also allows us to return to what is familiar. We know what to expect, and so we feel in control.

Resurrection is unpredictable and catches us by surprise. It is “New” because it ushers in the New Creation. In the Resurrection, God reigns. We experience his Kingdom in all its power and glory. That means surrendering to the unknown of his infinite goodness and dying to our urge to be in control.

It’s totally understandable that we want to cling to this present existence – it is still so amazing, even though it is only a limited experience of God’s glory. But it won’t last. God truly made us stewards, and we have used our freedom to disobey, allowing corruption and death to have dominion. God will not undermine or erase our freedom. The world as we know it will pass away. But he is creating something new by means of the Paschal victory of his own Son. Through Faith, Hope, and Love we are being initiated into the New Creation.

But there is one catch – we have to die first if we are to rise. And let’s not forget about the agonizing period of watching and waiting in between. What incredible joy it must have been to encounter the risen Jesus on that first Easter Sunday! Peter and the others had left him alone to die on the Cross. Their final moments with their beloved Savior and Messiah were shameful moments of betrayal and weakness. Now that same Jesus suddenly appears to them, clearly victorious and beyond all harm, and speaks astounding words: “Peace be with you.”  What a deep and amazed flood of joy they must have felt!

True Resurrection brings joy, even as its newness surprises us. But it is only possible if we first experience the death and the waiting, if we are willing to go into the depths of grief and loss. We often resist!

“I just want things to back to normal!”

How many of us have said or heard these words the past few months! Pining for the way things used to be is itself a normal human tendency. Change is hard. Loss is hard. Grieving our losses is incredibly hard – even though Jesus promises that those who mourn will be comforted and blessed.

We tend to resist true Hope. We prefer to settle for mere resuscitation rather than endure the pain of watching and waiting, not knowing when or how God will fulfill his promise of new life.

In this resistance, we are in good company. Peter and his friends, even after Easter Sunday, still struggled with wanting things to “go back to normal.” In John 21 Peter declares that he is going fishing – going back to his old way of life before he got to know Jesus. No one stops him. Indeed, the others join him!

Jesus surprises them yet again, leading them to a miraculous catch of 153 fish and inviting Peter three times on the seashore to renew his love. As in the Upper Room, he does not shame them for their weak human tendency to turn away. He meets them in their place of heartache and grief.

It’s so hard to grieve, so hard to lament our losses, so hard to open ourselves to the new and better heavenly realities that Jesus is opening us to.  It’s much easier to deny or minimize. It may be absolutely obvious that things will never go back to the way they were, but we will keep pretending, keep holding out false hopes. Or we will identify a scapegoat that we can blame, someone to lash out at because things are not the way we want them to be. One need only spend a minute or two on social media these days to find many examples of these behaviors!!

It is much harder to lament – to allow ourselves to feel the depth of grief and agony and to express it to God and to others. Lament and hope are intimately connected. Refusing to settle for any false messiah, authentic Christian Hope stays open to the promises of God – even when God seems to be painfully slow and silent in answering.

The most hopeful people I know are those who are willing to cry out to God like little children – to weep, to groan, to sob, or to scream – but always seeking the face of the living God.

Hope is defiant. It resists the cheap substitute of resuscitation. It does not settle for going back to the way things were, but holds fast in Faith to the promises of Jesus. Blessed are those who mourn; they will be comforted. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; they will be satisfied.

Hope hurts. It is much easier to cling to control, to protect ourselves, to numb our pain, or to cast the blame on others. It is so hard to reach out in Hope when we do not know how or when the answer will come (indeed, what if no answer comes?). There is so much vulnerability there. And so much freedom.

Resuscitation can be a good thing. But in the end, it can only bring us back to the present world of corruption – a world still destined to pass away. Only Resurrection can usher in the New Creation, in which God promises to wipe away every tear, in which there will be no more mourning or death.

During these painful and challenging times, you and I have a choice. Will we cling to our flimsy hopes in resuscitation – or will we go into the depths of grief and lament and dare to hold out Hope in the Resurrection?