Grief

Blessed Are The Anguished

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— Demonstration supporting Sammy’s Law, March 22, 2024. Photo: Roger Talbott

This is the week when Christians recall the passion and death of Jesus. On Thursday, we have a service to remember his last supper. On Friday, we often have long services in the afternoon that recall the seven things he said on the cross or the 12 events that happened on the way to the cross.

All these are in preparation for the joyous celebration of Christ’s resurrection on Easter Day. 

Some churches also have a service of Tenebrae — a word that means “darkness.” The service consists of lamentations from the Psalms and the prophets. No one preaches. If there is music, it is also the music of lament and grief — think, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord.” Periodically, a candle at the front of the church is extinguished, and the church grows so dark it is hard to see anything but the candles.

In the end, only one large candle remains lit and it is removed from the sanctuary. The congregation sits in silence. Then there is a loud noise. Last night, someone beat on an unseen kettle drum. The large candle is returned to the front of the church, a symbol of St. John’s words, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out.” 

When I used to lead Tenebrae services in the suburban church I pastored when our sons were growing up, our son Matt helped me by making the loud noise at the end of the service. He created a loud, hollow noise that sounded like a door slamming shut on your tomb. 

As an adult, Matt sometimes attended a Tenebrae service even if he didn’t attend church on Easter morning. He said, “It is the world’s best horror show.” 

As I recited lamentations in my church’s Tenebrae service this year, I remembered how all of us who loved Matt felt when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and watched over the next ten terrible weeks as he slowly wasted away in front of us, even as the light of his love for life and his family fought back against the darkness. 

The feeling we had, like the feeling the followers of Jesus must have had in the last few hours of his life, was anguish. 

It is the same feeling I have had for the last six months about Israel and Gaza. 

I have Jewish family and friends for whom Israel’s national security represents a kind of psychological safety net in a world that periodically decides to blame Jews for everything. The brutal attack on October 7-8 poked a hole in that safety net. Many of them see the net being further degraded as Israel’s short-term military objectives risk the long-term safety of all the world’s Jews. 

As what might have been a just war has become just war, my friends and friends of friends who are Muslim, Arabic Christians, and people whose skin doesn’t match the paint samples Americans arbitrarily call “White” see our country’s support of Israel (now waning) as a clear indication that some lives matter more than others. 

The great temptation is to feel nothing.  After all, I can’t do anything about it. It is the way of the world. As one of my pastors said last Sunday, most of the people involved in Jesus’ crucifixion treated it the way we Americans treat mass shootings. It was just another day. 

His Sunday sermon, the Tenebrae service last night, Holy Thursday, and Good Friday remind me if I am to remain whole and human in this cruel world, I am called to feel anguish. 

I Googled “anguish” and found this:

“Anguish is often referred to as emotional distress or pain, and it can encompass several different emotions, such as trauma, grief, sorrow, fear, and anxiety. It’s a reasonable, typical, and sometimes even a rational response to a horrible situation.” 

Betterhealth.com

It isn’t easy to choose to feel distress and pain. No one can do it all the time, as the exhausted caregivers of dying loved ones know all too well.  Yet we also know that shutting those feelings out entirely makes us less than human. 

We need rituals and seasons that bring us back to our anguish.

 In the last few years, I’ve been fascinated by how people who never go to church, especially young people, show up for Ash Wednesday. Having ashes applied to your forehead while hearing “Remember you are dust” is as grim a ritual as there is in Christianity’s toolbox.  Yet, if a clergy person is willing to stand in a public place and perform that ritual, people will line up for it, showing that it reaches something that happy, clappy weekly “celebrations” do not. It helps us get in touch with the anguish of life itself. I suspect that if there were some way to take Tenebrae out into the streets, people would line up for that, too. 

I experience the same “vibe” when I attend Yom Kippur services at Malkhut, the Jewish spiritual community my daughter-in-law, Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg,  has formed here in Western Queens, and hear my son, Jim, chant in Hebrew alphabetical order the names of the sins we all commit. (You can taste that vibe by listening to Leonard Cohen sing “Who by Fire.”) I suspect that my Muslim friends who are observing Ramadan are getting in touch with the same feelings. 

 I have recently seen the importance of secular rituals of lamentation, too. I have attended demonstrations led by Jews and Muslims demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. I recently marched with neighbors who are demanding a radical change in New York State law — to give New York City the right to set its own speed limits — a week after another child had been run over in Queens. All of them are acts of communal anguish and lament.

As the Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann has repeatedly pointed out, lamentation is prophetic. It expresses humanity’s resistance to the Powers that Be, who insist cruelty and death are necessary. Living in this world without anguish means caving to the Powers that are trying to squeeze us into their image.  

Jesus once said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” We find comfort because we are not alone; we are part of the human race made in the image of God, who often weeps over us.  

This is part of a larger project on the Beatitudes. I would appreciate any comments you would like to share.

Light in the Groundhog Hole

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Measured by the number of times I have seen and referred to it, Groundhog Day is my favorite movie. I can’t help thinking about it on February 2nd. (Spoilers ahead).

Bill Murray plays Pittsburgh weatherman Phil Connors. He and his producer, played by Andie McDowell, and his cameraman, played by Chris Elliott, check into an inn in Punxsutawney, PA, on February 1 because the following day they have to report the annual ceremony in which a groundhog (also named Phil) will see his shadow at sunrise and predict six more weeks of winter — not a stretch because February 2nd is smack-dab between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

Phil gives a lackluster description of the meaningless event and is eager to return to Pittsburgh. However, a blizzard forces him and his crew to stay an extra night. The following day, he is awakened by Sonny and Cher singing, “I’ve got you, Babe!” — the same song that woke him up the day before, and the announcer says that it is February 2nd. Phil lives Groundhog Day over and over again, and then again, and again.

I’m reminded of the movie, not just because today is February 2nd, but because, like Phil, I keep repeating something over and over again.

I am trying to write a book about the Beatitudes of Jesus — nine sayings that each begin with the word “Blessed.”

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are the meek.

These first three, especially, make no sense. What is blessed about poverty, spiritual or otherwise?

Mourning isn’t exactly “happy” (another possible translation of the word “Blessed.”)

And who wants to be meek?

So, I sit down every morning and write a few hundred words. The next day, I write a few hundred more without making any discernible progress toward writing a book.

I’m taking today off to think about Bill Murray’s Phil and what happens to him in the movie.

When the movie begins, Phil is an unlikable, arrogant bastard. He dislikes and looks down on his producer, cameraman, and all the people in Punxsutawney.

What makes repeating Groundhog Day hell for him is that he is stuck in this hick town with these dumb people, repeatedly reporting on a meaningless event.

However, over time, Phil begins to see how spiritually impoverished his life is. He has no friends. He loves no one. No one loves him. He isn’t doing anything that matters to him. This depresses him. Slowly, he starts to make some changes in his daily routine. For example, he takes a piano lesson every afternoon from a teacher who thinks he is her new student each time he comes to her door. The daily routine doesn’t change, but Phil learns to play the piano.

By the end, Phil begins to appreciate Larry, the cameraman and falls in love with his producer. He starts living a meaningful life, not by spending hours meditating or studying any religion’s scriptures, but by simply facing the fact that his life isn’t worth living and meekly (the word in the Greek New Testament means “teachable”) learning how to live a better life step-by-step.

The working title for my book about the Beatitudes is A Life Worth Living Forever.

I think that is what the gospels mean by the phrase “eternal life.”

Jesus transitions from the Beatitudes to the rest of the Sermon on the Mount by declaring, “You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth.” He says keeping the light under a bushel basket or for salt to lose its flavor isn’t right.

In the movie, Phil eventually gets out of his own way. He creates a community of friends that resembles the Kingdom of Heaven on a small scale. He accepts and makes amends for how he has treated his co-workers and television audience. He eventually becomes the richest man in town, measured by how much he is loved. His light shines.

I can’t seem to explain the Beatitudes, but I can point to Bill Murray’s Phil and say, “That’s what they look like.”

Like Phil, we all have a light inside of us, and Life will teach us how to let it shine if we will let it.

And thank you, friends, for reading this. I’m trying to learn to write like Phil learned to play the piano.

That Other “D” Word

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“Old Man with Cane” Created by Dall-E

“You know how people say ‘passed away’ when they mean ‘died’?” our friend, Jim, said recently. “Well, there’s another ‘D’ word, ‘Diminishment,’ and  the euphemism for that is ‘Aging’.” 

Both Jim and I know what he is talking about.  I used to have to walk right along to keep up  with him. Now he pushes a rollator. 

I started wearing hearing aids when I was 35. Almost 30 years later, my hearing got so bad that I underwent surgery for cochlear implants. I also have gone from running 5K’s three times a week, to barely being able to walk a mile. I struggle with chronic fatigue and brain fog due to Long COVID. 

On top of that, I joke that my job was a post-graduate course in aging. During my career as a pastor from 1971 to 2016, the average life expectancy in the U.S. rose from 71 to 78.5. What that meant was that on Mother’s Day in the 70’s, I would see kids, parents, and grandparents sitting together. In the 2010’s, I would see kids, parents, grandparents, and great-grandmother all in the same pew.  Since great-grandmother was probably the only person who still attended on a regular basis, I spent a lot of my time with people in their 80’s and 90’s. 

I learned that “diminishment” means two things: 

– Not being able to do what we used to do. 

– Not being able to be who we used to be. 

Sometimes, just turning a page on the calendar will change who we are. A colleague said that his father complained, “Yesterday, I was the boss of the biggest construction project in the state. Today, I was issued a card that lets me go bowling for half-price.” 

That’s why Supreme Court Justices and Senators and our President still hang on to their jobs into their 80’s. I can’t say that I blame them. It’s taken me six years to quit dreaming every Saturday night about preparing (or not preparing) to lead worship on Sunday. 

The other form of diminishment is when physical and mental limitations keep us from doing what we used to do. 

In those post-graduate studies I mentioned earlier I saw people handling diminishment with three other “D’s”: Denial, Despair, and Discernment. 

I work as a volunteer with people who have hearing loss. The first barrier to overcome is denial. People wait an average of seven years between the time they notice they aren’t hearing as well as they used to and when they start looking into getting a hearing aid.  

What are they doing in those seven years?  

  • – Driving family crazy when they turn up the TV too loud. 
  • – Losing their own ability to speak clearly – as they unconsciously mimic the way they are hearing words pronounced. 
  • – Mishearing what was said and being embarrassed so that they learn to pretend to hear when they don’t or they withdraw from conversations entirely. (The last one is why hearing loss is highly correlated with cognitive decline). 

So, why do we live in denial? 

To save ourselves from the despair we will feel if we face the truth. Jesus may have said, “The Truth will set you free,” but we don’t really believe it. And, yes, I’ve talked to way too many people who faced the truth of their diminishment and despaired. On some days, I have been one of them. 

However, I have seen others take a different road and I am trying follow it myself. It is the Way of Discernment. 

Most of us are familiar with this famous proyer:  

Lord, grant me the courage to change the things I can change. The serenity to accept the accept the things I can’t change. And the wisdom to know the difference. 

Reinhold Niebuhr

The trick is finding the wisdom to know the difference. I think James Baldwin shows us the way:  

Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

Yes, I said above that facing diminishment can lead us into despair, but that is because we jump too soon to the conclusion that our life is essentially over. “Facing” really means looking at the problem and asking, “Is there anything I can do about this?” 

Take hearing loss as an example. We are fortunate to live in an era in which technology can help us overcome a lot of the limitations imposed by hearing loss. However, sticking a hearing aid in your ear is not the same as putting on eyeglasses. We are required to work at learning to use the aid correctly and to be proactive about asking people to speak more clearly. (And to sometimes explain why, as the writer, Katherine Bouton says, Shouting Won’t Help)

But, not everything can be overcome. I am still trying to discern if there are answers to Long COVID. I’m convinced that I can’t take a pill that will cure me. I am discovering that fasting has made a difference, as well as patient, disciplined forms of exertion. But, I’m still not running any races. 

I could despair about that, or accept it with serenity. On my good days, I choose the latter. At a superficial level, I like to think of myself being as cool as Tony Bennett asking beautiful girls to walk a little slower.

But, I also am discovering something deeper. The psychoanalyst, Ernest Becker, wrote in his book, The Denial of Death , that aging requires “terror management.” For Becker, I think (I don’t pretend that I’ve read his book carefully enough to understand it fully), the trouble with being human is that we can anticipate death and  knowing we will die threatens us with meaninglessness. 

In contrast, the Christian tradition describes a scene shortly after Jesus has died his terrible death and then reappeared to his disciples. In this scene, Jesus says to his disciple, Peter, 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.”  — John 21:18

Christians read that as a prediction of Peter’s eventual death by crucifixion, and Jesus is reassuring Peter that even that will have a purpose in his life.  But, those words  also describe what will happen to a lot of us, if we live long enough. 

As things fall away in my life; as people I love more than life itself die; as I look at a picture taken 50 years ago and barely recognize the young man I was then; as my vibrant wife, three months younger than me by the calendar and fifteen years younger by any other measure, goes off to the theater while I go to bed, I still sense that there is something  that I call “me” that I am just discovering. 

William Stafford has expressed how I feel as well as anyone can:  

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

The Way It Is, by William Stafford. 

I think Jesus was saying to Peter that even at the end, when he is helpless, he will still be following the thread of his life. 

Whatever happens, beloved, your life isn’t over until it is over (and maybe not then). Hang on to your thread. 

figurines of the nativity of jesus

The First Christmas After Death

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Jacquie and I are grateful for the cards, emails and other messages we have received in the past few weeks that acknowledge our ongoing grief.

One of the hard things about losing someone who is as much a part of you as your arms or legs — or more precisely, your heart — is that the rest of the world quickly goes on with its business. As it should. As it has to. We understand. We have done the same. However, we are comforted by those who remember that something important stopped for us this past summer.

In all honesty, our Christmas, on the surface, won’t be much different this year. Matt, and his family live(d) in Portland, OR, across the continent from us. He would call us on Christmas Day. We will miss that — that voice. (A church secretary once announced he was on the phone by saying, “it’s your son with the great voice.”) But, we won’t have the empty chair at the table like our daughter-in-law and grandchildren will. Just thinking of their table brings tears to our eyes.

I wondered if we would just try to skip Christmas this year.

However, as Advent progressed, it felt more and more like Christmas — not the way the bouncy Bing Crosby tune puts it. But, more like Christina Rossetti puts it:

“In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan.
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
. . .
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.”

I am late to the Rachel Held Evans fan club, but this morning I came across something she wrote that resonates with me at a deep level:

“I know that Christians are Easter people. We are supposed to favor the story of the resurrection, which reminds us that death is never the end of God’s story. Yet, I have never found that story even half as compelling as the story of the Incarnation.

. . . the true miracle of the Incarnation— the core Christian conviction that God is with us, plain old ordinary us. God is with us in our fears and in our pain, in our morning sickness and in our ear infections, in our refugee crises and in our endurance of Empire, in smelly barns and unimpressive backwater towns, in the labor pains of a new mother and in the cries of a tiny infant. In all these things, God is with us—and God is for us.

Rachel Held Evans with Jeff Chu, Wholehearted Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2021) p. 5.

I hope that, when Easter comes around next April, some power beyond my own will have rolled away the stone in my heart. But, right now, I agree with Evans. I don’t know if I believe in an empty tomb right now. I do believe in a baby in a manger.

The one thing death does for us is enable us to see our loved ones whole. Whenever I think of Matt, I see him not just as the almost skeletal, cancer-ravaged remnant of himself who looked out at us the last time we Facetimed a few days before he died. I see him as the man who came to celebrate Father’s Day 2021 with me, bringing his own grown son with him. Both his mother and I were proud of what a good father Matt was.

At the same time, I see him as the young man I visited when he was working in Poland after college. I especially remember his ardent efforts, a decade before cell phones, to place a call to a young woman whom he had met in Geneva. I was not surprised when he married her.

I can see him in adolescence and in boyhood and as the baby his Mom and I brought home from the hospital, tiny enough to cradle in one arm, nursing like every baby ever born and sleeping like . . . well, like a baby who can sleep soundly in a bassinet or a feed trough.

I used to wrap the baby Jesus in metaphysical swaddling clothes. This year, for me, he is like every baby, including Matt. Therefore, he is the Incarnation of Life. As Matt was. As you and I and everyone we love are. He came into this world, whether he knew it or not, to live and to love, which means taking on all the risks of skinned knees, viral infections, broken hearts, cancer, and crucifixions. But also to delight in sunrises and sunsets, good food, friendship, skin contact, and new babies.

Matt loved every moment of Life. Incarnation was not wasted on him.

Easter may promise something after death, but, in this bleak midwinter, all I can believe in is Christmas and the life in this world that Christmas celebrates and calls us to live generously, gratefully, . . .fully.

The first poem I ever memorized — before I could read — were the last four lines of Rossetti’s poem. It was a “piece” I said at our church’s Christmas pageant, with my parents and grandparents of blessed memory looking on:

“What can I give him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would give a lamb.

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part.

What can I give him: give him my heart”.

“A Christmas Carol” by Christina Rossetti.

Seventy Christmases later, I finally understand those words. It is safer to give those other gifts: lambs, frankincense, Walmart gift cards. Giving your heart means to risk having it broken. Yet, to not give your heart would mean that you would miss Life — the real meaning of Christmas.

What to Say to a Grieving Person

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Last September I started a series of blog posts on grief. I never finished due to the fatigue that I suffer from Long COVID. I was just starting to feel better when our son called us about his diagnosis. “I am going to die,” he said. I am writing this partly to offer thanks to all those who have reached out to us with your prayers and condolences. Nothing makes it better, but we have felt supported.

A few weeks ago, Jacquie and I lost our oldest son to pancreatic cancer. He was 49. His wife and two teen-age children are grieving and disoriented from the fact that he was fine until about 10 weeks before his death. So are we.

We got a lot of cards, emails, and personal expressions of love and support from dozens and dozens of people. People told us that they were sorry for our loss. Our Jewish friends and family usually said, “May his memory be a blessing.”

Many of them admitted, “I don’t know what to say.” Some just said, “There are no words.”

In fact, we found those expressions of wordlessness the most comforting. They matched our own feelings of inexpressible grief.

The French philosopher, Montaigne, the inventor of the essay, tells a story about a king who was defeated by his enemy. To torture the king, his enemy had the king’s beloved horse brought forward and then had the horse slain in front of the king. The king cried out in dismay.

The enemy brought forward the king’s closest advisor and best friend and cut his throat. The king howled with grief.

The enemy then brought forward the king’s wife and children, and murdered them before his eyes. The king said nothing.

The enemy was surprised. Why had the king wept for a horse, howled in grief for his friend, but was silent about the loss of his family? The enemy thought he had failed to break the king’s heart.

But, as Montaigne said, “Lesser griefs weep. Great griefs are dumb.”

There are no words.

Statisticians can tote up the numbers murdered in the Holocaust. Historians can trace the development of Hitler’s final solution. But anyone who walks through the Holocaust museums in Washington, D.C. or Jerusalem leaves knowing that there are no words.

We have been fortunate not to have encountered the kind of people that Gardner Taylor, one of the Black Church’s great voices of the 20th century, used to call, “Spiritual Speakeasies.”

I used to meet them in funeral homes when I visited parishioners who had lost loved ones. They, to paraphrase Reinhold Niebuhr, always seemed to be able to describe the furniture of heaven and knew the temperature of hell. They glibly said things like, “we know (insert the name of the deceased) is with (insert the name of a dead grandparent) and they are rejoicing to meet all their other loved ones.”

Well, maybe.

The New Testament tends to describe the afterlife the way you might describe Florida to an Eskimo without the aid of photographs. All you would be able to say is, “There are no polar bears in Florida. No ice. No snow.”

So, Jesus says that there is no marriage there (Matthew 22:30). And Revelation says “there will be no more death’ nor mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

To come back to the Eskimo analogy, you could say that Florida has palm trees and white sandy beaches, but it would not mean much to someone who has never seen them. The Eskimo might take your word for it that Florida is a nice place, but would not sign up for trip there anymore than most of us want to be on the next bus to heaven.

Death, especially the death of a child, leaves us with more questions than answers, more grief than confidence.

There is a part of me that cannot believe that my son still lives. But, I have no proof of that, either.

Death is a great mystery.

Maybe when we die, we die.

Maybe our atoms return to the stars from which they came.

Maybe we get to try life all over again.

Or maybe there is something after death that is beyond all that we can ask or think. I hope so.

We do not grieve like those who have no hope. We only grieve like those who have no words.

Re-membering: How Grief Makes You A New Person

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Seeing the Whole Person


In the days after my Dad died, his grandchildren put together a display of photos. There were pictures of:

  • A grandchild steering his garden tractor while sitting on Dad’s lap.
  • Christmases past surrounded by kids and grandkids.
  • Dad giving his daughters away at their weddings.
  • Dad and Mom, barely out of their teens, at their own wedding.
  • A 12-year-old farm boy standing proudly next to his first deer.


Suddenly, it seemed like all of him was there. Not just the man I had seen the last time we were together: an old man who could barely hear anything you said. I also saw him in the prime of his life. I saw the young man I remembered from when I was a boy. My memories brought all of him together in a way that would not have been possible when he was alive.

Our memories ambush us years after the funeral. The smell of fresh-baked bread reminds me of one grandmother. The sight of a new commemorative postage stamp reminds me of the the other, who encouraged me to collect them. What triggers your memories of those long-gone?


When we remember our loved ones, we re-member them. We put them — and ourselves — together in a new way.


Re-membering Together


People gather after someone dies to share their memories. It may be the calling hours at the funeral home; an Irish wake; or in Greek Orthodox culture, a dinner honoring the deceased on the one-year anniversary of their death. Jews observe Shiva for a few evenings after the funeral. Friends, neighbors, and extended family visit the immediate family in their home.

Every traditional community has a way of creating these gatherings. Our secular suburban life is poorer when we don’t have them. But, just sharing a cup of coffee with good friends in those first few days after a death can help. In this pandemic era, we have even learned how to gather on Zoom.


We gather to listen with empathy as the most-bereaved talk about losing their loved one. Telling these stories can help them process their loss. But, it also helps the most-bereaved to hear stories about their loved one from others who knew that person.


In response to the first of this series, my sister-in-law, Jo-Anne, said that everyone’s life is like an elephant. The people who know us are like the blind men who famously announced their true, but very different, conclusions about that elephant. We all see only part of a person — including our parent, spouse, sibling, or child. Hearing stories about them from others helps us fill out our picture of this person who is so important to us.


I came away from my Dad’s funeral with a much bigger picture of him. I listened to people who had worked with him at the electric company, or on the volunteer rescue squad and the town board. Neighbors told me how he had helped them. After all, he could fix anything; from your refrigerator to your kid’s broken arm.

This also happens when I gather with my brother and sisters. Each of them related to our parents differently. As I listen to their stories, they fill in the picture, and at the same time, deepen the mystery, of who my parents were.


The Pieces Come Together in a New Way


“Closure” is a myth. We have this fantasy that, after someone important dies, we will go through the stages of grief: denial, anger, depression, and acceptance. Then we should be able to pick up where we left off.


Instead, we are changed

as we re-member our dead

into our lives.


The Mystery of Your Existence


All my grandparents were born in the 19th century. All my grandchildren were born in the 21st century.

If you are now in the Third Half of your life, you can probably say the same about many of the people who loomed large in your childhood and some of the people who are dearest to you now. And, here you are in between the past and the future.

We are participating in some kind of grand scheme of things. My hope is that we are moving toward Shalom, wholeness, peace, good will toward all people, and toward Creation itself.

Remembering and passing on our memories is one way we actively participate in this grand scheme.

The Bible says God does not forget us. Whatever resurrection is, it is definitely a kind of re-membering.


Remembering is the work of grief that lasts long after the tears stop flowing.

There are three more aspects of this work:

  • We make sense out of our memories
  • We forgive.
  • We decide what we believe about life, death, and life after death.”

I will write about them soon.

Let me leave you with this beautiful litany:

A Litany of Remembrance – We Remember Them


In the rising of the sun and in its going down,
we remember them.
In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
we remember them.
In the opening of buds and in the rebirth of spring,
we remember them.
In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer,
we remember them.
In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
we remember them.
In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
we remember them.
When we are weary and in need of strength,
we remember them.
When we are lost and sick at heart,
we remember them.
When we have joys we yearn to share,
we remember them.
So long as we live, they too shall live, for they are now a part of us,
as we remember them.

by Rabbi Sylvan Kamens and Rabbi Jack Riemer
From Gates of Prayer, published by Central Conference of American Rabbis.

Image credit: Raul Diaz, Berlin Germany, Holocaust Memorial https://www.flickr.com/photos/radzfoto/2621999611/in/dateposted/

Acquainted with Grief: 1 Grieving all the Time

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If you are in the Third Half of Life, you are probably grieving.

The grief may be passing through your life like a thunderstorm, or sitting over you like long days of rain. Or it may, for now, be part of the climate of your life.

You may or may not believe that global climate change is real, but I bet you have noticed in this Third Half of Life that the emotional climate of your life is not as bright and carefree as it once was. Your days, no matter how bright, may be tinged with sadness, the warmest of hugs and most intimate conversations may be accompanied by a chill.

This does not mean you are morbid or unhappy, it just means that you know in your bones that things — and people — can end.

As with global climate change, ignoring these changes only makes things worse. Acknowledging the fact that grief is part of the Third Half of Life enables us to savor the sunlight and find meaning even in the rainiest of days. Grief can make us more human, if we don’t avoid the work that goes with it.

My personal experience with grief has been blessedly ordinary. Like almost everyone my age, I have seen both my grandparents’ and parents’ generation pass away. I have been spared, so far, the loss of my beloved, or any of our younger family members. My only credential is that I have watched people grieve for over half a century. More than that, I have grieved with them.

I was not many years into the ministry before I realized that part of the psychic load of being a pastor was that I was grieving all the time.

Believe it or not, I loved my parishioners. I had to. It was the only way I could stand most of them. Given all my faults, I must have been loved by them in return. So, I grieved when they died. And, I did not have to be an empath to feel the deep griefs so many of them carried in their hearts. Not that it was a constant topic of conversation, but there would be moments when:

  • A widow would recall the life she shared with the man she loved.
  • A mother would recall a child who died before I was born.
  • A man would mention that he still missed a cat that he had to euthanize a year ago.
  • Someone would talk about father who died when he or she was fourteen.

These were the vibes that people emanated whether they told their stories or not.

Most of all, I have had a ringside seat with people when they lost loved ones. I sometimes had to bring them the news myself. As we prepared for the funeral, I coaxed them to describe their loved one. I would follow up with them in visits weeks and months afterward.

That work helped me develop some deep convictions about grief — especially what the work of grief is. Most of that work is subconscious — it is soul work. It cannot be described in words.

A colleague of mine, the pastor of a neighboring church, pointed to this inner work when he described how he handled his brother’s sudden death in an auto accident. The two of them were a about a year apart in age. They had been close all their lives. So, my colleague felt the loss of his brother very deeply. He said that he mowed his lawn almost every day for months after the funeral. Pushing his mower back and forth over his large lawn gave him the space to do that inner work that no one can describe.

However, there are four things we do when we grieve that can be described imperfectly, haltingly, because we tread on the edge of mystery. These four things are:

  1. We remember
  2. We make sense out of our memories
  3. We forgive
  4. We decide what we believe about life, death, and life-after-death.

These are not “stages of grief.” You can find lots of books on that subject. This is the work we do for everyone we love and lose. It never really ends. Right this moment, you are doing that work for people who have been dead longer than a lot of the adults you know have been alive.

In the next few weeks, I am going to go into this work in more detail.

It would help me to hear from you about how you have handled the grief in your life.

Image credit: Raul Diaz, Berlin Germany, Holocaust Memorial https://www.flickr.com/photos/radzfoto/2621999611/in/dateposted/

Winter Solstice 2020

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The sun touches the Tropic of Capricorn . 

Jupiter and Saturn share their shine.  

A vaccine for the rich

arrives at warp speed.

Money for rent

comes at a snail’s pace. 

The stock market goes high,

The food lines get long.

 The air is as full of lies

as the hospital beds are full of people

gasping for breath. 

“I can’t breathe” echoes

And echoes

And echoes. .

The night is very long and very dark. 

We cannot even draw together

to warm each other.

What shall we do? 

Even alone 

we will do what we have been practicing all our lives:

Light

Yule logs, 

Hanukkah candles, 

and Christmas trees. 

Sing songs of courage and carols of joy, 

or the kind of songs you make up when you have had too much to drink. 

 Read or remember stories 

about how the darkness almost conquered

a soul

or the world, 

and then the light shined in.

As I write, the sun is rising. 

Even the longest night 

cannot hold back 

the new day. 

The Sufferings of the Jewish People

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Almost two decades ago, Jacquie and I attended the ceremony in which our son, Jim, converted to Judaism. In fact, we stood on each side of him as he spoke the words that moved him from the Christianity in which he was raised, to the Judaism to which his heart and his God had led him.

Considering the fact that I am a United Methodist minister, some people wonder how his mother and I could do that.

Jacquie puts it better than I can, “I don’t believe God would want me to stop loving my son because he converted to Judaism. Besides, She would not do that, anyway.”

That is not to say that his conversion did not affect us. There  is a moment in the ceremony in which the convert takes on the sufferings of the Jewish people. Jacquie and I gulped at that. I gulped even more on Saturday when news of a shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh began to come in. By evening, we would know that 11 people were murdered.  The largest single attack on Jewish people in US history.

Before the shootings happened, I had invited Jim’s family for dinner. As we sat together around the table, I felt that Jim’s decision to take on the sufferings of the Jewish people now weighs on our hearts even more, because now I care not just about him, but our beloved daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, and their extended family, including their other grandparents.

Our conversation at  the table revolved, in part, around a service that our daughter-in-law, Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg, had  hastily planned through the afternoon. She had sent out word through email and social media, but by dinner had only received one response from someone who said she planned to attend. Rachel said, that at least with the five of us, there would be a half dozen people there.

In fact, 29 people came.  Since Rachel’s congregation has no building, we met in a Sunday School classroom of Community United Methodist Church.  Rachel held back tears as she read an email from a colleague in Pittsburgh. She then gave us some time to sit and meditate in silence. Then, she and Jim led those who knew the words in singing the evening prayer for the end of the Sabbath.

I sat in the back, watching and praying, too. I prayed for a world where people were not hated because they  were different. I prayed in my own way and my own words to a God who, I believe, also had a son who took on the sufferings of the Jewish people.

The Past is Ever Before Us

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Recently, I learned that people in some cultures gesture before them when they speak of the past. When they talk about the future, they gesture behind them.

It makes sense. We can see the past as clearly as we see what is in front of us. We cannot see the future, just as we cannot see what is behind our backs. (Elementary schoolteachers are an exception, of course.)

It comforts me, as we leave a place and people we love, to think of the past as ever before me. I will always be able to see those people and places in a way I am not able to see my future. But how does one do that without living in the past? How does the past become a place of reference, not residence?

Our 49th anniversary was our next-to-last day in Cleveland. We spent part of it at one of our favorite places, the Cleveland Museum of Art. CMA contains one of the best and most balanced collections of art in America.

You can see many world-famous pieces of art for free. It does not have gates inside the door, with employees “suggesting” a $20 “donation.” CMA’s trustees follow the museum’s founders’ desire that it be free “for all the people forever.”

When our sons and then our grandchildren were small, they loved the armor court. There, knights wear truly shining armor. We also loved watching our grandchildren create art on giant, super-duper iPads in the Artlens Gallery. Those are some of our favorite memories.

At the museum, Jacquie and I, farm kids who grew up knowing nothing about art, learned how to “see” art. By looking at good art, we learned the simple method of distinguishing it from bad art. As one art critic says, “When you see bad art, you first go “Wow!” Then, after looking longer, you say, “huh?”, because there isn’t much there. When you see good art, you may say, “huh?” first. But then, if you look longer, you begin to say, “Wow!”

We sat for several minutes in front of “Lot’s Wife.”This monumental painting shows the bleakest landscape you can imagine. In the foreground, are railroad tracks like the ones that carried doomed passengers to the death camps. In the background, are the shadows of what appear to be ruined buildings obscured by smoke.

Yes, when I first saw it years ago, I said, “huh”. The longer I look at it, the more I say, “Wow!”

Going to the museum symbolizes what I mean about the past being ever before us. Our memory mounts moments on the walls of our hearts like paintings in a museum. We can see faces before us the way Rembrandt saw a kitchen maid.

We can see camping trips before us the way the Hudson River School artists painted the wilderness.

We can take our time as we look at those moments. We can step back and get perspective, or move in close to see the tiny details.

Chances are, the moments that made us say, “Wow!” at first, will remain in the warehouse. The ones that we hang in the galleries of the heart will be the moments that puzzled us, maybe even pained us, or have escaped our notice until now. What was that fight about? What about those meals we shared with others?

Stepping back, we can see deeper meaning in them. We may see grace strokes that we missed at first. We may see how those moments influence our choices now, the way artists today learn to draw from Michelangelo or learn to break the rules of drawing from Picasso.

We do not put the past and all the people we have loved and all the places we have been behind us. The past is ever before us. All we have to do is look.