Rituals

         I've been thinking about the many rituals that are an important part of every culture.  There are rituals around birth: baptisms, naming rituals, brises. We have rituals for coming of age: Bat mitzvah's and bar mitzvah's, quinceaneras, senior proms, sweet sixteen parties and graduations.  We have marriages and weddings. We celebrate retirements as well as birthdays and anniversaries.  And we have rituals around the end of life: wakes, memorials, funerals, celebrations of life.  All of these rituals give our lives structure and help us to frame events into meaningful times.  We recognize the seasons of our lives as we recognize the seasons of the year. Those rituals are essential to our sense of movement and purpose as we age and move through lives.

       Mitch Albom in his book, Have a Little Faith shared the story of Rabbi Lewis who lost his young daughter through a very severe asthma attack.  Albom wrote that the power of ritual includes being part of something bigger than yourself, connecting to those who have gone before.  They give our lives rhythm and purpose, especially after loss, after the death of someone we deeply love.  These rituals are soothing, are comforting, and form patterns of self-care and other care.  He goes on to say that since faith is about how you act, what you do, rituals are essential. 

       As he pointed out, though, we in the white Western world are diminishing in our practice of these rituals. Fewer and fewer people practice daily prayer, fewer people are baptized, and fewer get married.  As adults, many of us forgo birthday or anniversary celebrations. And many people now are deciding that when they die, they do not want their families to have a memorial service or a celebration of life.  

                There are reasons for all these decisions, and I think that in many cases, people who decide they don't want these celebrations do so out of a sense that somehow celebrating the seasons in a particular life is self-centered or selfish.  

               But the older I get, the more important I find these celebrations to be.  And in particular, to decide you do not want your loved ones to hold a memorial service in your honor after you pass is the opposite of being giving and selfless.  This denies people a way to grieve, a way to work through the loss and death of someone they loved and love still.  Memorial services are not about the person who died.  They are rituals for those who have been left, for the living.  As such, they offer a way to grieve, a way to gather with others who are also grieving, to remember, and to assign meaning to a life that is no longer physically present with us.  It is a time to offer reassurance that though a body is gone, a spirit continues, and to give people tools for keeping that spirit alive.  They are invited to share their stories, to continue to talk about their loved one without fear of bringing pain, to remember how we each have been changed because of their life in this place.  Memorials offer an invitation to live out the good of the person who has passed by continuing their legacy of giving, of loving, and of serving in their own unique ways. 

               Will people get over the loss of someone without the memorial service?  Probably most will figure out a way to grieve on their own.  And there are always situations where it would cause more harm than good to have such a service (like in the case of family conflict).  But I believe that in the great majority of cases, celebrations of life help the grieving process immensely.  As such, I believe that to deny your loved ones the opportunity to gather, to remember, to share, and to grieve together is to make the grieving much more difficult. 

               Frankly, planning and putting together a celebration of life is especially helpful to immediate family.  It gives them something to do with the pain they are experiencing.  It helps them to get out of bed in the morning because they have a focus and an important job that needs to be done.  That job includes continued focused on their loved one whom they lost (so it does not feel like just putting that person aside to go back to “normal” living), but it frames their time and gives meaning and purpose to the time following the loss. 

               I could go on…

               Please think carefully before you make the decision for your loved ones that a memorial service in your honor will be unneeded or unnecessary.  Please think seriously before you decide for all the people who love you what will be best for their grieving process. 

               If you are worried about the burden it will put on them to plan the service, plan it yourself.  Pick the place, the music, or the readings you would like as well as who you might want to have roles in the service. Pick what kind of party or service or celebration you might like to have.  You can make the arrangements ahead of time in many cases.  Still, you plan your own memorial with the reminder that again the service is for the living: so they may choose differently that your suggestions. 

               Again, though, please do not decide it is unnecessary for those left behind.  That is not your decision to make: and it underestimates what others may need to do to move forward after your passing.  Our lives touch many people, usually more than we think.  To celebrate that is a good and important part of life, it is an important piece of continuing to live despite the fact that the older we get, the more losses we will experience.

Societal Change

      When we were in Scotland for the first time (5 years ago), one of the bus drivers said to all of us that he could tell if another driver was from Scotland or not because the Scottish drivers always greeted each other with a wave of the hand, whereas people from other countries, and the US in particular did not.  At the time he said this, I remember thinking that it really depended on which parts of the world and even of the country we were discussing.  My own experience had been that hiking or walking, in particular, always met with friendly encounters from other people; that if I smiled at someone as I passed, this was almost always met with a returning smile or even a "hello."

    But I think this is changing, and not for the better.  The last time I went for a hike and I smiled and said "hello" as I passed someone, the young woman just stared at me like I was from outer space.  I found this very disconcerting.

    Then this weekend Jasmyn and I went to a Halloween party for Monterey Bay Aquarium members.  Everyone was dressed in costume, everyone who went had to be an aquarium member.  But still, as I walked by others dressed in their costumes and would say things like "Oh, I love your costume!" I would usually get those same glass-eyed stares. 

    At first, I wondered if this was because I'm now a middle aged woman and we tend to disappear.  Books, articles, studies all talk about the fact that middle aged women are just not seen.  Doctors don't listen to us, store clerks won't engage us (as I shared in another article), and people in public no longer actually LOOK at us.  But Jasmyn was with me.  And Jasmyn experienced the same thing I did.  Jasmyn is a beautiful young person, so that was not it.  And Jasmyn encouraged me to watch and see how the groups at the aquarium interacted with each other.  Were any of them friendly to the other aquarium members who were attending the party?  Did any of the other families or groups choose to greet, smile, or acknowledge one another?  And the answer was a very sad, "No."

    For fear of sounding like one of those crotchety old people who complain that everything was better "back in my day," let me just say that I can understand where this behavior has come from.  We've taught our kids stranger-danger (though statistics say it is usually people the children know who do the most harm), so is it any wonder they've now grown up to be people who do not interact with strangers?  We have learned to isolate ourselves in our electronic devices, only "meeting" new people in virtual ways, so is it any surprise that we no longer remember how to meet or greet or talk to potential new connections and friends in person?  Add to that that in this moment in time, the polarization in our country and the discomfort talking to anyone from "the other side" politically makes it difficult for many to feel they want to risk a conversation with someone who may not be on the same page.

    Nonetheless, I feel we have lost something vital.  I felt very sad that my attempts to compliment or connect with others at the aquarium were met with distance and even fear.  While dressing up, seeing the fish and being with Jasmyn was great fun in itself, for me, Halloween has always been a time to connect with others, to be a parade of costumes and celebration as a community. And, as I often say, how can we hope to heal our country without actually talking to one another and trying to cross those divides?

    So where is the hope in this?  I continue to believe that we make the world what we want it to be.  So I will continue to greet the strangers I see.  I will continue to compliment others in their costumes and to delight in those who will smile back.  I will not be changed by those who believe it is necessary to be cold to and distant from strangers.  I encourage you to do the same.  We can make the world a kinder place by expressing the kindness we hope to find in the world.  

Happy Halloween!

We must do things differently!

     Today as I was driving back to church after a meeting, I was stopped at a red light and noticed a very skinny and very dirty homeless man who clearly had some mental health issues, standing on the side of the road staring at his fingers and talking to them.  

    Suddenly a police officer drove through the red light, stopping in the middle of the street.  He jumped out, grabbed the homeless man, threw him on the ground, kneeled on his back and grabbed his arms in a way that I am certain broke at least one of them, screaming at him the whole time and eventually handcuffed him.  I swear, if the light hadn’t changed, I would have been able to video at least the end of this unfortunate encounter. I couldn’t believe it. Or rather, I could believe it but the fact that this behavior still continues is utterly baffling to me. This was a 6 lane road, so there were many of us who saw this, but the officer didn’t care and didn’t think he’d be challenged or corrected, probably because, again, this was a homeless and mentally ill person: someone many feel it is okay to reject and to treat like they are sub-human.

    Someone reading this might say that I had no idea what proceeded that and they would be right.  Nonetheless, this man was not putting up any resistance at all, he was laying on the ground crying in pain but not fighting this officer at all. He had nothing on him, nothing with him, nothing that could have been damaging or threatening.  There was no reason at all why this officer could not have talked to him politely, asked him questions, taken him gently in, if that is what needed to happen.

    When will we start caring about people enough to take seriously that this kind of behavior from the people who are supposed to “protect” us does not, in fact, protect us, but instead creates a society of violence, retribution, vengeance and fear? This behavior will never lead us to remember that we are all connected, and that those people we dismiss as “other” and “not worthy” are our siblings: they belong to us, and we have a responsibility to care for them, to HELP them, rather than harm them more.  

    I keep thinking of a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenging it?”  She said that a long time ago, but have we moved any closer at all to true understanding, compassion, and caring for one another?

    Our Old Testament law of “an eye for an eye” was supposed to mitigate the amount of retaliatory damage we could inflict on the other.  Jesus took it even further, “I say to you, do NOT return evil for evil!”  So many people claim to believe and yet I know very, very few who really want to help those who do damage rather than try to avenge them.

    The truth is that our retaliatory responses make nothing better.  Our punishments do not lessen the amount of crime in our society.  I’ve written about this before so I will not go into the details here.  But this doesn’t work.  Restorative justice DOES.  It goes so much further in terms of changing people for the better so that crimes are not repeated and people can re-enter society better and more able to be well-functioning and contributing individuals.  

    This has to begin with what we see as acceptable responses by our law enforcement to those they don’t like or those with whom they are angry.  Being okay with the way police abuse even those we reject has to stop.  And it has to stop with us.  

We become what we believe ourselves to be

        I've been thinking about a person I knew who was a professional victim.  What I mean by that is that this is a person who, given the attention of anyone at all, would take the opportunity to share how their life, their parents, their current family members, their friends and their community were unkind to them and had done them wrong.  This was such a central part of their identity that at a job interview for a leadership position, they lost the job because they took the interview time as an opportunity to share how badly they'd been victimized by their life.  

    With prompting, this individual finally chose to go to therapy.  But unfortunately, the therapist they chose and loved was someone who supported them in this victim stance.  The therapist would listen and lament about how horrible this person's life was and how awful it was that she'd been treated as she had.  For those of us who knew this professional victim well, we saw a different picture.  We saw a person who manipulated and controlled those around her with this victim stance.  If she whined long and hard enough about something that she believed was "unfair," those around her tended to jump to fix it or give to her what she wanted, even when it was unhealthy and damaging for her or those around her.  Her victim position was one of power, but an unhealthy power.  Those who loved her grew tired of being made out to be her perpetrators, those who loved her also grew tired of her choosing this position of what appeared to be weakness when she had so much potential for true strength and joy.  Unfortunately, it was a rare individual who offered her a different way of being in the world, one that celebrated the gifts in her life and gained strength from surviving what was difficult in her past. The rare people who did offer this different option were usually, then, added to her list of "perpetrators" who did not understand her, could not help her, and did not love her when it fact it was out of love that a different possible view of the world was offered.  She believed herself to be a victim at every turn, and could not begin to see other options for how she might walk through this life.  She was never able to move into a different stance, and I believe fully that her therapist caused more harm than good in this woman's life.     

    Another person I know similarly decided that he was a failure in life, could not function normally, was "broken" and could not heal.  This person, too, found a therapist who would support this self-view.  This therapist even used the phrases, "deeply wounded," and "broken" to describe her client.  The individual with this self opinion had functioned in life: he graduated from an esteemed university with honors, was invited to be part of significant and important conferences, held down good jobs, and was even at one point written up in the local paper as someone who was extremely gifted and capable.  But he chose to entrench in a self-image that said he was incapable. As a result of that self-definition, he chose to no longer be functional.  He decided that his life wounded him too deeply for him to do even the basic behaviors necessary to live in this world. As a result of this self-image, he became the person he decided he was.  He became the incapable, broken person he believed himself to be. And like the professional victim above, he blamed those around him, with the support of his therapist, for his "brokenness." Honestly, it was heart-wrenching to watch.

    When my family was going through our terrible trauma, I went to seek help from a spiritual director.  In contrast to the two therapists mentioned above, this person told me that there are three responses to trauma: we can become victims, we can become survivors, or we can thrive through our traumas to emerge better and more whole.  This spiritual director told me that he saw me as that third kind: the kind who was a thriver, growing stronger and clearer about who I am in the world and how I choose to be because of my traumas, not in spite of them.  He told me that being a thriver did not mean I would always be happy: tears, and genuinely going through the trauma with all the emotions attached of anger, grief, even despair at times, were part of emerging as a thriver.  But making the choice to go on, to continue, to do what needed to be done and to do it as well as I could, to focus on who I chose to be and what I chose to do rather than what had been done to me, but more, to look for the good, to find things each and every day to celebrate and to be grateful for: to seek out help for myself from appropriate people in appropriate ways that would allow me to continue to care for the others around me (like my family and congregation) who were also in pain: that these were the choices of a thriver.  He said this with such conviction, and emphasized repeatedly my strength and my thriver choices to seek out and live in gratitude, that I became who he said I was.  I leaned into being a thriver, someone who has grown from my traumas, rather than being hemmed in or restricted by them, someone who claims my own decisions in life rather than living in a place of blaming others for my situation.  And I continue to be a person who looks for the good, who chooses gratitude for the gifts of each day, and who works hard to grow and be better tomorrow than I am today.  I choose to be a thriver because someone whom I trusted told me that was who I was.  Again, this does not mean I don't have feelings.  To the contrary, I continue to believe we have to go through the traumas, through the feelings, through the hard times to come out the other side in a healthy way.  But I choose to do that, knowing that on the other end I will still be a thriver who can function and who makes the decision to live fully and with gratitude and joy.

        While this may sound like an anti-therapist rant, it is not.  There are very good therapists out there, and I believe most of us can benefit from a good therapeutic relationship at one point or another or even throughout our lives.  This is also not an "avoid going into your past or the things that have hurt you" proclamation.  There is great power in looking at our pasts to see what has shaped us and what struggles we still need to work through in order to emerge as thrivers.  

    What I am trying to say is two things: 

    First, do not let your past determine who you are.  Work it through so that you can move forward into being who you are called to be. Deal with those early hurts and then let go of the stuck blame game which will not help you to be the person you are meant to be.  It will also not help you to have positive and loving relationships if you are continually blaming those around you.  You are adults.  You make the choices you need to make for your lives.  Step into those choices and take responsibility for your lives from this moment forward.

    Secondly and more importantly: we need to be careful and intentional about who we decide we are, and how we let others tell us who we are.  Who we believe ourselves to be greatly impacts who we become.  Our self-image, then, can be either a gift or a curse, depending on what you tell yourself and what you allow others to tell you about who you are.  

    Let me be the first, then, to tell each of you my readers: You are loved. You are beautiful. You are STRONG to have made it this far and to live each and every day in a challenging and difficult world.  You have been gifted with every breath you take, with bodies that, even if they have some challenges, still carry you through each day, with friends and family who love you, with the seasons as they come and go, with the birds that sing and the gardens around us, with music and dance and books and art.  All of this has been given to YOU because you are worthy to receive it all.  You are kind, you are smart.  You are loving and generous. You are capable.  Most of all, you get to have a hand in deciding who you will be as you step forward into the rest of your lives.  Take that opportunity.  THRIVE!