When Our World Turns Upside Down When I was twelve, my grandfather died suddenly, effectively leaving me without a father figure. One morning, I’d gone to school, and everything was normal. In the afternoon, when I got home, everything had changed. My world turned upside down, and I spent years empty, angry, scared, and lonely. I needed a poddley, a magical creature who helps children feel better. Most of us experience devastating change at least once in our lives. In an instant, a tragedy tears our world apart and leaves us wondering how we can go on. Whether we’re demolishing a building, ruining a relationship, detonating a bomb, starting a war,…
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The Use and Abuse of Power
Trauma and Power Listening to Bessel van der Kolk’s book, The Body Keeps the Score, I am struck by how we, in the medical and mental health fields, too often use power to control those we deem sick or broken or crazy. As he worked in the field, van der Kolk came to realize that much of his professional training was geared to helping him and other doctors “stay in control in the face of terrifying and confusing realities.” [1] Being out of control frightens pretty much all of us. Clinicians get scared, too. Those of us with authority are used to being respected, deferred to, obeyed. When patients resist…
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The Patience of Recovery
The Patience of Creation Creation takes patience. Whether you’re forming a universe, writing a story, choreographing a dance, baking a souffle, or building a life, creation takes time. They say that God made everything we can see, smell, and touch – and much that we can’t – in six days, but He was a master, and we cannot compete. We can’t build a house in six days, nor can we grow a baby that fast, and it takes a lifetime to mature into our true selves, if we ever do. Becoming who we really are takes a lot of patience. To make it even harder, when we think have our…
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Hope in the Face of Suffering
Hope in the Future What is hope? Could it be trust in a new generation, the joy we feel when we watch young animals at play, babies being born? In our yard, a family of scrub jays has nested in the holly tree. As I write, the father submerges himself in the bird bath while the mother feeds their baby seeds and insects from the garden. Watching them, I smile, thinking of beauty and life that will continue after I am gone. Or could hope be the belief in an existence after death? At the hospital, I sit with a woman who is sick and weary from cancer. She begs…
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Memorial Day and Healthy Grieving
Repressed Grief When we don’t address it, grief hangs on. We can we numb ourselves from our pain with force of will or sullen silence, with bursts of anger, or drugs, or busyness, yet the hurt does not go away. Instead, it settles into our joints, scars our muscles, makes our head hurt. Unable to face the enormity of our loss, some of us go to our grave frozen and miserable. Over the years, I’ve sat with many newly sober people who were shocked by the intensity of their ten- or twenty-year-old grief. Suddenly caught with no buffering substance, they felt overwhelmed by emotions they had forgotten how to process,…
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Self-Acceptance, Shame, Samson, and Grace
The Importance of Self-Acceptance Today we will discuss look at the importance of self-acceptance, for us as individuals and as a society. By self-acceptance, I mean not just that we like and are comfortable with ourselves, but that the self we accept be as close as possible to who we really are. Until we understand our true nature, we cannot be healthy, generous, or free. We cannot love or respect what we do not understand. Understanding ourselves has benefits beyond our own satisfaction, however, When we see and accept our own true self, we learn also to see, accept, love, and respect others. Thus self-acceptance is important for our communities.…
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Mother’s Day and the Joy of Turning
The Mess in Our World Today Thinking about Mother’s Day this year, I feel sad. A month ago, I wrote a song for the holiday, reflecting that it was, in some ways, a good thing my mother isn’t alive to see the mess we’ve made of our political and denominational world. In Unitarian Universalist circles, we still struggle to address race issues much as we did in the 1960s when the “black controversy” divided us. Now, voices are again raised in anger over our association’s “white supremacist culture,” while others defend themselves. In the United States, we are more divided than at any time except perhaps during the 1920s. Back then, the…
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Uncertainty, Fear, and the Dark Night of the Soul
Fear of the Future I sat in bed, leaning against the headboard, looking out the window at the full-moon glow that spread across the deck. Though the image was serene, I couldn’t feel the peace. The day’s news had depleted me, and I felt heavy with a sense of loss and helplessness. I thought about the pipeline that will be built no matter what we say or do, fouling water, defiling graves, and wounding a Native American community, yet again. I worried about the crackdown on immigration that has Hispanics and refugees afraid to leave their homes, that if enacted, will break up families, shatter lives, weaken our economy, and…
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Choose Life – Deuteronomy, Greed, and Recovery
Moses and Choosing Life In the book of Deuteronomy, God says, “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants might live.” (Deut 30:19 NRSV) I relish life. I want to be fully alive even when it hurts, which sometimes it definitely does, so that Bible passage appeals to me. But what does it really mean to choose blessings over curses and life over death? A rabbinical midrash on Moses’ death suggests an answer. The story goes that when it’s time for Moses to die, he refuses. God argues with him, the angels implore him, yet Moses insists he’s not…
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Guilt and Repentance
In the Beginning There Was Shame According to the Hebrew Scriptures, shame entered the world when Eve and Adam ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. When you don’t know right from wrong, you can live in blissful ignorance. Once you do, any manner of behavior can leave you feeling embarrassed. Indeed, the very nature of your being can embarrass you, as the original couple discovered once they’d tasted the fruit. They realized they were naked and scurried to find leaves so they could cover themselves. Shame and guilt can be difficult to tell apart. On a simple level, guilt is the belief that we’ve done…
