The Thing I Can’t Write About, Part IV: The Courage to Learn and Become an Advocate for Suicide Prevention

In my first three posts in this series, I wrote about the courage to face the truth about my daughter, Jessi’s, struggle with diabetes, anxiety and depression, the amazing intuitiveness I have with her and how I have had to learn how to trust her--and to be able to trust her to God--and, thirdly, about the courage to trust others and ask for and accept help. It really does take a community of compassionate, caring, supportive people.

 

Finally, I want to focus on the importance of education and advocacy when it comes to dealing with physical or mental illness, becoming “wounded healers” as we learn from our suffering and use that learning to love and support others. 

 

Jessi was diagnosed with type I diabetes on a Friday when she was 8 years old, and the very next day her mother, brother, Jessi and I were taking a class on diabetes, including how to give Jessi injections of insulin.

 

We were also told about a week-long diabetes camp held each summer near Devils Lake, ND, and we made sure Jessi was able to attend each year. Here she not only learned more about diabetes, but she was able to bond with and make friends with others who also had diabetes.

 

When Jessi was diagnosed with anxiety and depression at the age of 10, education was again key to helping Jessi learn about these afflictions, but also to us, as family, as we learned how best to support her. We not only read books about anxiety, depression and suicide, but we went to family therapy. Jessi was constantly working with a therapist and eventually, psychiatrists, as she started taking antidepressant medications.

 

All these forms of education were key to helping Jessi understand her illnesses and to us as family as we learned both what was helpful and what was not in loving and supporting her. We made plenty of mistakes along the way, but we tried to learn from them and change our future behavior.

 

We are so grateful that we had all these opportunities to learn and that we had funds available to find Jessi and us the best possible teachers.

 

The next step was to take what we had all learned and become advocates for others. Jessi has taken the lead in this, and she has been fierce in her search for mental health and in loving others who also struggle with the many questions and struggles that go with anxiety and depression.

 

When Jessi was 21, she and I flew to Orlando, Florida for a week-long workshop called Stephen Ministry, which trains laypersons in how to offer support and pastoral care to persons both inside and outside of one’s congregation. Jessi, by the way, was the youngest person in this gathering of some 300 people.

 

I suggested to Jessi that we take one day off and go across the street to Disney World, which she had never attended. “No Dad,” Jessi replied. “We are here to learn how to do Stephen Ministry and we need to attend all the sessions offered.”

 

Part of Jessi’s anxiety is that she has certain obsessive-compulsive needs, including being early for all appointments and being able to pick seats in a classroom or workshop where she feels the safest. At Stephen Ministry she not only wanted to be at least 20 minutes early for each session, but she wanted to sit at a table which was in the back row in the very middle of the large conference room.

 

After morning sessions, participants had the option of picking up a box lunch and returning to the main conference room to discuss an assigned topic. Jessi liked to do this: extra learning, you know. One day, without saying a word to me, Jessi stood up during this time and marched to the front of the room where people were invited to grab the microphone. I was, frankly, aghast, as Jessi is normally very reserved in large groups. She took the microphone and summarized her own history of anxiety and depression, and then explained that she wanted to be a Stephen Minister in order to take what she had learned and help and support others going through the same thing, i.e. a wounded healer. When she was done, there was a long pause, and then the participants gave Jessi a standing ovation.

 

As Jessi walked back to our table, an older woman at the neighboring table called Jessi over and asked if she could ask her a question. The woman explained that her husband had been quite depressed, and then committed suicide. This woman wondered why her husband didn’t love her enough to want to stay alive. Jessi responded, “This has nothing to do with how much he loved you. When a person is in a severe depression, they don’t think about anyone or anything else. They just want the pain to end, and sometimes death seems like the only way to finally end that pain.”

 

Jessi has continued to be a fierce advocate for those who suffer. She has already maintained a couple of blogs where she openly shares her own struggle with depression. See Out of Darkness, Into Nature

 

She also supports and participates in the annual Out of Darkness walks which last overnight, comprise over 16 miles, raise tens of thousands of dollars for suicide prevention and end at sunrise as one walks through thousands of luminaria, each representing someone who has been affected by suicide. We have all been blessed to have many friends and family who join her in these walks. Sometimes they even walk in her place. One summer a walk was in Seattle, and Jessi planned to walk with her Aunt Joy. However, just before the walk, Jessi was hospitalized with depression, and her cousin, Elin, walked in her place, securing the pledges that Jessi had raised. 

Like all parents, Mary and I spend a fair amount of time worrying about Jessi and wondering what all she will face after we are gone. However, she has amazing family and friend support, and now a wonderful husband, Rob, with whom she has built an amazing relationship of mutual love, care and support. 

Jessi and Rob asked me to officiate at their wedding two years ago. In my sermon I shared how I had once been at a spirituality retreat where we did what we call a “guided imagery,” based on the Biblical story of four people who had brought an ill man to Jesus and lowered him through the ceiling of the house so Jesus could heal him. The leader of the guided imagery then asked us who we were each worried about, and I focused on Jessi. Then she asked who the four people were who would bring that person to Jesus for healing. I immediately thought of her brother, Brian, and then two persons who were members of the congregation I was serving at the time. But who was the fourth?

 

Into my mind came a young man I did not recognize. I wondered whom he could be? And then the revelation came to me that I had not met him yet, but this man would love Jessi the way I do.

 

Now, I went on to say, I realize that we have, indeed, met this young man. He is Rob, and Mary and I rejoice in the mutual, unconditional love that Jessi and Rob have found in each other.

 

So here I am, once again gathered with all our family to celebrate an early Thanksgiving in Jessi’s and Rob’s home. Being with Jessi has made it possible to write the final installment of “The Thing I Can’t Write About,” as somehow it seems easier to do when I am actually with her. 

 

In addition to giving thanks for all the amazing people who have been there for our family over the years, we give thanks for one more thing. Jessi and Rob are “with child,” who is scheduled to come forth sometime around Easter. The blessings never seem to end!

 

 

 

All Saints: Hollow and Hallowed

November 1 was All Saints Day and this coming Sunday is All Saints Sunday. On this Sunday, in the churches in which I served, we read the names of persons who, as we put it, “have gone before us,” along with the tolling of a bell or the lighting of a candle as each name was read.

 

This is indeed a holy day, a hallowed day, which the dictionary defines as “revering and honoring” our loved ones who have died. It is a celebration, a day of thanksgiving for the “communion of saints” who continue to have such a special place in our lives. It is this beautiful and appropriate focus we will have this coming Sunday.

But, as with nearly everything in life, there is also another side, one that we don’t talk about very much. In the midst of our thanksgiving and celebration, there is also a hollowness. Something feels empty, gone, missed.

 

In my book on loss and grief, healing and hope, I write about it this way:

 

      It seemed that the further I got away from the deaths of those I had loved most, and the more I healed, the more I realized just how sad it is to leave what you don’t want to leave. 

      It was like holding a small bird in your hands. You know you can’t hold it forever; you have to let it go. So you slowly begin to lighten your grasp. However, you find it so difficult to take the last step, and open your hands wide enough for the bird to fly away.

      What makes that final letting go so difficult? It is the reality that you are being forced to accept that which you do not want to accept: that the person you love so much is really gone, and is not coming back. 

      No matter how you cut it, death is not a problem to be solved. It stares you in the face and refuses to move. It separates you from those you love and need and never gives them back. 

       There will be new friendships, and there may be new loves, but a part of you remains gone, a part of your heart forever unable to move into the future because it refuses to forget and let go of its commitment to those you once loved and still love with all your heart. 

       Death leaves holes in our hearts that will never fully heal. We die if we naively cling to the notion that one day we will be totally healed, that one day we will again be as happy as we once were.

       We can be happy again, but it will be different. To live again is not to return to the past, but to move into the future honestly admitting the pain we carry, accepting the way we have been changed.  [When the Northern Lights Went Dark: My Journey through Loss and Grief to Healing and Hope, Amazon, pp. 253-254]

 

This dual emphasis, of hallowedness and hollowness, is captured well in the words of Kate Bowler: “Today we are drawn into remembrance, the complexity of love and loss both warms our hearts and chills our bones.”

 

Our culture is seemingly obsessed with the notion of “closure.” Yes, there are times in life when we just want something “to be gone,” like a cancer or a headache or an irritating person or a traffic jam on a highway. But loss and grief are different. 

 

I remember a woman who had had a miscarriage explaining that she didn’t want to “get over it,” because she was the only person who had fully bonded with this new life, and if she quit remembering, then that small life would be truly forgotten and gone.

 

When someone who has died is no longer remembered then they are gone, they are truly dead. Yes, remembering hurts, but it is also what gives us our most profound joys in life and fills us with gratitude in the midst of the sorrow that continues. I love remembering Dad telling a story, and then bursting into his jolly laughter.  I love remembering how, when I had gotten hurt as a child, Mom was always there to hold me and start the healing process. 

 

We remember because that is how we know we have been loved, cared for, nourished, comforted, guided. That remembering also reminds us of pain and loss, but it is a suffering we carry always within our hearts that reminds us of the manifold ways God and our loved ones have been and continue to be a blessing in our lives.

 

 

 

Part III of The Thing I Can’t Write About: The Courage to Accept Help

In my first post in this series I wrote about the courage to face the truth and in the last post I wrote about the amazing intuitiveness I have with my daughter Jessi, and about the courage to learn how to trust her, and to be able to trust her to God. This post is about the courage to trust others and ask for and accept help. It really does take a community of compassionate, caring, supportive people.

 

It was a night in mid-November of 2013. Jessi was living in Las Cruces, New Mexico for the year as a volunteer through Border Servant Corp. She lived in community with five other volunteers and spent her days teaching low-income children how to garden. I had had hip replacement a few weeks before and was now sleeping in her bed since our bed was too low to the ground, and it was very difficult to get out of it as I healed and was doing physical therapy.

 

I don’t remember how it started, but one night as I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, my intuitiveness kicked in and I sensed that Jessi might be struggling. We started texting. As we did, I could tell she was in a very dark place. It was after midnight, and she was exhausted from fighting off the anxiety and deep darkness that enveloped her. I asked her to promise me that if things got worse that she would text me before taking any actions. She agreed, and I fell into an extremely restless sleep. Very early in the morning my phone beeped, and I saw it was Jessi. I could sense the desperation in her texts, and all she could relay was that she couldn’t quit thinking about killing herself. This is termed “intrusive thoughts,” when an idea so permeates your being that you cannot think of anything else.

I asked if she would pick up the phone if I called, and she said yes. I called, Jessi picked up, I asked her if any of her roommates were home, and she said Kara was next door in her own bedroom. I asked Jessi to call for Kara, she came, and I told Jessi to give the phone to her. I then told Kara Jessi was having what we call “intrusive thoughts” about ending her life, and I asked if she could stay with Jessi until her brother got there. She said she could. I then told her not to leave Jessi alone. Even if she goes to the bathroom, go with her.

 

I then called my son, Brian, who was working in Las Cruces and lived just a few blocks away. I asked if he could quickly get dressed, go and get Jessi, and stay with her for the day, working from home. He did just that, sat with her, made her breakfast and worked as she lay on the couch beside him.

 

I immediately booked a ticket out of Washington DC to El Paso. I remember thinking that my surgeon had told me I should wait several weeks before flying, and I was pretty sure that amount of time had not passed, but, to me, it didn’t matter. I was laser focused on getting Jessi to a safe place at home. I packed, called a friend to take me to the airport, and I was in El Paso by dinnertime. Jessi and Brian were at the airport to pick me up, we drove to Las Cruces (about 45 miles away), went to Jessi’s home to pack a bag for her and thank her roommates for supporting her, and then we headed to Brian’s house for the night.

 

The next morning Brian took us back to El Paso and Jessi and I began the journey home to Arlington, Virginia. We called Jessi’s therapist, who talked with Jessi on the phone. We also contacted her psychiatrist, who discussed Jessi’s situation with her therapist. They then informed us that Jessi should either be admitted to a behavioral hospital, or she could stay at home so long as she was not left alone. We discussed this with Jessi, she said she would prefer to stay at home (there have been times when Jessi insisted on being hospitalized because she felt her depression was too deep for us to deal with), and I changed my schedule so I could stay with her the bulk of the time, with Mary filling in after she was done teaching school for the day so that I could make visitations and attend evening meetings.

 

One of the things I am most grateful for is that Jessi is committed to doing whatever it takes to be as healthy as possible. And that begins with her willingness to accept help, and let the village be a part of her healing. In the example just described Jessi relied on her roommates, her brother, her father, her therapist, her psychiatrist, and on a church willing to let her dad work from home while she healed, as well as supporting me in taking her to see her therapist, sometimes several times a week in the beginning.

 

When Jessi was first diagnosed with depression and suicidal ideations, a friend of mine, who has a child who suffers in a similar way, said to me, “Brian, this will never end.”

 

I didn’t really believe him. At first I saw this as just one of those challenges where, if you keep your nose to the grindstone, it can be overcome. How naïve I was, and how little I knew about mental illness, which is the topic of the next and final post: the education it takes to be a help rather than a hindrance to those who suffer in ways we don’t, at first, understand.

 

I am so grateful for two things. The first is that Jessi has been relentless in her striving to be as healthy as she can. She has had a regular therapist since she was in 5^th grade, and she never skips a session, being so eager to learn anything that can help her grow and fight the demons of anxiety and depression. Secondly, I am so thankful for all the resources that have been available to us, and the loving and insightful people who have worked not only with Jessi, but with us as a family. She had an amazing therapist for ten years in Phoenix and now, for the past ten years, an amazing therapist in Virginia, with whom she has sessions at least once a week. After searching we found a psychiatrist in Virginia who has been extremely insightful in her use of medications but also helpful, in recent years, in terms of working with Jessi’s therapist to diagnose bipolar and ADHD, and adjust her medications appropriately. 

Jessi is surrounded by loving and caring friends, always there for her when she needs to text or talk. Two of the other volunteers in Las Cruces, including Kara, are two of her best friends to this day, and they regularly meet as a threesome on Google Meets, and, before the pandemic, traveled to be together two or three times a year, including in Canada, where Ellen lives.

 

So many of our friends and family have been supportive of Jessi and us as parents, wondering how she is doing, and asking how they can be supportive. It really does take a village, a caring and compassionate community, to walk with us in our most difficult times, and Jessi, Mary and I have experienced that in so many ways. And the village has been global, with many of Jessi’s doctors and therapists being from different countries, ethnicities and religious traditions.

And now, in recent years, she has the support, companionship and love of her husband, Rob, who walks each step of the way with her, no matter what she is going through.

 

In Part I of this series, I quoted Jessi, who had written in her blog, “So, this is bipolar, eh? I guess it’s time to become a spokesperson for it.” In the next post I will focus on all the ways and people who have helped us learn about anxiety and depression and how we have tried--with Jessi leading the way--to be advocates for others who suffer in similar ways.

 

 

Part II of The Thing I Can't Write About: Daughter Jessi's Struggle with Depression and Suicidal Ideations

Well, I guess I am still having trouble writing about Jessi's suffering and struggles. It has been a year and a half since I wrote Part I. But I am with her now, in her home, and have been for nearly a month, having been separated by the pandemic since her wedding in October of 2019. Being with her helps me face the pain and worry I continue to carry.

Part I might have been titled: The Courage to Face the Truth. Part II is really about the courage to face the depression and suicidal ideations head on, and then learning how to trust those we love to God.

 

The power of love can create a kind of intuitiveness. I have had that kind of connection with Jessi  for a long time, even during her junior high and senior high years when we were not particularly “close.”

 

I’m not exactly sure where that kind of deep connectedness comes from. Maybe it grows out of the way we constantly gaze upon those we love, noting their expressions and moods and gestures, looking deep into their eyes to try to understand and support. Perhaps it comes from years of observing how they react to certain events, experiences or statements about life. And yet, for all that, with some people the connection seems to go deeper, even beyond these experiences. 

It was a Thursday night in the winter of Jessi’s freshman year in high school. I was in bed but couldn’t sleep. I don’t remember what I had observed that day, but I tossed and turned, focused on Jessi. Finally, I got out of bed. I went through the house, including the garage, and gathered up so I could hide every knife, razor or sharp object I could find. I found secret places to hide every pain pill and other prescription medicines. I grabbed every rope and extension cord I could find. Having hidden all of those things away, I fell into a restless sleep that lasted longer than normal.

 

I was awakened by the sound of Mary yelling at Jessi to open her bedroom door. I don’t know how she got in, but she found Jessi--who had looked for a knife but couldn’t find one- swallowing a handful of one of her anti-depressant drugs. Mary began to fish them out of her mouth before she could swallow them, trying to find out from Jessi how many pills had been left in the bottle. We eventually determined that Mary had gotten almost all of them out.

I called Jessi’s therapist and she told us to take her to the Behavioral Health Hospital in Mesa. As we drove to the hospital, I kept looking at Jessi in the rearview mirror as she sat crunched into a ball in the back seat. The anger and fear and sadness in her eyes were like I had never seen before. She looked like she had been “possessed” by some other being. She did not look at all like herself.

 

Thus began a long day of sitting in waiting rooms, visiting with doctors, getting Jessi admitted to the hospital. We stayed with her as long as we were allowed until we were asked to go home, being told we could return the next morning at 9 am to see her again.

 

When we arrived--before we could see Jessi--we were ushered into a room to meet with the staff member who had done her intake interview.

 

In my published book on loss and grief [When the Northern Lights Went Dark: Amazon] I share several of the times we all have  had in life when something is said to us so startling that we remember the place and words exactly as they were said. The most painful time for me with that kind of experience occurred that morning, when the intake staff member looked at us, and, mincing no words, said to us: “Now, the first thing you have to realize is that if Jessi decides to kill herself, you will not be able to stop her!”

 

I can’t even begin to describe the sadness and fear that statement elicited in me. Whenever I think of it, or try to share it, even these 15 years later, I can barely get the words out.

 

It would take a long time for me to begin to understand what the therapist was saying to us, but, looking back, there were two essential learnings that would come from that statement.

The first was that the most important thing in the future would be our relationship of love with Jessi, including the kind of intuitiveness we have with each other. Oh, there would be plenty of times when we would--out of understandable fear--try to control Jessi: where was she, what she was doing, who she was with, etc. We would play cat and mouse at times-- which never really helped--and probably just hurt our relationship. But eventually we came to understand that all we could really do was to love and support Jessi and try to really “listen” to what was going on for her. Like me, Mary also had plenty of rocky times with Jessi during those high school years, but now, at age 30, Jessi begins almost every day by calling her mother (and sometimes me.)

We would make many mistakes along the way. The lack of trust that grew out of our unrelenting fear implied that we thought Jessi was not doing the right things, or trying hard enough to be healthy. But, day by day, we would come to see and realize that the opposite is actually the truth: Jessi has to work so very hard every day of life not just to try to survive, but to also try to thrive. From the constant monitoring of her food intake--matching it with insulin--to the countless finger pricks to measure her blood sugar, to the days when anxiety is so powerful she can barely breathe, to the days depression takes over and she cannot get out of bed. Then there are the many attempts to finish college classes and get and keep jobs that so often end in what feels like failure to her as the anxiety and depression overtake her ability to finish classes or keep jobs. So much loss, so much grief. 

 

The second thing I eventually learned--which became my salvation--is that not only could I not control what Jessi might decide to do, but I could not control what would happen to her. I can still remember one evening, sitting alone, when I finally addressed God and said: “God, I am helpless here. I want Jessi’s future to be in my hands, but I know I have to let that go. I have to turn her over to you. Lord, I give her to you.  Please, please, keep her safe.”

Finally, I was able to breathe again. Oh, not a day goes by that I don’t worry about Jessi in some way, but the fear eventually subsided as I began to focus on my relationship with Jessi and the beautiful connectedness we have. I can’t protect her from pain or suffering or death, but I can be with her and for her every moment of life and I can know the joy of just being in her presence, of hearing her sweet voice, of laughing and crying as we  text and FaceTime on a daily basis, or have the beautiful moments like now when we are in each other's presence, including being together on Father's Day for the first time in many years.

 

 

 

Unknowing as a Path to Wisdom and Wholeness

We live in a world filled with “know it all’s.” Humility and modesty have all but disappeared, or at least taken a nap. Everywhere you go, whether in reality or virtually, you hear people pontificating on every matter of life: the pandemic, vaccinations, economics, politics, parenting, relationships, school, government, church, morality. Lots of truth has also taken a nap. Opinion has taken over the day. It doesn’t seem to matter if that opinion has any basis in fact. Stick out your chest and let the words fly, with a little more volume so that those around you can overhear. And--lets be honest--most of us, at least from time to time, act like we are "know it alls."

In theology we call this “hubris.” One definition of hubris is “a great or foolish amount of pride or confidence.” Applied to personality, “Hubris is the characteristic of excessive confidence or arrogance, which leads a person to believe that they may do no wrong. Hubris is pride multiplied until it is out of proportion.”

 

Merriam Webster explains the origin of this concept: “English picked up both the concept of hubris and the term for that particular brand of cockiness from the ancient Greeks, who considered hubris a dangerous character flaw capable of provoking the wrath of the gods. In classical Greek tragedy, hubris was often a fatal shortcoming that brought about the fall of the tragic hero. Typically, overconfidence led the hero to attempt to overstep the boundaries of human limitations and assume a godlike status, and the gods inevitably humbled the offender with a sharp reminder of his or her mortality.”

 

Another way we approach this issue in theology is the struggle between Faith and Doubt, which is greatly misunderstood. They are not opposites. Doubt is the pathway to Faith, and ever deeper knowledge and understanding. It is the acknowledgment that we are not as smart as we thought we were, and that there is more for us to learn.

 

Brian McLaren, in his recent book, Faith after Doubt,  proposes a four-stage growth process of Simplicity, Complexity, Perplexity and Harmony. He writes:

 

Doubt, it turns out, is the passageway from each stage to the next. Without doubt, there can be growth within a stage, but growth from one stage to another usually requires us to doubt the assumptions that give shape to our current stage. (43)

 

In the stage of Simplicity, we desire correctness. We have a great need to prove we are right about things.  Our thinking tends to be dualistic: good/bad; right/wrong; us/them. However, as we experience the limits of our knowledge and understanding, doubt moves us toward Complexity, which has to do with effectiveness. We expand our toolbox as we realize life is complicated, and we need to find new paths in order to succeed.  However, we soon realize this is more difficult than we thought, and we experience the limits of not only our knowledge and understanding, but also our effectiveness, our competence. 

 

I have experienced this so often in ministry, at every level. I thought I knew what God wanted me to do, what the congregation needed, what the people of Mexico (when I taught there) needed, how the Hunger and Justice Committees I have been on could really make a difference. But then I hit a wall, a wall of doubt, that tried to take me deeper, accepting the complicated Perplexity of life. Here we are driven toward a deeper honesty with ourselves, and a greater hunger for justice in the world. This is often the most painful descent into unknowing. 

 

McLaren describes this movement:

 

When I studied the mystics . . . I learned that they spoke often of purgation (or katharsis) as the portal to illumination. They saw purgation as the painful and necessary process by which we are stripped of know-it-all arrogance, ego, and self-will. Perplexity, I realized, was working like an X-ray of my soul, exposing much of my so-called spirituality as a vanity project of my ego, an expression of my arrogant desire to always be right, my desperate and fearful need to always be in control, my unexamined drive to tame the wildness of life by naming it and dominating it with words. The doubt of Perplexity, the mystics helped me see, was just the fire I needed to purge me of previously unacknowledged arrogance. In this way, self-knowledge was another gift that came, unwanted, during my Stage Three descent. [72, 78]

 

Doubt drives us deeper, as we accept the Perplexity of life, and we deepen our commitments, striving for greater honesty and justice. This is where many of us find ourselves right now. We realize we don’t have all the answers. We realize our quest for love and justice often falls short. In this polarized world, we speak louder--thinking that will persuade others--but what we are actually doing is trying to convince ourselves we are really right, that we know what is best, that we are on the correct path. Doubt again enters, and drives us even deeper, toward Harmony.

 

Surely God must have something in mind for me and the world that is deeper than this, beyond this. The mystics of every religion and faith tradition point to those moments when we realize the unity of all things in God, and thus the unity of each of us in all of us. We see beauty everywhere and in everything. We see mystery everywhere, no longer as a challenge to pick apart and try to understand, but to be received as another thread of the beauty of life. The ambiguities and variety of life are no longer discordant to our ears but begin to merge into an uplifting harmony. We feel a new wholeness within, because we sense our unique part in the wholeness and holiness of all that exists. We realize that justice and peace and harmony come into life, not through judgement and arrogance, not through crawling into our cozy, private spiritual worlds, but through our opening ourselves up to all of life, all of creation, all of humanity, and embracing all in the Oneness of our God. 

It is then that we realize that we move through stages, not just because we encounter doubt and unknowing, but because we are driven by love, a love that is deeper, more pervasive, more inclusive, more Godlike. [87-91]

 

Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  [Matthew 22:36-39]

 

 

The On-Going Reformation of Church and State

As we enter a New Year with serious, ongoing problems as a nation and in our churches, how can spirituality give us direction in terms of navigating these challenges? The important key is whether one believes God is still active in history, as indicated in a phrase that became popular in the church in the 1990’s: “God is not finished with us yet.”

Amanda Gorman, twenty-two-year-old National Youth Poet Laureate, pointed us in that direction on Inauguration Day:

 

Somehow we've weathered and witnessed

a nation that isn't broken

but simply unfinished

 

We the successors of a country and a time

Where a skinny Black girl

descended from slaves and raised by a single mother

can dream of becoming president

only to find herself reciting for one

 

Both church and state begin in a kind of “originalism,” building upon the Scriptures (church) and the Constitution (state), which are beloved. But we Progressives also believe God is alive and at work in history, guiding us into ever deeper understandings of truth. We believe God can use both the physical and social sciences to “reveal” to us these deeper truths, such as the insight that being LGBTQ+ is an orientation, not a choice; that people are poor, not because they are lazy, but because they lack opportunity; that minorities in almost any culture are often the victims of discrimination and unequal treatment. We see science not as being opposed to God, but as a gift from God. An example would be the messenger RNA research that has so quickly given us vaccines. Human intelligence comes from God, and can either be used for good (these vaccines) or evil (nuclear weapons.) 

Two of the most important revelations of human knowledge that affect how we see all of life, including church and state, are, first, the linear view of history and, secondly, the revelation of modern psychology that the hiding of, and the refusal to admit--let alone confess—destructive, factual secrets leads to increasing pain and suffering in any system, from family to congregation to nation-state.

 

All ancient religion viewed life as circular, following the seasons of the year.

There was no sense of the movement forward of history. Rather, life was a continuous repeating of what had already been, and the gods have to do with things like thunder and weather (Zeus), hunting, (Artemis) and the fertility of the earth in the spring (Demeter).

 

The Judeo-Christian-Islamic understanding of history, with a beginning and an end, changed this view of reality. Now you have a choice. Either you can look for ways to return to the past and attempt to preserve it (the Conservative view) or you can look for ways to move into a new future, different than anything that has gone before (the Progressive view). This is where Catholic and Protestant theology split in the medieval era. Catholic theology affirmed a succession of popes with the goal of preserving what had been, and that is why I believe it has had so much trouble dealing with the discoveries of the modern world, from birth control to the equality of women and the LGBTQ+ community.

 

Protestantism was born out of the desire for Reformation, taking the best of what existed at the time and trying to improve upon it. That has been a rocky road, with fits and starts, and with anything but unanimity, but in recent history we have finally been able to embrace women and the LGBTQ+ community as equals, create a Just War theory that tries to curtail increasing violence, and to confess the sins of the past such as Luther’s anti-Semitism and American slavery.

 

We ELCA Lutherans (the denomination of which I am a pastor) have tried to argue that Reformation is on-going, built upon the past, but with a view to the future that keeps struggling to make things even better by remaining open to revelations from God as we try to grow in our ability to be in harmony with the will of that God. This is where Conservatives and Progressives often part, because the very things many Progressives have been working for (the equality of women and the LGBTQ+ community, the acknowledgement of white privilege and systemic racism) are seen by some Conservatives as conflicting with what they see as the truths of Scripture.

 

The second arena--that of family systems psychology--has demonstrated how hidden--and thereby unconfessed and “covered up” actions--from alcoholism to physical and sexual abuse, continue to destroy that family system. I have been a called pastor in eight congregations, and the difference between those that were relatively healthy and those that were not, is that the unhealthy ones continued to carry secrets that were never admitted, confessed and confronted, and thus unconsciously affected in negative ways how those congregations operated.

 

The Trail of Tears

Now, just as church bodies can decide whether to focus on preserving the past or moving into a new and reformed future, so can nation-states. Just as theology and church are called to acknowledge our “original sin” of rebelling against the will of God, so America needs to do the same, and I don’t believe we really have. We have never fully acknowledged, let alone confessed, our original sins of beginning this nation with the genocide of the native peoples and the building of the economy upon the backs of slaves and migrant workers. And, whenever sin is not confessed, it finds ways of continuing. A short list of examples would be the continual breaking of treaties with Native Americans, the incarceration of the Japanese during World War II, the unequal treatment of Blacks by police and our legal system, the constant abuse of Latinos and their children by our government, relying on their labor but refusing to give them basic rights. I have had the opportunity to visit ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Detention facilities three times. The first two times I became so physically sick I decided not to go the third time.

 

The biblical definition of repentance is “turning around,” as we acknowledge and then turn around and walk away from sin. Today in America we are at a “turning point.” Which way will we go? Will we strive to return to the past, not only refusing to confess our original sins, but actually working to maintain white privilege and the systemic racism inherent to our way of life? Will we continue to resent immigrants, taking their skills and labor but not allowing them to be fully a part of the American dream? Even though our Constitution uplifts “freedom of religion,” will we continue to discriminate against Muslims and Jews and other religious groups? 

 

Or, instead, will we strive to create a “more perfect union” that continues to improve its ability to treat all people with dignity? Will we be open to Reformation, taking the best of what is already here and committing ourselves to making it even better, with “liberty and justice for all”?

 

Amanda Gorman, painted us just such a vision: 

 

We will not march back to what was

but move to what shall be

 

A country that is bruised but whole,

benevolent but bold,

fierce and free

 

We will not be turned around

or interrupted by intimidation

because we know our inaction and inertia

will be the inheritance of the next generation

 

Our blunders become their burdens

But one thing is certain:

If we merge mercy with might,

and might with right,

then love becomes our legacy

and change our children's birthright

 

So let us leave behind a country

better than the one we were left with

Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,

we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one

 

We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,

we will rise from the windswept northeast

where our forefathers first realized revolution

 

We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,

we will rise from the sunbaked south

 

We will rebuild, reconcile and recover

and every known nook of our nation and

every corner called our country,

our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,

battered and beautiful

 

When day comes, we step out of the shade,

aflame and unafraid

 

The new dawn blooms as we free it

For there is always light,

if only we're brave enough to see it

If only we're brave enough to be it   [The Hill We Climb]