Talking (Again) About Suicide

The above 4-minute video was John D. Schramm's first attempt to talk about the taboo subject of suicide. It is a beautiful testimony to choosing life and, at the same time, a call to break the silence -- the taboo of talking about suicide.

Over half a million people have seen John's video and it's been translated into 39 languages. He wanted to "start a conversation worth having about an idea worth spreading."

The following is what John learned:

• Breaking the silence is not an event, but a process. Through hundreds of emails and thousands of comments on various websites, it is clear that attempt survivors don't just break the silence one time, but over and over and over again. Or they don't, and live in the silence after once having a bad experience with sharing their secret with another.
• Tough questions don't have easy answers. John was a layperson with no training in the healing arts. He attempted to start a conversation, but then just listened as others were inspired to share their journey. Then John pointed them to resources that he knew.
• Conversations are a crucial, but slow path to change. In John's life, he's witnessed the self-inflicted deaths of several people he's loved and known. While he wanted their closest friends and family members to share their stories too, he found he was powerless to cause that. Instead, he simply remained open to the conversation, replied to each email or invitation to chat, and urged strugglers to find or build the network of committed listeners and further their own conversations.

This conversation, thankfully, has begun. The challenge now is to continue it and expose the taboo to conversation and openness. When that happens, suicide is no longer a taboo.

In the fall of 2010, my son took his life. Suicide is not new to either my professional or family experience, but the effect on me was devastating and involved a good two years of grief-sharing and processing.

Almost immediately after his death I posted a number of blogs on this site (October-November, 2010). It was my attempt to heal heal my own grief and help others through my experience. You may find them helpful.

"Perhaps no other life-threatening condition on the planet can be so positively impacted by honest, forthright and intimate conversations with friends, loved-ones, clients and colleagues. As we do this, we demystify suicide. We render it approachable by creating a net of understanding so strong and a willingness to intervene imbued with such resolve, that people can no longer fall through the cracks."

[Richard Heckler, Waking Up Alive ,1996].

When we break the silence, we take action to prevent the next loss. By sharing our thoughts and feelings we make ourselves vulnerable, but it is that vulnerability, that openness, that enables our own healing.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255

Military Veterans CLICK HERE Most every city or county offers suicide survivor groups,  they are a big help, too!

A Blessing for Memorial Day

The Celtic cross emphasizes our inter-connectedness --
with all of creation, with each other,
and with God. We are One.

A blessing asks for favor and protection. It connects us with each other and with all of creation.

The language of blessing is an invocation – a "calling forth."

In the Memorial Day blessing below you will see the word “may" appear many times; it is a very powerful word -- an invocating hope and possibility… "May there be…" "may this happen…" "may we..."

A blessing both imagines and wills a desired future or state of being – there is a transforming force behind it. And this transforming force is God’s subtle presence and divine energy given for us -- there for our asking.  

A BLESSING FOR MEMORIAL DAY

·

       On this day, may the Holy One help us to turn our swords into plowshares; to know war no more.

·       May we come to understand the true, multi-generational cost of war and its killing.

·       Yet may we always remember and honor our brothers and sisters who selflessly served and those whose lives have been sacrificed in what they believed to be honorable and true.

·       May the founding beliefs that have made our nation strong, just and honorable be evident in our collective life together.

·       May we as a nation and as a people be slow to anger, quick to forgive, and merciful in our actions.

·       May we who come together today be strengthened in our peacemaking and be a blessing and inspiration to those of us who seek to become makers of peace.

[The above blessing was the invocation I made for the assembly of the Madison (Wisc.) area chapter and friends of Veterans for Peace (VFP), Memorial Day, May 27, 2013 in the Gates of Heaven Chapel in James Madison Park]

Tune Up Your Relationship

Sabine and I have taught a marriage course for a number of years and often use it as a pre-marriage preparation. It was designed to help couples build strong relationships that will last. And we strongly recommend it. During the course, the following important relationship areas are addressed:

• Recongnizing each other's needs,
• Learning to communicate effectively,
• Resolving conflict,
• Healing past hurt,
• Knowing how to make each other feel loved,
• Relating to parents and in-laws,
• Good sex,
• Making time for each other, and
• Having fun together.

At the conclusion of the course, we provided each participant a check-up. And I have enclosed it below.

I suggest you use it for a discussion outline with the person with whom you have a primary relationship -- a "check up" on your relationship!

 

The Monthly Checkup

1. Are you booking dedicated “relationship time” with your partner each week?

2. Have you met his or her “top three desires” this month? (Do you know what they are?)

3. Have you talked about your feelings with your partner more than twice this month?

4. When you listened to your partner’s feelings this month were you able to do it without interrupting, criticizing, or giving advice?

5. How many times this month have you expressed appreciation for your partner?

6. During times of conflict, are you able to discuss the ISSUE rather than attacking your partner?

7. How many times this month have you taken time to generously listen to your partner’s point of view?

8. Have you spent time this month to express support for your partner?

9. How many times have you talked about your own personal hurts with your partner?

10. When was the last time you apologized to your partner and sought his/her forgiveness?

11. How many times this month have you made love to your partner in a way that communicated your love and commitment to him/her?

12. How many times have you been able to show love to your partner in your partner’s primary or secondary “love language?” (Do you know your love language? Your partners?).

Some Longer Term Issues to Work On

13. Have you been able to truly forgive your partner for hurting you? The criterion being that the offense no longer conditions your relationship with him/her. Forgiveness is a choice.

14. Have you been able to maintain independence from your parents and your partner’s parents?

15. Have you been able to forgive your parents for the ways they have hurt or failed you?

Working on improving and strengthening our relationships are the two most important things we can do this side of heaven. We know that. We’ve all witnessed break-ups among our friends, and, perhaps, it has even happened to us.

Remember -- by the time you finally take action to save your relationship, it’s often too late and neither of you have the energy to fix it! So, let's begin now.

We shouldn't be surprised that we all tend to let our relationships drift. Most of us spend more time and concern about maintaining our automobiles (and, of course, our careers) than our primary relationships. When our car breaks down, it’s inconvenient. When our marriage breaks down it’s a long-term disaster! But often it was a disaster we saw coming but chose not to do anything about it; instead, thinking we will have time tomorrow to fix things.

This checklist should help you to prevent that disaster – to begin to do something today. Putting together a good action plan first begins with the decision to spend quality time (just the two of you) together. 

Talk with your partner -- today!

Humility -- The Elusive Quality

This week, I was reading in the New York Times about an exclusive school in New York City called "Avenues: The World School." I didn't get too excited about the prospect of sending my granddaughter who lives nearby to the school -- grade school tuition is $43,000.

As for the curriculum: Mandarin or Spanish language immersion begins in nursery school. Every kindergarten child gets an iPad. And soon students will be able to do a semester in San Paulo, Bejing, or any of the other 20 campuses the school plans to start around the world.

Last September, the school opened with over 700 students from pre-K to 9th grade. High school will soon be offered. At $43K a year, there is a 9-1 student to teacher ratio and a 10 person staff "success" team oversees each student's development.

The news article contained a story that was very revealing. One of the school's parents was a man who had started a his own technology company while still in college. He hired the smartest and most motivated engineers to start his company. They soon found they had to fire two-thirds of them. He went back and tried to figure out what had happened. What was the problem? The weakness was that arrogance reigned in the company when humility was what was needed. [You can read the entire article HERE.]

There is more to this, however. Recently, a number of admissions officers from prestigious east coast colleges were queried as to what high school applicants were missing in their applications. It was, in a word, humility!

Perhaps, in a pathologically competitive, information-saturated city like New York, this is the answer for wealthy anxiety-prone parents. But is it the answer? And what is "success?" Is it economic, relational, or  spiritual success we seek for our children?

One couple gushed over their son's school curriculum, "He'll be so marketable coming out of college with [Mandarin] fluency. There's enough competition domestically!" 
Given this affluence and these expectations, how does an elite school like the Americas teach humility and have it stick? Of course, this is not a new struggle for those of us who see our own spiritual life and the spiritual life of our children in conflict with the gods of profit and social standing -- of being more than just "marketable."

Nevertheless, we should think about this matter of humility and why it is important (something all the leaders of our world's enduring religions taught).

I leave you with a quote from C.S. Lewis whom many of you may know from his popular books Mere Christianity and Chronicles of Narnia:

“As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud [person] is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”

Humility  

Being modest, not pretentious, not believing you are superior to others; an attitude of "egolessness," and respect for others.

How do we practice humility and inspire it in those with whom we are in relationship? That is one of the most powerful of spiritual questions!

What's Going On with Dying?

Sometimes the results of research are strange. 

Take this is one example: clergy at the bedside of dying patients resulted in less use of hospice care and greater use of aggressive and costly end-of-life medical procedures which resulted in a lowering their quality of life during their last days.

In a paper recently published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Dr Tracy Balboni and others reported that patients reporting high spiritual support from religious communities were less likely to receive hospice care, more likely to receive aggressive end of life measures, and more likely to die in an ICU in several hundred surveys in seven oncology centers in Boston, Dallas and New Haven compared to patients who were not highly supported from their religious communities! 

However, those patients who were not highly supported by their religious communities and, instead, tended to use chaplains and medical team personnel, had a higher quality of life in their final days.

What could possibly be going on here? 

After all, this would appear to me to be contrary to how we as clergy aid the dying (but then, I did a year's residency as a hospital chaplain as part of my preparation for ordination).

This research team surmised that the more dying patients received support from religious congregations, the more likely they were to fight death through experimental, highly toxic regimens of chemotherapy or surgeries with little chance of success. Apparently, these patients believed that God, acting through doctors, hospitals, and drugs, would miraculously save them.

Here’s the scary part – The data suggest “a lack of understanding on the part of religious communities about the medical realities that these patients are facing and that they focus instead on praying for miracles and perseverance through aggressive therapies.”

However, when patients received their spiritual support from hospital chaplains, they received forthright and realistic information bridging the facts of their medical situation with their end-of-life considerations and religious beliefs. But isn't that what all clergy should be doing? As I recall in my training, a chaplain is to elicit a patient’s values and goals, and, at the same time, weigh the potential benefits and risks of medical therapies. Trained hospital chaplains are to have one foot in each area – spiritual and medical. The goal, of course, is to help the patient have what we used to call a "good death."

So why aren’t clergy outside the hospital setting doing this? 

Balboni offered an explanation: “[a] fixation on the possibility of a miracle by both patients and their religious communities makes it difficult to change the focus of care;" that is, being able to shift away and deal with symptoms like pain, and to make end of life as comfortable as possible, and this means getting away from focusing solely on getting cured. She has actually heard from patients that stopping various therapies would be going against God's will. "One patient was concerned that stopping chemotherapy,” she related, “would be equivalent to committing suicide, which was against that person's religious beliefs."

Of course, it is not wrong for a terminally ill patient with advanced stage cancer to try experimental drugs, particularly if they are very young. But if it's at the expense the spiritual preparation people need at the end of life it may well be wrong; like keeping the focus away from the reality of the patient's true medical condition.

In their paper, Balboni and co-authors rhetorically ask why a belief in the potential for a miracle might result in more aggressive use of medical care? One possibility is that many religious people consider medicine to be a means of God's divine intervention. According to a survey in the Southeast, 80% of respondents endorsed such a belief -- that God acts through physicians to cure illness. 

But here's where this can go askew. Religious people may then view the withholding of heroic efforts as taking these technologies out of God's hand. Another view may be the tendency of some religious communities to elevate the role of suffering as "spiritual" or redeeming in itself.

So how is the problem fixed? As a starter, it is a strong endorsement for the continuing training of hospital chaplains through a method such as Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). This specialized training helps clergy keep a foot in both worlds -- medical and spiritual. Along with this there is the need for medical practitioners to reach out more to religious communities and create a better understanding of end-of-life care, hospice, and what medicine can realistically offer. 

The point is this: spiritually-minded patients need to be convinced that choosing to withhold aggressive end-of-life measures does not constitute taking matters out of God’s hand.

And may we all strive in our own spiritual lives to have "a good death. " A death today which hospice-trained nurses and chaplains care can provide; that is, care designed to improve the quality of a patient's last days by providing comfort and ensuring the patient's dignity. It is delivered by a team of specially trained professionals (including chaplains), volunteers and family members. 

Hospice addresses all the symptoms of a disease, with a special emphasis on controlling a patient's pain and discomfort. It also addresses the emotional, social and spiritual impact of the disease on the patient and the patient's family and friends. During the patient's illness, and at the end, hospice offers a variety of bereavement and counseling services to families before and after a patient's death.

How Are You Making Peace?

Peacekeeping is a characteristic value of most of the world's enduring religions. So, how do we as spiritual persons, practice it?

We almost intuitively know that no of us can practice peacekeeping if we have anger and violence residing in our hearts. Peacekeeping begins from the inside out. When we begin to practice peacekeeping we first do the inside (heart) work -- the rest will follow.

But how is peacekeeping practiced -- especially in our interpersonal relations, with our spouses, children, friends, and co-workers? How can we help keep peace in those relationships and bring about a more peaceful society?

And then what's next? Do we not want to be involved in some larger effort to promote peace? When I first came to Madison (Wisc.) as their chief of police in the early 70s, I received a moving note from a very young boy. It simply said, "Please be our peace chief!" It deeply moved me and solidified the belief I had that police can help promote peace in our nation's cities.

The conflicts at the time in our nation's cities were glaringly obvious -- between young and old, black and white, student and non-student, liberals and conservatives, anti-war protesters and those who supported the war.

In Haiti with Sabine and son, Joshua Ezekiel in the late 90s.

After my retirement and entry into the clergy, I had opportunities to further my desire to be a wider peacemaker. After all, in the faith I represented, "blessed are the peacemakers" was one of our founder's guiding principles!

This led me to be part of two medical and construction missions to a small village in the mountains Haiti. And as a member of the International Committee for the Peace Council, I was part of peacekeeping missions to Cambodia where we called to the world's attention the continuing carnage of landmines. In Chiapas, Mexico, we facilitated discussions concerning the repression of local indigenous peoples. In South Africa, I experienced another life-changing event as a delegate to the 1999 World Parliament of Religions in Cape Town. This drawing-together of all the world's enduring religions drew over 7,000 people from 80 countries. That year, the focus was the AIDS epidemic.

While my international travels have diminished over the last five years, I have found purpose, sustenance and encouragement as a member of my local chapter (Chapter 25) of Veterans for Peace (VFP). Since 1985, VFP has worked to expose the true costs of war and militarism. As a military veteran, I believe I best continue to serve my country by being active in this effort -- especially today when a million or more of our young people (including my youngest daughter) have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The true costs of our engagement in the Middle East will be born by future generations and they will be in a continuing need for our love and support. This has been our experience with Vietnam era veterans in terms of homelessness, suicide, addiction, and family violence. It will be no less so for our recent veterans. War mains both the conqueror and the conquered.

What are some of the things you are doing to help make the world more peaceful? When you work as a peacemaker, you are blessed!

Practicing Lovingkindness

The following story describes how one man practices lovingkindness by paying forward the kindness he once received years ago when he was a stranded motorist.

He doesn't preach about God or Jesus. No, after assisting a stranded motorist, he simply hands the person a card noting: 

"Assisting you has been my pleasure. I ask for no payment other than for you to pass on the favor by helping someone else in distress that you may encounter."

That's it! He doesn't take advantage of a person's need and use it as an opportunity to preach his beliefs (I don't know what they may be but actions always speak louder than words!) Thomas Weller practices the "wisdom of the ages:" "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and asks those whom he helps to "pay it forward."

Is this religious? Spiritual? I think so because it is a reflection (for me) of the God I have come to know and love and who expects me practice this kind of lovingkindness.

So to to love God and neighbor is what this man does. Faith in action!

There's Hope For Us!

I have always thought there was a link between spirituality and dance. In my tradition, I am reminded that David publicly danced before the Ark of God with all his might! (2 Samuel 6:14). Why wouldn't we show our love for the Almighty by using our whole body -- our voice in song, in our words, and, yes, in body movement -- dance!

Over the years we have seen on YouTube various "flash gatherings" that come together and sing and dance without notice in public places -- from Grand Central Station to a government employment office.

This morning I simply couldn't stop smiling after seeing this video and thinking how wonderful the world really is beyond network news. Enjoy. Smile. And why not dance along? (I couldn't help it even if Sabine was watching!)

CELEBRATE LIFE!