While I haven't posted a blog for a while (which in my case is a very good sign the life is stable for awhile) I thought I would share the remarks I recently made to members of the Wisconsin Chaplaincy Association during their annual conference, "Spiritual Care: Perspectives and Modalities." It is a topic that I have become very familiar with during the past two decades -- my life as a priest and pastor.
Wisconsin Chaplaincy Association Annual Conference
The Heidel House, Green Lake, Wisc.
Sunday, Oct 14, 2012
I want to thank you for asking me to come here and share my perspectives on my favorite topic -- death and dying.
My
life has prepared me for dying. And
so has yours.
Let
me begin to explain this with a story.
It happened a number of years ago during my one-year residency in CPE.
I
was called to the Meriter Hospital Emergency Room to give a death notification.
A married couple was travelling through Wisconsin headed with their three
children to the Dells. They stopped for fuel on I-94 north of Madison when the
husband suffered a massive heart attack in the men’s room. He didn’t come out
for a while and when he was found, 9-1-1 was immediately called. But it was too
late. As I came into the ER one of the
nurses pointed me to the waiting room where I saw a young woman sitting with three children.
Now
you have to know more about me. Some of you do. But death notifications,
handling dead and maimed bodies was not new to me. I was a police officer for
over 30 years. But what I had learned all those years wasn’t going to help me
this afternoon. The terminally ill,
grieving and dying don’t need to hear “just the facts” from a Joe Friday.
What
I had learned as a cop was to keep cool, just the facts, do it all in 20
minutes or less and get back to real work – which essentially consists of
driving around looking and waiting for trouble. Or as a colleague once told me
“hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror.”
Effective
policing consists of developing a non-anxious, controlled, in-charge presence,
and NO emotional connection. Not your pastoral model. (I have to say that I, unfortunately,
have seen this practiced among my colleagues in the clergy.)
So
that day in the E.R., my parallel process was in full operation – wife, three
children, husband suddenly dies. What’s that like? All my fears when I was a
cop. All those police funerals I attended – sobbing wife and children walking
down the church aisle following a casket, blue uniforms, stand at attention.
All
that came into play. My wife… my children… Now add many years of stuffing
feelings and being boy-strong… misty eyes were okay, but no tears -- and
certainly no weeping.
But
somehow that day in the ER, within a kaleidoscope of emotions, I must of heard
God’s word in Ecclesiastes,
“There is a time to weep and a time
to laugh, a time to mourn and a
time to dance.” (Eccl 3:4)
This
was a time to weep.
After
I told them what had happened, I wept with them – deeply. And then I asked them
if they would like to visit his body. And the children touched him, kissed him
and said “goodbye.”
In
group the next day I had the opportunity to do a verbatim on this.
I
was never the same again.
Thanks
be to God!
In
the past, I dodged, avoided and denied death as I served as an urban police
officer, parachutist, engaged in full-contact sports, and a variety of other
testosterone-laden activities. But that’s growing up male in America. Only the
unlucky die.
I
often came face to face with death in my prior life: traffic fatalities, recovering
drowning victims, investigating homicides, and other varieties of violent mayhem.
But
I was lucky. I came out of three decades of policing never having to shoot
anyone, not being shot (they missed both times!). Unscathed, or so I thought.
So
when I retired from policing to become a member of the clergy, I soon found
that I had stuffed a lot of feelings during my years. I signed up for a year’s
residency in CPE after seminary. I knew I had work to do.
The
major stuffing went on during my years on the Minneapolis police underwater
recovery team. A group of police divers whose job it was to recover bodies from
city lakes and the Mississippi River which separated the Twin Cities.
During
one group session, shortly before I was to be ordained, I thought about those
bodies, all those bodies of the children I had recovered. The little children I
would bring up from the water and place into the arms of their grieving parents.
Then
I thought about what I would soon be doing as a priest, I would again be
holding little children, bringing them up through the waters of baptism,
handing them to their parents.
But
instead of announcing a death, I would announced a message of New Life as these
children were “marked and sealed as Christ’s own, forever.”
The
juxtaposition was staggering. My deep, buried grief came pouring out. I soon
found myself weeping uncontrollably. Again,
an encounter with “the Holy Spirit and fire.”
Only
a few months later, my best friend died of cancer. I was then a priest and
could minister to him while I loved him. I officiated at his funeral with his
family’s priest.
I
was coming to see that somehow I was being more and more acquainted with death.
But it was a different kind of death encounter than I had experienced in the
past.
A
few years later my eldest granddaughter, Allison, in her early twenties, tragically
died in single car traffic accident near her home in St. Paul one early, snowy
morning as she drove to work.
Now
this was a new encounter. Facing the fear that all of us who have children know
deeply. Into that pain my wife, Sabine, and I entered as we were asked to take charge
of the, as they say, “arrangements.”
But
more was coming…
Two
years later, Sabine, was diagnosed with a terminal cancer. At the time, she was
not expected to live more than a year or two.
I
thought I was going to die. My grief and fear for her almost overwhelmed me.
This
was a new, even deeper encounter with death.
And
I have learned a bit more about what it is like to live, walk with a loved one
that is terminally ill.
I
navigated her unexpected illness face to face with God – I yelled at God, like
Moses, told God that I would not let God off from the promises God made. And God
never left me alone. God didn’t take away my grief, God just was with me…
listening to me… listening to me… understanding me… comforting me.
Then,
two years into our cancer fight, my third oldest son committed suicide. I found
death can be tasted. It is a bitterness, a gall, that takes time to wash away
and each one of us may go through the Kubler-Ross stages but do them
differently and in different order.
After
his death, for weeks I yelled at God, told God that I would not let God off
from the promises God made to me. And God never left me alone. God didn’t take
away my grief, he just was with me… listening to me… listening to me… understanding
me… comforting me in that familiar person of Jesus.
Through
all this I have tried to pay attention to what has happened and what is
happening. To be awake and alert. To open my heart. To live into these moments
and events. Through this I wrote a ream of poetry and blogged my feelings. Yes,
I was learning how to die, too.
Each
of us has a story. Some of our stories are short, unfinished. My story is
longer, nearing its end. In each
instance it is a unique faith narrative. It is ours and ours only. Narrative has
the power to heal – yourself and others as you listen and utter the most
important words in pastoral ministry -- “I
am with you… we are in this together…”
But
to do this, we need to know who we are,
our own faith-set, and work to ensure each person’s faith we encounter
is honored and respected. No exceptions.
We
live and work in a marketplace of ideas today and a global village of diverse
religious traditions – many pre-dating the one you and I may profess.
This
has caused most of the traditional functions of a pastor, rabbi, priest or imam,
to have been essentially replaced – out-sourced -- today. No longer do people primarily
come to us for healing – they go to a physician. No longer do they come to us
for counseling or seeking forgiveness or a life-plan, no they go to a
therapist, no longer do they come to us for an explanation of how the world
works, they go to a wise friend, philosopher, scientist (or “Google” their
questions).
I
suggest that no one but us is really qualified -- fully and deeply – to be in
the terminally ill business. Especially in a world that denies it every day by
living like it wasn’t true. Men and women who try to physically change their
appearance to look younger, take vitamins, and exercise. And take a pill to either
keep their hair from getting grey or to increase their sexual performances to
that of an adolescent. For by ignoring aging is to ignore death itself.
We
know most physicians don’t like to deal with death and neither do most therapists,
philosophers or scientists – nor do some clergy we know – but by default or
not, we must. That’s what we do.
That’s
our job. The job of a chaplain.
We
chaplains are left to perform one of our society’s most important functions – to
aid and assist the dying. To help people die. We are the death-responders.
Now
I wish I could say that all of us are comfortable with this role. But we must
be. That’s what we need to grow into if we think we are not very good at doing
this. It’s “job one” for us.
It’s
like this: all the other pastoral jobs are gone – they have been out-sourced!
Sorry. There is only one seat left for us on this bus.
I
look at it like this: you and I are essentially travel agents – the Karons of
Greek mythology. Karon was the mythical figure who ferried the dead across the
River Styxx to the Other Side.
And
the better we know the territory, the journey, and what death is all about, the
better travel agents we will be for those who either request our services or
who suddenly find themselves suddenly in our presence.
In the art of ancient Greece, Karon was depicted as
a rough, unkempt sailor, holding his ferry pole in his right hand as his left
hand received the deceased. He appeared to be an ordinary sailor – not a
captain or an admiral – an ordinary person who simply had an essential and necessary job to do.
And
you and I, like Karon, need to comfortable with ourselves, being non-anxious
souls who have come to know about the death journey, the river to be crossed,
and something about the Other Shore to which we direct others.
You
and I should know the territory, the Other Shore – that which any good travel
agent is expected to know. For most of us the Other Shore is the foundation of
most of the world’s religions. It’s all about the Other Shore, right?
So,
we need to know the landscape, direction, and territory.
I
suggest we do that best by paying
attention when someone is dying.
Listening. Feeling. Not reading about death or attending seminars or
conferences or even listening to people like me, but about being awake and highly
alert when we are with them. Being fully-present.
And
that means being open, humble, and being a deep listener. Is this not the greatest
gift we can give to another person in this busy, noisy, ego-driven, and
death-denying society listening?
Real
and deep listening… generous listening… gracious listening...
Our
presence is to make sure that death, our one last act in this earthly life,
remains sacred, holy, and full of both anticipation and possibility and as fear
and pain-less as possible.
But
we are more than just listening sentinels, travel agents, or
ferry-tenders. We are more, much, much
more. That’s because we deal in a realm, an existence, that not everyone can
see. To make the Other Shore more visible. To try and describe the life across
the river as much as we have come to know and understand it. And to be able to
talk about the Other Shore.
As
we pole that boat across the river we can talk about the nurturing, primordial,
life-giving river we are on. How it has eternally flowed. Its direction and
destination always the same.
When
it comes right down to it, our challenge today is to help others experience
what we used to call “a good death.” But I don’t hear that term much anymore.
That
is probably because many of us work in a hospital setting where death is considered
a “failure” and not a process through which we all go.
But
I still use it in my conversations. I think you should, too. Ask, “What would
be a good death for you? How would you like it to be?”
For
me, a good death means having no regrets. If there are regrets in the lives of
the terminally ill and dying we encounter, we should encourage them to make
amends, ask for forgiveness, restore the things in their lives which have been
broken – that often involves relationships with their children. Doing this
helps achieve the inner peace that will be needed in their walk to the river.
As
chaplains, they are also things we need to do on a continual basis – make
amends, ask and give forgiveness, restore that which has been broken in our own
lives; to live “no regret” lives.
When
we work for wholeness in our own lives we can be even better help to the dying
– and that is to bring the “great possibility” into the conversation as we
approach the boat, the river, and the Other Shore.
None
of us really knows what happens on the Other Shore – THAT something unexpected
and glorious will happen I am sure. How it will happen I do not know. Nor where
we actually will go. Therefore, I suggest that we all be “open to the possibility” – to the unknown – the
mystical --even anticipate it.
A
good chaplain helps the angry, the doubting, and the fearful as much as we are
to help the faithful. We help others consider the promises we believe God has
given to all of us. This is a sacred
mission.
After
all, we all are dying each day. Some of us are dying faster than others. Each
day that passes brings us closer to death. If there is a GREAT AND SACRED
MISSION for those of us who serve as chaplains, this is it.
We
are the Karons, the death-walkers, who lovingly, humbly, gently take the hand of
those who reach out to us during their last steps in this realm. Our job is to love them and to be courageous
knowing and accepting, at the same time, our own anxiety and fear of death.
As
we are present with those who are terminally ill, each of us grows a little
more as we ourselves let go a little more. We enter with them into a mystical,
liminal, and sacred space called death… a space of great possibility. A place
where there is no sorrow, a place where God will wipe away every tear.
We
walk with them to the ferryboat, stand by them to the Other Shore. And then say
goodbye. Our face may be the last human face they see. In these situations,
what does our face say to them?
Joseph
Campbell once said,
“We must be willing to let go of the
life we planned -- so as to have the
life that is waiting for us.”
Death
is letting go of all our great and grand plans. All our earthly hopes. Death
permits us to enter into the glorious, yet unknown, life that is awaiting each
one of us on the Other Shore.
Thank
you for being here today and listening. I have lived much, listened much, experienced
much, and believe in Glorious Light on the Other Shore.
I
hope and pray you do, too.
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