friday column on grief 11/4

We had a moving, elegant choral service for All Saints Day evening at First Presbyterian this week. In a culture dedicated to repressing grief, of moving quickly through its unnerving reactions, it is good to offer a set time, rooted in tradition, for all of us who face the valley of loss.

In this issue of Christian Century magazine, it featured a number of articles on death. One explored the changes in funeral sermons of late. While they open the doors of grief to the hearers, they are often delivered in the middle of ceremonies that are declared to be “celebrations of life.”The older I get the more I think this idea is pushed by baby boomers who fear any “negative” emotions.so, we try to make funerals, of all rituals, grief and tear-free zones. The lead editorial was a memory by the publisher of stumbling through his first call on a dying member of the church and his first funeral. All has slipped away, except he recalls that he did quote Romans 8 that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.” Another articles wonder aloud if the church has ceded its role in being a witness to death to hospice and funeral homes, so that people lack resources to face both death and grief in a religious vein.

The book of Hebrews speaks of a great cloud of witnesses. during our service many of us rose to light a candle to remember a loved one. I like to think of another doctrine of the church then and there, the communion of saints. In Celtic spirituality, mention is made of a thin place, where we sense a closer relation, a more permeable boundary between the divine and the ordinary world. I like to think that the departed crowded around the gates of heaven to peer lovingly at the know of people praying and singing their way through grief.

The eminent writer Joan Didion has lived deep in grief’s valley of late. While their daughter was grievously ill, her husband died suddenly in her chair. Out of the maelstrom of grief, she wrote The Year of Magical Thinking. I prize the book as she is one of the few people t emphasize the feelings of grief less than its confusing assault on our ability to think straight, with any focus or clarity for quite some time.

That grown daughter has since died. Didion has once again placed her formidable talents to sharing that expected loss to death. While her first memoir of loss was coming to grips with sudden widowhood, this book tries to come to terms wit a whole life cut short. Like any parent, she grieves all of her mistakes with her daughter, regrets all of the missed chances, and misses her desperately. Yes, she has gotten “better,” as she no longer bursts into tears atht he very mention of her name.

I am so grateful that the session (our governing board) of the church continues to support an All Saints Day service. it is a poignant reminder that deep human emotion can be enveloped in prayer. When words won;t come, hymns and formal prayers speak for us. While I respect the Roman Catholic tradition of venerating people who demonstrate remarkable attributes, I prefer the Protestant extension of being “saints” across the board to those who have gone on before us as described in the book of Revelation. In our tradition saints are those who are reconciled to relationship with God. For me, they stand as witnesses across the chasm of time and dimension that love need not respect any boundary, as it persists when all else fails to recall those absent from us.