Working Through Environmental Despair (Excerpt)
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In August, 1978 I chaired a week-long seminar on planetary survival issues. College professors and administrators had prepared papers to deliver on themes ranging from the water crisis to environmental effects of nuclear technology.
As we convened, I took time to acknowledge that the topic we were addressing was different from any other, that it touched each of us in a profoundly personal way. I suggested that we introduce ourselves by sharing an incident or image of how it had touched us.
From Your Minister
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It was not a surprise when my mother died. Survival rates for ovarian cancer are not high, and hers was in stage four by the time it was diagnosed. Against those odds, she lived three years with a high quality of life.
Finally, when the experimental treatments could not stave it off any longer, she refused any more chemo and radiation, quit eating, and slowly let go.
REsources for Living
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One way of defining religion might be as a place for talking about things that are hard to talk about. What does my life mean? Who or what is in charge? Where did everything come from? What do I owe to other people? What is good enough? How am I connected to the other beings of the planet as well as the other people? Why do bad things happen?
Offering for Grief
The Glove in the Subway
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A one-paragraph newspaper article describes a subway platform during the morning rush hour at Grand Central Terminal. A train pulls in; a well-dressed woman gets off. Before the doors close, the woman realizes that she is holding only one of her leather gloves. She looks back into the train and spots the matching one on a seat. It is obviously too late to dash back in to retrieve it, so with a cavalier shrug, she flings her arm out and, the doors about to close, tosses her one glove onto the seat alongside its mate. The doors shut, and the train pulls away. Read more →
Letting Go of What We Don’t Have
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Oh, letting go. Every so often a minister has to preach on something that is absolutely not a personal strength. And this is one of those times. I’m not a letter-go; I’m an attacher and a holder-on. I hold onto people and relationships I love. I hold onto to souvenirs and mementos. I hang onto old things from my parents or grandparents, even when I have no place to put them. I hold onto and reread beloved books—some I have read 10, maybe 20 times. I have transplanted plants from one house’s garden to another, clung like a vine to bad boyfriends and outworn securities, cherished broken knickknacks and topless treasure boxes and coverless books—sometimes even books with pages that keep falling out.
The Roots We Choose (Excerpt)
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We don’t get a say in the roots we inherit, even as they stretch beneath the surface of our daily lives and contain within them countless stories—of danger and survival and elation and heartbreak—that inform our living in ways we understand and ways we do not. No matter if we spend a lifetime tracing what we can learn about our family’s branches of these roots, or if we do all we can to ignore or even abandon these roots, they will remain there all the same, connecting us to the past, and in a sense, to each other.
From Your Minister
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My uncle had lost his powers of speech by the time he died. In his hospital bed, surrounded by his loved ones, he used a bead board to spell out what he wanted to say during his final days. At one point, my cousin told me, everyone leaned in close because it seemed like he wanted to say something important. C-H-A-N-G-E—the whole family sounded out the word—change!—and wondered what important words might follow. T-H-E O-I-L F-I-L-T-E-R eventually came through. He was reminding my aunt to do a job he had always done on their furnace. For some reason, letting go of this detail was critical for him as he departed the planet. These were some of his final words.
REsources for Living
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Have you ever had an all-out, meltdown, full-on temper tantrum? I don’t remember having major hissy fits when I was little, although if you asked my mom you would probably learn that’s more about my faulty memory than my good temper. I certainly have been witness to some raging temper tantrums as a parent. My daughter’s frequent tantrums in her younger years pretty much always grew out of wanting something that she couldn’t have—either because we weren’t willing to satisfy her desire, or simply because couldn’t find the thing that she wanted. Either way, you could watch her brain dashing around and around in a tiny little circle: “I want it! I don’t have it! I want it! I don’t have it! I want it! I don’t have it!”
A Stone to Hold On To
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It was the weekend before I was scheduled for a biopsy. Marta spent the morning gathering stones on the beach. Later that evening, she pressed a smooth round stone into my hand and said “I know that when you’re facing a challenge it helps to have something to hold onto. I chose this stone especially for you so you will have something to hold onto this week.” On the plane going home somehow I lost the stone, but during my biopsy I held on to Marta’s love.
