A therapist we know lives with her husband in the woods east of Ann Arbor. I drive up to her home from time to time when a thought weighs on my heart. My wife suggested I go see her. There are times when you need to get out of town to get a different view of things. I drove up this morning and had a good talk with her. She is to me an Amma, a wise woman. I will see the woman in the woods more in the months to come.
Grief: Contemporary Theory and the Practice of Ministry, by Melissa M. Kelley, professor at Boston College School of Theology. Kelley has written a beautiful and well researched study on the experience of grief. Rather than see grief as a linear process of stages, she sees grief as a mosaic made up of many bits and pieces unique to each individual. She looks at the ways grief shatters our natural attachments in life, leading us to despair, lost meaning, and an inability to understand our stories any longer. At the same time, though, the love of God, embodied in the life of Christ, lies always underneath our journey of loss, holding us up and beckoning us to find healing and wholeness. Ministers, she says, are uniquely positioned to point the grieving toward sources of hope again. Along the way Kelley blends insights from literature, case studies and contemporary psychology, but the ‘secure base’ she returns to again and again is the gospel of God’s love in Christ. This book helped me better understand the grieving, and it gave me a deeper appreciation for my own griefs and losses, which are like small tiles God has included in the mosaic of my life. This is a fine and thoughtful book.
Melissa M. Kelley, a professor at Boston College School of Theology, believes that traditional psychoanalytic understandings of grief, though helpful, only yield a one-dimensional view of how people really grieve. In her book on Grief, she suggests a mosaic as a more flexible metaphor for the ways we grieve.
While traditional grief theory can often seem to encourage ‘paint-by-number’ results, the contemporary field allows us–invites us–to understand each person’s grief experience as a particular mosaic, fashioned out of innumerable and varied aspects of one’s life, such as one’s history of losses, one’s relationships, one’s ways of making meaning, one’s experience of the Divine, one’s religious resources, one’s sense of community, one’s culture, and so on. Each grief mosaic is unique, nuanced, and intricate.
I have been grieving losses this year. I like the image of grief as a mosaic with varied bits and aspects to it.
Because they can’t expect their spouse to be their sole support.
When I first got married I had a vision of a union of two people who realized that they needed nothing in the world but each other. As I’ve grown older, I see more nuance. A full life, which is what Joe and I each aspire to live, is a complicated life. I have a career, kids, a home, siblings and all the attendant dramas. I can’t rely on Joe to be my sole counsel for all that, just as I cannot be his.
Marriage is like an H. Often you are together in the crossbar in the middle, and other times you are on your own side of the letter with your own friends.
Another advantage sitters [introverts prone to sit and observe] bring to leadership is a willingness to listen to and implement other people’s ideas. A groundbreaking study led by the Wharton management professor Adam Grant, to be published this month in The Academy of Management Journal, found that introverts outperform extroverts when leading teams of proactive workers — the kinds of employees who take initiative and are disposed to dream up better ways of doing things. Professor Grant notes that business self-help guides often suggest that introverted leaders practice their communication skills and smile more. But, he told me, it may be extrovert leaders who need to change, to listen more and say less.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a post on introverted pastors.
It was the winter of 1994, a January or February night. I was chaplain on-call at Abington Memorial Hospital, north of center city Philadelphia. I was in a chaplaincy training program called Clinical Pastoral Education. I had a bad relationship with supervisors who wanted me to feel my feelings and work on my ‘issues’. Which was all well enough except the methods they used involved emotional manipulation and abuse. My hospital assignment included the oncology floor, 20 rooms with patients and families suffering from cancer. During on-call overnights, one or two a week, each chaplain covered the whole hospital, including the emergency room. Abington was a Level 2 Trauma Center, not the worst but bad enough. I attended 50 deaths in 12 months there, or about one a week. It was a scary place to be, and because of the conflict with my supervisors, there was no safe place for me anywhere in the building. I felt alone, hunted and depressed. “Better is a dry morsel with quiet, than a house full of feasting with strife.” (Pr 17:1) I only wanted my morsel of bread and a bit of peace.
So that night in the winter of ’94, I was lying in bed in the on-call room, which had a door that led out onto the roof of the hospital. The room was in the old, original building with the cupola. It had two twin beds, a TV and a bathroom. I got up and walked over to the door out to the roof. There was snow on the roof. I looked out the window at the snow. I thought, “What if I went out and laid down in the snow?” I stood at the door and thought about it for a long time. Now I lay me down to sleep… in the snow. I would surely die before I woke. In the end I did not go out and lie down in the snow because I do not like to be cold. My wife laughs at this part of the story. She knows I am a creature who likes his comforts. But I thought about it. I thought about suicide. And because I thought about it, thought long about it, I can understand the impulse, the feeling, the sense of being forced into a corner with no other way out.
My wife today is grateful I do not like to be cold and did not act on that thought in the winter of ’94. If I had, I would never have met her, and we would not share a rich and full life now in Adrian, Michigan, nor would I have found this lovely congregation to minister among. The hard times do not last, I have learned, and life can get better. I finished CPE and moved on to other things, but I remember that bad night. In a quote I love, Philo of Alexandria says, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” They could be young or old, poor or rich, but they are fighting a great battle. And at times the fight is so hard you can only think of how to be free of it.
Mystics are naturally independent, not only of ecclesiastical authority, but of each other. This is necessarily implied in the very idea of first-hand reception of light. While it must always constitute a strong bond of sympathy between those who recognize it in themselves and in each other, it naturally indisposes them to discipleship. They sit habitually at no man’s feet, and do not as a rule greatly care to have anyone sit at theirs. Mysticism in this sense seems naturally opposed to tradition. No true mystic would hold himself bound by the thoughts of others. He does not feel the need of them, being assured of the sufficiency and conscious of the possession of that inward guidance, whether called light, or voice, or inspiration, which must be seen, heard, felt, by each one in his own heart, or not at all.
~ Caroline Emelia Stephen
Leaders vary in ability and personality. Even with their differences, though, certain traits come together a recognizable kind of leader. I see at least three kinds: leader as motivator, manager or mystic.
Leader as motivator. This is the doer, the go-getter, the energizer. These leaders enliven rooms and excel at motivating people toward a goal. They are gregarious. They have drive, vision and an entrepreneurial spirit. They can transform organizations, if they have time and their people can sustain the change. There are pitfalls in this type of leader — they can become too controlling, or they can lose their credibility. When an organization wants to grow in size and influence, it looks for a motivational leader.
Leader as manager. These leaders are good at organizing and keeping track of details. They are meticulous, thorough, and efficient. They follow through in a timely way. Their desks are clean and orderly. They know what needs to be done and how to do it. They bring to an organization the gift of stability. The danger for managers is that leading is more than numbers and details. Leaders should enjoy being with people, and at times they must facilitate change, which is seldom orderly or efficient.
Leader as mystic. This kind of leader values the life of the mind and spirit. They care for what is under the surface of things. They love silence. They read, write and reflect. They sense the sacred in things. With their listening skills, they make good counselors. They enjoy one to one conversations and small gatherings. A problem for mystics is that their quietness can be perceived as aloofness. Their preference for the inner world can also blind them to the importance of risk and action.
No leader is wholly a motivator, manager or mystic. Like the sliding controls on a sound board, there can be a mixture of types. But most leaders lean toward one dominant style. I am a mystic. I have developed better managerial skills over time, and I have learned to motivate through thoughts and ideas. But I will always have a mystical bent.
When criticized, our instinct is to defend, explain or justify ourselves, which Russell Bishop combines to form the word dexify.
I have learned that when I feel the need to dexify myself, some part of me is almost always of the opinion that they must be right and I must be wrong. The defending, explaining and justifying never seems to change anything and, instead, tends to anchor me more deeply in the issue that needs to be addressed…
The next time you find yourself under attack and are about to resort to dexification… look inside yourself to your own reactions. If… you find yourself in reaction mode, consider that there might be a kernel of truth here for you, perhaps an entire bushel-full. If there is something there, then draw a bit more on that source of heartfelt wisdom and dive into the question even further, perhaps saying something like, “That’s very interesting. Can you say some more about what you see or how you see this playing out in my behavior?”
I know that for many this seems somewhere between silly and incomprehensible. Why on earth would you invite even more criticism, especially in an area where you might already feel uncomfortable?
It’s simple, really. You just might learn something that will liberate you.
Not bad advice, really, although it would take a strong sense of self to act on it. Ben Franklin said, “The sting of a rebuke is the truth of it.” We shouldn’t be afraid of the truth about ourselves.
Oxford evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar says up to 150.
Put simply, our minds are not designed to allow us to have more than a very limited number of people in our social world. The emotional and psychological investments that a close relationship requires are considerable, and the emotional capital we have available is limited.
Indeed, no matter what Facebook allows us to do, I have found that most of us can maintain only around 150 meaningful relationships, online and off — what has become known as Dunbar’s number. Yes, you can “friend” 500, 1,000, even 5,000 people with your Facebook page, but all save the core 150 are mere voyeurs looking into your daily life.
Dunbar also notes we will devote 40 percent of our ‘emotional capital’ each week to our five most important relationships.
I brought communion to two old women who live in this 12 story building. One lost her eyesight from macular degeneration, and the other her right leg from diabetes. Each lives alone in a spare apartment with off-white walls, adding to the sense of loss in their lives. Each woman cried as she took a tiny plastic cup and a bit of white bread. At a care facility later in the afternoon, I sat with a man in his 90s as his wife told him his sister had died. He took the loss with a stoic spirit. And the day began and ended in a critical care room at the hospital, with a woman who feared the loss of her husband. By evening the losses and potential losses from the day had collected in me and made me feel sad. A night’s sleep helped me feel better the next morning.
I need to know more about the psychology of grief, so I have put this book on my reading list. Much of my pastoral care happens with the aged, who among all the ages of life are most vulnerable to loss — loss of health, loss of family members, loss of home, loss of mind. When I am with them, it feels as though I am looking at images of my future. And I am trying to understand what Jesus meant when he said, “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Mourning does not appear positive, but Jesus saw a blessedness in loss because of the availability of divine comfort. This seems strange to me, but then gospel values often do.
Perla Cruz cries at a funeral mass for Rigoberto Ruelas, an elementary teacher. He ranked below average in a teacher rating system, and after a newspaper published his score, he went into the woods and took his own life. Students and parents considered him an exceptional teacher. With other stories in the news, his death leaves behind hard questions about suicide.
“There’s almost always an underlying illness associated with suicide,” [psychologist Kita] Curry said. “Depression, anxiety, substance abuse… issues we don’t like to talk about. People are uncomfortable getting help. Their suffering increases, they feel hopeless, they have trouble coping with life’s stresses .… They reach a point where they’re not thinking clearly, and they don’t see any other way out,” she said.
Sometimes there is a tipping point. “People take their lives because suddenly they’re going to lose their house or they’ve been arrested or their wife has left them,” Curry said. “But if not for that, it would have been something else. Because the real problem is that they don’t have the emotional resources to deal with it. There are others dealing with those same problems and they don’t take their lives.”
One resource against unfairness in life is the ancient practice of Stoicism. A key tenet of Stoicism rises out of simple logic: it is easier to change myself than to change the world. Stoics tell me to focus on what I control — my attitudes and actions — rather than on circumstances outside of my control. However potent outside forces seem, they have no power to alter my basic identity. In particular, Stoicism teaches me to disregard the negative things others do or say because these are not in my power. With practice Stoic habits of mind can become a powerful inner resource against the temptation to anger and despair.
The photo shows an icon of Christ the Teacher, his right hand raised in blessing. Early followers of Christ mixed Stoic ideals into a Christian philosophy. St Paul spoke as a Stoic Christian when he said, “I know what it is to be poor or to have plenty, and I have lived under all kinds of conditions. I know what it means to be full or to be hungry, to have too much or too little. Christ gives me the strength to face anything.” (Phil 4:12-13 CEV)
(Photo by Robert Gauthier, Los Angeles Times)
Tim Stafford offers advice on choosing a therapist. One of the least asked questions, he says, is whether the person is directive or non-directive. Will they offer advice and tell you what to do, or will they only listen and empathize. Depending on the issues we are dealing with in our lives, we may want empathy or we may want specific advice. It seems to me the best therapists will do both. They will listen deeply to our lives, and they will offer strategies on how we can cope and thrive.
His comments made me think about my pastoral style. In short, I tend to be non-directive. I listen, but I am not quick to tell people what to do. I rarely offer unsolicited advice, and when advice is asked, I am slow and cautious in giving it, usually because I don’t know what to say. In general I am simply uncomfortable telling others what to do.
I think this quality in me has driven a few parishioners crazy. I remember well a committee meeting years ago in another church. A parishioner looked at me in red-faced fury and blurted, “But who’s in charge of the church?!” I wanted to respond, “Jesus Christ is the head of the church,” but this man didn’t care about that. He wanted me to be a Type-A driven person like him and push the church in a direction he wanted it to go. He didn’t think I was much of a leader. But I have never and will never be the kind of leader he wanted.
Other parishioners have seen me as a leader, and this is always surprising. One day in my current church, a man commended me for my leadership of our praise service, a more casual worship time we offer to compliment our traditional service. His comment surprised me and made me realize I have been a leader of that service, although it seems a sort of halting, bumbling leader, not quite knowing what to do. But I’ve stuck with our praise service and done everything possible to support the leaders of the praise band. I love the music they make.
I envision myself as a thought leader. I sow ideas through sermons, writing and conversation, with the hope that these seeds will take root in people’s lives. I want my parishioners to follow Christ, not me, and to pursue a ministry Christ has chosen for them. When they discover that call, I draw alongside of them and encourage them in their work for Christ. To borrow an idea, I don’t see myself as a shepherd — a traditional image for pastors — but as a sheepdog who moves along with the sheep and keeps them close to the shepherd.
The question for me today is this, do I need to bark a bit more in my role as a sheepdog? Probably. But I’ll bark quietly.
Our nine-member church staff took part in a team building exercise last week. Among other things, we took the DARE test together and compared results. DARE is a psychological inventory that measures personality in four categories:
Drivers move people and projects along. Analytics think about things. Relators love harmony. Expressives make friends easily. The test had 50 questions. You end up with a number in each of the categories, all of which add up to 50 if you do the math right.
My results were D-2, A-9, R-31, and E-8. I had the highest and lowest numbers among our staff — my personality is the least balanced among the four tendencies.
I am strongly a Relator. We’re the dependable ones, the mediators, the good listeners. We’re the dove that brings peace, or the oil that keeps the machine running smoothly. Our weaknesses include being hesitant and shy.
The test showed me why I’ve always struggled at organizing programs — with such a low Driver score, this isn’t a gift of mine. But I’m great at pastoral visits. Relators excel at support and encouragement. My church would do well to divest me of all program planning and make me a minister of visitation. But that’s not likely to happen. My test result also reminded me that I will always be a bland blogger. Blogging thrives on fire and controversy. But as a relator, I shy away from hot topics and avoid giving offense.
Although I wish there were more Driver in me, I am content with who God has made me to be. Contentment is another characteristic of relators. It’s also a key part of the meekness appropriate to the gospel.
“What do you think she’s afraid of?” We were sitting at Mario’s Mexican Restaurant discussing a mutual acquaintance. It took time and reflection to answer the question. I looked at the person’s behavior and then identified the fear that prompts it. Naturally, then, I began to wonder, “What am I afraid of?” How do my fears influence my behavior?
And I’ve located my chief fear, or at least a principal one. I’m not thinking of rational, normal fears. I am afraid of jumping off a three-story building, as any sane person would be. No, I’m looking at the irrational fears, buried deep in our psyches, that hinder us from being who we might be.
I am afraid of being an intruder. I fear being in a place where I am unwanted, where I don’t belong. It took time to unearth the fear, but there it is. I had to watch my behavior and work backwards. If someone is afraid of making a mistake, they may micromanage details. Or if someone is afraid of being overlooked, of not being noticed, they will insert themselves into situations in ways that attract attention — they unconsciously bend the focus of things to themselves, like a child saying “look at me.” But if your fear is being an intruder, as mine is, you shrink back from encounters. You are reluctant to remain where there is a possibility, however slight, that you do not belong. If you are in the presence of other people, you may leave too soon so as not to overstay your welcome.
When I was born, my parents were married to other people. I am the product of an extra-marital affair. It was a complicated, messy thing, especially for its time in the early 1960s. So I entered the world literally as an intruder, with no settled place to belong. I wonder if this identity seeped into me in my earliest years — years they say are the most formative for us. Please forgive my attempt here to psychologize myself. But identifying the origin of fears helps drain them of their power and mystery.
This fear of being an intruder can hinder my work as a pastor. It deprives others of the benefit of my presence and perspective. The only way I can think of to counter it is to meditate on 2 Timothy 1:6-7. “I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”
Divine love is incessantly restless until it turns all woundedness into strength, all deformity into beauty, all embarrassment into laughter. The Solace of Fierce Landscapes
I am embarrassed of myself, embarrassed to be myself. It has always been so with me, or at least as long as I can remember, and I do not know why. I wish I were not embarrassed to be myself. Other people appear confident and self-assured, but I am not. I am like the sand that sifts out from the top of the hourglass. I am most happy when least aware of myself.
Fourteen years ago I spent a week at Ghost Ranch, a retreat center in the mountains of northern New Mexico. I sat each day at a table and learned calligraphy. Wholly absorbed in dipping my pen in the ink and making letters, I forgot myself for long stretches of time. I was as unself-conscious as the Pedernal Mountain in the distance. Embarrassment left me at Ghost Ranch, but it returned when I went home. I still have blips of this unself-awareness in my ordinary life, when engaged in a creative art or staring at the beauty of nature. If only I could carry that frame of mind with me always.
I am grateful today that Divine Love seeks to change me and turn all my embarrassment into laughter. I hope in heaven Love will smile at me and make me laugh at my own silliness.
