Monthly Archives: December 2019

Grieving at Christmas

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Grief dominates Christmas for me this year! Sparkling decorations, joyous music, holiday parties, and upbeat festivities just don’t fit where I am.

I was a teenager the last Christmas I celebrated without Linda. That was six decades ago!   Even though she was not cognitively aware of the last five Christmases, she was still present.

I could see her! Hear her voice! Hold her hand! Kiss her forehead! Comb her hair! Feed her! Brush her teeth! Sit silently beside her and listen to her breathe.

Now she’s gone! Memories remain, but they are accompanied by sadness for what is no more.

Part of me is missing, too.  Adjusting to who I am without her means reorienting my identity, redefining my vocation,  re-ordering everyday living.

But there is a mysterious goodness in grieving at Christmastime. It’s hard to explain.

The pensiveness I feel seems to be stripping away the superficiality of the season and confronting me anew with the profundity of the Christmas story:

The infinite God, the source of all life, who brings this magnificent and ever-expanding universe into being, entered human flesh with all its frailty, vulnerability, death, and grieving. Thereby,  God has claimed all matter, including human life and death, as bearers of divine presence and love.

The ultimate meaning of our existence is to be extensions of the incarnation, birthing and nurturing God’s presence and love amid our living, grieving, and dying.

Grief is love weeping, evidence of love shared. The longing for presence, yearning for recovered memories and lived expressions are signs that love still lives and grows. Gratitude that love remains amid death and loss gives perspective to the grieving.

But Linda is no longer present for me to tangibly share love. That still hurts deeply!

Christmas speaks to that hurt, too! It doesn’t take it away, but it offers a means of redeeming the absence and hurt: I can enter the loss, grief, and longing of others!

There is comfort in solidarity with those who suffer. Some are in our families. Others are neighbors. They need a gentle embrace, a whisper of comfort, perhaps a gesture of forgiveness, a word of encouragement.

There is also comfort in extending hospitality and advocating on behalf of the vulnerable and wounded who also bear God’s image, presence, and love.

Christmas is about God coming in a helpless baby, born of a young peasant, unmarried and pregnant teenager, made homeless by a cruel governmental decree.

The Christmas stories in the New Testament proclaim God’s radical hospitality and prophetic advocacy on behalf of the powerless, despised, and vulnerable people of the world.

Grief has energy, passion! I pray that the energy and passion of my grieving will be channeled into friendship with and acts of mercy and justice on behalf of those with whom Jesus so closely identified that we meet him in them.

That’s what God wants! And, I think that is how Linda would want me to grieve her absence!

Christmas, after all, is about God entering our grief, redeeming our sorrows, and inviting us to join Emmanuel in “the least of these.”

 

 

 

Christmas: A Different Politics

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OIP7L7BFVIE“I’m tired of politics and politicians! Maybe Christmas will give us a break!” That’s a comment I overheard in the grocery store this week.

We could all use a reprieve from the rancorous partisan wrangling going on in Washington and on social media.

It seems that hate, cruelty, violence,  greed, dishonesty, deception, and disrespect have been normalized and now dominate political rhetoric and practice.

Can’t we just put politics aside–sit beside a warm fire, wrap gifts, sing “Jingle Bells,” and dream of a white Christmas?

Perhaps such an escape from the world of ideological warfare over taxes, immigration, poverty, homelessness, religious divisions, and abuse of power would help us all.

But there is a problem! Those same realities exist in the first Christmas as recounted by the Gospels. Emperor Augustus issued an executive order requiring that everyone  register to be taxed. Compliance required that everyone return to their birthplace.

A young pregnant unmarried peasant girl, Mary, and her fiancé, Joseph, had to travel to a remote hamlet. Unable to find housing, they lodged in a barn.

There in the darkness of the night, surrounded by farm animals, Mary gave birth to a son, without the aid of medical care. She wrapped him in a common cloth and placed him in a cattle trough.

Rumors circulated that this child of Mary and Joseph, Jesus, was the Messiah, God’s anointed, from the lineage of mighty King David.

Threatened by a potential rival, King Herod ordered the slaughter of all males under age two. To escape the violence in their home country, Mary and Joseph became immigrants in Egypt.

So, as recounted by Luke and Matthew, the first Christmas was a political event! God entered the messy, divisive, violent world of worldly politics.

Politics is about power, its definition and use. Christmas is about God’s politics, God’s definition and exercise of power.

Here are the  images of God’s power:

  • a baby born among the homeless,
  • an immigrant child escaping violence,
  • a carpenter/preacher speaking truth to prevailing religious and political power,
  • a compassionate healer of the sick who welcomes outcasts,
  • the crucified Jesus extending forgiveness to thieves and a violent mob,
  • the Risen Christ, still bearing the scars of crucifixion,
  • the Living Christ present in the longing for wholeness, justice, and peace.

The answer to our current politics of destruction and dysfunction is God’s Christmas politics of compassion and justice. We most properly celebrate  by

acts of mercy and justice toward the poor, vulnerable, and powerless

welcoming the outcasts and strangers

caring for the sick and frail

comforting the grieving and dying

 visiting the imprisoned and lonely

practicing forgiveness in a culture of vengeance

living and demanding honesty and integrity

trusting the power of love over coercion and domination

cultivating confidence in the ultimate triumphant of God’s love!

God’s Christmas politics WILL win!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lessons from Seminary Class on Dementia

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December 5 was the concluding session of “Dementia through a Pastoral Lens” which I teach at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.  It was an eventful and poignant time as students shared evaluations and insights from their fourteen weeks of academic challenges and personal engagement with people living with dementia.

I asked, “Name an insight or formational experience you will take from this course.” Among the responses are the following:

  • We can’t think our way to God; God comes to us in experiences of love.
  • “I became more patient.” Discipleship requires slowing down, being fully present in the moment.
  • Ministry means presence more than doing.  We aren’t problem solvers; we are mediators of grace.
  • People with dementia are full members of the church and not mere objects of charitable ministry. They are no less faithful disciples than we are.
  • Human identity and worth do not lie in capacities, intellectual or otherwise, but God’s claim upon us and our relationships in community.
  • People lose their memories only if they lose community, for memory is held in community, not simply in our brains.
  • The presence of the weak and vulnerable are essential for the church to be the body of Christ and faithful to its nature and mission.
  • The vulnerable belong at the center of the church’s life and mission and not on the margins. Jesus shifted the margins with the outsiders becoming the insiders.
  • Baptismal vows to support and nurture one another have no expiration date. The covenant extends into our frail years!
  • Theology is lived more than thought.
  • People with dementia teach us more than we teach or serve them.
  • To love and be loved is to know God, whether we can cognitively comprehend or verbally articulate thoughts about God.

During a “commissioning”the students assumed the following vows:

Will you be intentional in ministering with people affected by dementia, especially those with the disease, their loved ones, and those who care for them?

I will, with God’s help

Will you be present with people with dementia, learn their stories, receive their gifts, and enter their worlds?

With God’s help, I will seek to be an extension of the Incarnation

Will you relate to each person with dementia as a unique, precious child of God, made in the divine image, whose personhood and worth are in their identity in Christ?

By God’s grace, I will relate to each person with dignity, respect, and love as a brother or sister in Christ.

Will you honor the persons with dementia as fellow disciples and nurture their ministries with support, guidance, and access to the means of grace, including the Sacraments?

With the guidance and presence of the Holy Spirit, I will honor them as colleagues in Christ’s ministry and among the priesthood of all believers.

Will you seek to form congregations in which people with dementia and their families truly belong as equal participants and members of the body of Christ?
With God’s help, I will seek to order the life of the congregation to be the body of Christ, reflecting the unconditional love of Christ for ALL people.

The students received special stoles provided by Lynda Everman and Don Wendorf who have developed the marvelous “stole ministry” as outlined in the book, Stolen Memories.

 

This book can be ordered on Amazon; 100% of sales support the work of the network, ClergyAgainstAlzheimer’s (order here).