“Grief isn't like making jello,” a dear friend of mine has said. We can't just add water, stir and wait while it gels. There is no recipe for getting over grief, no handy maps to follow. And yet, through the ages people have learned to live with loss and grief. There must be a sacred rhythm, something that is passed on through our DNA, something that our souls know, that can guide us when we can't figure out how to manage on our own. These rhythms are the stuff of religion. If Unitarian Universalism is indeed a religion for our time, it must have something to offer us when we need this kind of help.
As always here, we are not handed answers to our questions about death, or life after it. Even if we were, we'd still have to figure out how to carry on with our own lives after someone else's death.
At its core, religion helps us to make a way out of no way. Like music, poetry and myth, religion speaks the language of the soul. It speaks in a way that makes heart-sense, even when to our minds things make no sense. The music in our worship services offers the heart a path by which to open and to find comfort and healing along the way. The poetic lyrics in the songs stir images in the mind, images that contain within them full stories, filled with many emotions. The realm of religion beckons us when the surface world can't provide the space or depth to guide us safely through the waters of grief.
Navigating these waters is rarely a graceful passage. And it is not a passage in which a final destination is ever reached. We strive to move forward in this process that is not about progress in a straight line. In our everyday world we are used to measuring success by levels of advancement. Grief is a “dance we do,” in which at times we fear we might spin too fast and not be able to catch our breath.
In our chalice lighting, Heather tells us how, over and over, she asked, “What am I going to do?” until she began to find some bearings in daily chores. Her mother helped her along the way, by writing notes reminding her of small steps she could take to keep functioning. Reminding her that no one is alone.
Spiritual traditions through time have given us rituals through which to retreat, for a time, from the world. Through meditation, pilgrimage, prayer of all sorts, we can follow the ways of those who have gone before us on their own soul journeys. How healing ceremonies around loss can be; when we gather with others with whom we're united by love of the same person. Together we recollect and celebrate life and love. Such ceremonies carve out time in which we can revisit what has been meaningful in our relationships. Ritual holds us in the rhythm of the ages, connecting us with our deeper selves and with the soul of the world. We are not alone.
Initially after a loss, we are often given time to be sad. But, as time passes the expectation to resume normal life may creep in, even though normal will never exist in the same way again. Buddhist nun, Lama Shenpen, has written, “It is in thinking that we should be feeling something other than what we are feeling that makes things so difficult.” We go on functioning, or at least trying to, sometimes without a place or a way in which to express our grief, so we may try to think ourselves into feeling something different.
In our Unitarian Universalist culture, we don't so often have ritualized ways of showing anger and anguish, of lamenting. The poets of the Hebrew bible knew of the soul's lament. There we are told, “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more.” This is such raw grief, it can be easier to turn away from the intensity. Yet, perhaps it is in the expression of the depth of suffering, that we can seek hope.
Hope speaks of the future. It promises that life will not always be as hard. It straddles both sorrow and joy, knowing that they are intertwined. Hope promises that this fear, this grief, will burn away, or at least not scorch with such fierceness. In the realm of the sacred, there is room for both pain and hope, at the same time. We do not have to leave one at the door and pretend to feel differently than we do. In this realm we can slowly, bit by bit, look at grief, while being held in the promise that we will not be overwhelmed by it. Hope admits pain, and at the same time, it trusts that things will get better.
Hopefully, we find this renewed faith for what will come, although it will be a future that will be unalterably different that we had previously envisioned. The death of someone we loved is also the loss of our future story. We pictured life colored by the dreams we had painted together with someone who is no longer here to share that vision with us. We mourn our loss of the way we had hoped to live, and of the person we had hoped to become.
Ways of living that help give shape to our lives are not about staying the same. In humanism, we believe in the power of people to make a difference in the world; Pagans among us bring an intimate sense of the sacred to the cycles of life. Religion guides us along the path of transformation.
In living with grief which will not leave us completely, we learn that we can no longer be the person we thought we were. Even the most independent among us builds some degree of identity through relationships. When those relationships alter, we too are changed. As we move forward in time, we do so with a changed way of looking at the world. We are called towards transformation. It is so often the human way to resist heartily such change. Yet, some who have tasted this transformation say it is the gift of grief.
Like religion, myths teach us about ourselves by revealing human nature in general. Myths arise from the sacred places in which the soul resides. The place where faith and grief speak with one another, is also the place of myth.
In the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, we find wisdom that speaks of grief. Psyche mourns the death of her beloved, Cupid. Along the way, she finds help in doing tasks that she cannot manage on her own. She learns the value of waiting until the fierceness of grief subsides for a moment. She faces what is overwhelming, but help and hope come from the memory of her loved one, as she feels his presence.
Here is this myth of love and grief, as told in word and music:
The maiden, Psyche, was beautiful and joyful, and unbeknownst to her she drew the love of the god, Cupid. Sight unseen, his power engendered within her a mighty love.
By a cruel twist of fate, they could spend time together only under cover of night. Psyche had never seen her partner after daybreak. Becoming curios, Psyche risked angering the goddesses. She lit a lamp and looked upon her lover's face. As punishment for this, Psyche was separated from Cupid forever. He was as one dead.
In her grief, Psyche wandered day and night, without food or rest, yearning for her beloved. In her journey, she came upon the angry goddess, Venus, who ordered Psyche to complete the overwhelming task of separating a whole roomful of different grains into separate piles. Although accustomed to difficult household chores, in her grief this was unbearable.
WHEN I AM FRIGHTENED
A colony of ants took compassion for the grieving Psyche, completing the work of separating the many different grains for her, and they disappeared by morning.
Jealous Venus set Psyche on another impossible task- to take the golden fleece from a heard of fierce sheep. Nearby water reeds felt her tears, and whispered that she should wait until the rams had fallen asleep, so that she may collect the wool in safety.
Venus, again displeased, bade Psyche go to the underworld, and boldly ask the goddess there to give some of her beauty to Venus, warning Psyche not to steal some for herself.
As such tales go, Psyche could not resist. However, she found not beauty, but a sleep so strong that it grabbed her tight that it might imprison her forever. Cupid, who had been searching for his lost love, found her. He blew away the fog of sleep. As she awoke, she could sense his presence in the wind. She knew his love remained.
BREATHS