Wondering Wednesdays – early grief

I mentioned a while back I was reading Mary-Frances O’Connor’s The Grieving Brain. I have now finished it and am recommending it in lots of places! The grief she writes about in the book is the loss of a parent but it describes well my early experiences of a different sort of loss that hurt me immensely… She writes:

In the early days of my panicky grief, I did not have the presence of mind to do much at all, let alone learn to change the focus of my awareness. In fact, I kept a note taped to my kitchen cupboard that read, “Cook. Clean. Work. Play.” It served two purposes. The note was an intention for what I thought I could actually accomplish during a day, minimal as it seemed. In the moment I found myself overwhelmed or dazed, I could return to this simple list to tell me what to do next. On the days that I did accomplish any aspect of all four goals, I was reminded that this was enough – it had been a good day. Just to be clear, this was normal, typical, average grief I was experiencing, not complicated grief. It took months to remake my life into something I lived fully, and in some ways, it is still a work in progress. In the long term, finding a way to spend more time in the present moment helped me to figure out what that life was like now, and when I knew what life in the present really felt like, I could choose how to spend it (p170-171).

I find this very helpful and life-giving as I think about loss and bereavement, very aware that there is more to come… My overwhelming takeaway is be kind to myself in such seasons and don’t expect too much. I can slip into imagining I can do all I used to be able to do when I was young and life was simple and COVID hadn’t happened. I can’t, my energy is different now and I am more mindful of how and where I use it.

Musing Allowed: acting differently in bereavement

This was an impromptu activity in our bereaved siblings session at our children’s hospital annual memorial service. Yes, colouring holding pens with feet.

Wendy and the team had organised some wonderful activities and this paper was the table cover. When they had finished decorating the frames, a challenge went out of being and thinking differently about what we can do and not do, one of the team suggested this activity.

Living with bereavement feels clumsy, awkward, odd, unusual and unnatural. For those without arms, it is their normal. One has to adapt, amend lifestyles to cope with loss, we don’t have a choice really if you think about it. We could stay stuck but this is rarely a completely static time.

Like the children today, we can rise to the challenge of learning a new skill, reluctantly yes, odd definitely but needful. Sometimes even fun and silly.

So let’s be kind with each other when it is clunky.

Friday photo – dipping my toes in!

Sally paddling at St Ives

On Saturday I went paddling.  You can tell by my fleece that it wasn’t as warm as it might look!

I got beyond dipping my toe in to half way up my calves!  This next week I am dipping my toe into some art journaling.  There is a free week long online course which a friend alerted me to.  It is an area I have dipped my toe into before but want to go deeper.  I am not always great at following through on such things but blogging about it makes me feel more accountable.

Maybe next Friday’s photo will be something I have created!

Wondering Wednesdays – I hope you know

Morgan Harper Nichols writes

I hope you know it is okay to have moments when you do not know what to say. I hope you know in the arms of Love, you have nothing to be ashamed of, even when the questions you are asking have no easy answers. I hope you know you are heard, in the wildest, roaring waves.

I love the image of God as the Arms of love and when I go to Buckfast Abbey and see the image of Jesus in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament (see Paul’s blog on Sunday), those are the arms of love too which I imagine holding me.

What I hope you know sentence might you write?

Musing Aloud: Can our God be too big?

How many Jesus’s can you see?

If you look very careful you can see a crucifix at the front of the picture. It is on the altar in front of the stain glass window.   Admittedly, it is not a clear photo to see it, but never the less, it is easily missed in comparison to the image of Jesus that is the size of the side of a house.

It got me reflecting, can our God be too big? Where my mind and spirit went to is, can we credit and blame God for lots of things, occasions, tragedies even blessings that God has not initiated?

Perhaps you are asking, is my God is too small to even ask this question? Perhaps? But it seems at least as likely that we project God on to everything that happens, because we assess, that God wants, desires, wills it to happen according to the mysterious will and purposes.

My God is that big that some of that is possible, but also my God is a God of the small things, the shadows, the background as well as the foreground, seemingly eclipsed by the hugeness of the situation. A God with otherness values.

Yes, we have a multi omni God, but that doesn’t mean God is sometimes restrained to greater principles to be found quietly weeping on the margins, whispering, “what the Hell?”

Friday photo – succour for my soul

I love this picture so much. It contains so much succour for my soul. Sea pinks or thrift are one of my favourite flowers. They flourish at the coastal edge and bring welcome colour as spring edges towards summer. St George’s Island is a magical place for me, two sisters, Babs and Evelyn Atkins, bought it in my lifetime – it helps me to remember to dream and to wonder if a crazy idea might be God and actually happen! We come here regularly, walk along the prom, eat or drink at Hannafore Kiosk, wander along a little further to visit the ruined Celtic chapel. It is a place we don’t tire of, one which provides succour for our souls…a place of rest and recreation. Where are those places for you?

Wondering Wednesdays – going before

On Monday I was leading a retreat day, in a new venue, with a group where I only knew two of the people. I was exploring spiritual health, using that term to mean our relationship with God, self, others and creation. I drew on the work of Margaret Silf in Soul Journeys (along with two psalms and the work of Morgan Harper Nichols) and she writes this about the angel’s words to the women after the resurrection:

The angel’s promise assures us that wherever “Galilee” is for us, the risen Christ will go there ahead of us, and we will see that power of his transformative presence in ways that we had not recognised until now (p169).

That is such a reassuring thought for me. The post resurrection narratives bring me such comfort and even on Monday I had a sense that Jesus had gone before me, Chapel House, where the retreat was held is a prayed into space. I felt a sense of peace, I experienced the Holy Spirit leading me in different ways through the day as while I had a script for my three talks, there are always excursions from it!

We may not know what the future holds but we can trust that Jesus will be there with us and that we can experience his transformative power in ways we might not be able to imagine from where we are now.

Musing Aloud: viva la multiple difference

These are the 3 actions encouraged every session as a part of Archbishop’s reconciliation course we are doing in the church. Sally and our vicar Al lead us through Navigating disagreement this morning.

Sadly, this is a discipline that seems to be rarely done well in most contexts. The course advocates the values and habits in the picture above. More of what they mean are:

Being curious. Listening to others stories and seeing the world through their eyes.

Being present. Encountering others with authenticity and confidence

Reimagining. Finding hope and opportunity in the places where we long to see change.

It is inevitable that we disagree with each other on micro and macro levels and topics. I think these practices would enable us to be more gentle, gracious and respectful with those we don’t agree with. I don’t think the Godliness criteria is that we agree with each other, but how Godly we disagree. As I don’t seem to observe many professions modelling good practices in this area, these seem to be worth a go.

Friday photo – blocked way

This is one of our favourite spring walks, a private wood with permissive paths.  There are lots of fallen trees and one day we were in the wood in high winds and there was so much creaking we decided to get out quickly!  There were plenty of fallen trees to suggest that might be wise!

We usually climb over this tree but it does get me wondering how we tell whether a blocked path is an indication to turn back or a challenge to climb over – if we have the capacity to do that. I do keep returning to the theme of discernment in my blogs and seek to recognise the moves of the Holy Spirit within me while recognising that often it is our choice what we do in such a situation.  Where is the Holy Spirit leading you today?

Wondering Wednesdays – grief and grieving

There is a difference between grief and grieving, according to Mary-Frances O’Connell. I have found this distinction helpful as I reflect back on a very significant and unexpected loss in 2020. She writes:

Obviously, grief and grieving are related, which is why the two terms have been used interchangeably when describing our period of loss. But there are key differences. You see, grief never ends, and it is a natural response to loss. You will experience pangs of grief over this specific person [or situation for me] forever. You will have discrete moments that overwhelm you, even after the death when you have restored your life to a meaningful, fulfilling experience. But, whereas you will feel the universally human emotion of grief forever, your grieving, your aspiration, changes the experience over time. The first one hundred times you have a wave of grief, you may think “I will never get through this, I cannot bear this”. The one hundred and first time, you may think, “I hate this, I don’t want this – but it is familiar, and I know I will get through this moment”. Even if the feeling of grief is the same, your relationship to the feeling changes. Feeling grief years after your loss may make you doubt whether you have really adapted. If you think of the emotion and the process of adaptation as two different things, however, then there isn’t a problem that you experience grief, even when you have been grieving for a long time (2022:xvi-xvii).

I find this very helpful personally and pastorally. I think that there are times when we are expected to get over it – whatever type of loss it is. Partly it is that people are uncomfortable around loss and grief, partly because we are uncomfortable with our own I think. We don’t always want to ask because we don’t want to upset people and sometimes the environment isn’t private enough. Other times, people are very comfortable sharing their stories and acknowledging their grief which can be 60 years or more old. Grief and grieving are natural, and I find God meets me in them. I have lots of joy and blessing in my life but that doesn’t negate the grief or mean it’s not there, I am just learning to respond in a different way to it as time goes by.

Mary-Frances O’Connor (2022) The Grieving Brain. New York: HarperOne.