This year for Mother’s Day, give the gift of … listening

May 3, 2013 by

Questions
Left Unasked;
Stories
Left Untold

By BOBBIE LEWIS

My 7th-grade cooking teacher admonished us, “Get those recipes from grandmother, girls; she could be dead tomorrow!”

We laughed.

Now I understand what she was talking about. A few months ago, I realized I had outlived my mother. She was only 63 when she died. That didn’t seem so young at the time, 28 years ago. Now I know she left us way too soon. I think about her often, but especially on her yahrtzeit, the anniversary of her death. On the Jewish calendar, it is the 11th of Iyar, which this year is April 21. The year she died, it was May 13, which was also Mother’s Day.

My mother and I didn’t have a particularly chummy relationship when I was growing up. As the oldest of three children, I was the trouble-maker, the rebel, the big mouth. It seemed we were always at odds. Things improved after I left for college and then when I married at 23. In many ways, my experience echoed that of Mark Twain, who wrote, “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

Despite the friction, my mother and I were always close in the sense that I never failed to let my parents know what I was doing. In the pre-Internet and cellphone days, when making or receiving a long-distance call was an event, that meant writing actual letters several times a week from summer camp and from college. In return, I would get regular letters from home.

My mother was a great storyteller, but she was very matter-of-fact about the stories she told. “My mother died when I was 6,” she said, of rectal cancer. As children, we just accepted this. Only when it was too late—when she was gone, and my own children grew to be 6 and older—did I want to ask her the important questions: How did you feel when your mother died? What do you remember about your mother? What did you miss about not having a mother?

Her father remarried when Mom was 12, and she always called her stepmother, my grandma, “Mama.” So I never asked her: How did you feel when your father remarried? Was it hard to get used to a new mother? How did your older sister—the one who taught you everything a young girl needed to know when you were growing up—feel about a new woman in the house?

She must have wanted to ask her own mother similar questions. Mom often told us how her father had left Poland for America months before the rest of the family. Before my grandmother joined him, her oldest daughter, 8, died of scarlet fever—and my mother was born. How did her mother bear it? How did she find the courage to tell her husband, when they were reunited, “We lost one, but look, I’ve brought you another one”?

We hear our parents’ stories so often we become bored by them. They become so much a part of us that we don’t think to ask about the missing details, which we might ask of any stranger telling the same tale. Only when they’re gone do we realize how much we forgot to ask.

.

Bobbie Lewis is a veteran writer, editor and communication consultant. Her website is www.write4results.com; she has a recipe blog: www.bobbiesbestrecipes.wordpress.com. This summer, Bobbie will become a more regular contributor to ReadTheSpirit—watch for her columns in June.

Lenten Journey: Past Easter, Jesus waits … with breakfast

April 1, 2013 by

This entry is part 8 of 8 in the series Lenten Journeys

By the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Pratt

Every year, as I walk the Lenten pilgrimage I am reminded of breakfasts prepared over charcoal in a remote farm community in Cuba where our United Methodist Volunteers in Mission Team was working along side our Cuban brothers and sisters to build a retreat facility for the emerging Cuban Methodist Church. It was in that setting that my hungry, empty soul was filled as if by Jesus who also prepared a breakfast over a charcoal fire for his despairing disciples. I am deeply grateful for the compassion from a community filled with Grace who fed my soul.
Gracias Senor!

In the early 1990s, Jesse Jackson personally confronted Fidel Castro with his abuse of Christians. Castro publicly apologized opening the doors for suppressed faith groups to come out of hiding and grow. By 1998, the time of my first trip, the Cuban Methodist Church had grown from 2,000 to more than30,000. Other Christian denominations and Jewish communities have grown at great speed. Within the last year, the Cuban government has asked our UMVIM teams, which have averaged one team a month, to come more often.

Perhaps the rapid growth is because their faith was a light the darkness could not overcome, an underground light much like a smoldering fire that lingers unnoticed until the firefighters have left the scene, whereupon it erupts into flames.

It is a strange irony that Genesis begins with darkness and the last of the four Gospels, John, ends in darkness—Genesis1: 1-5 and John 21: 1-14. Genesis tells us that before darkness there had never been anything other than darkness; it covered the face of the deep. At the end of the Gospel of John, the disciples go out fishing on the sea of Tiberias in the dark night! They have no luck. Their nets are empty. Then they spot somebody standing on the beach. They don’t see who it is in the darkness. It is Jesus.

All it took to break the darkness of Genesis was God’s word, “Let there be Light!” Amazing—beyond our imagination! But the darkness of John is broken by the flicker of a charcoal fire in the sand. Jesus has built a charcoal fire and he is cooking fish for his old friends. Breakfast! The sun is rising. All that we need to know about overcoming our own darkness may be found in those two scenes.

The original creation of light is so extraordinary that most of us cannot fathom it. Breakfast cooking on the beach is the opposite. It is so ordinary that we are prone to ignore it.

God’s creation of Light to overcome the darkness is not what pulls most of us to faith. It is too exceptional. So, a small spark was lit to draw us. Jesus sheltered a spark with his cupped hands and blew on it to make enough fire for a breakfast. Very few of us will come to God because of our interest in creation. We are much more likely to come because of the empty feeling in our hearts and stomachs.

Nearly every morning while working in Camp Canaan in Miller, Cuba, I was reminded of these scriptures. We awoke in the pale early morning light before the sun arose. Then, like the dawn of creation, the rising sun filled the sky with a golden ball of fire. As we watched the sunrise, the smell of breakfast being cooked over an open charcoal fire drew us toward the morning table.

I wasn’t sure why I went to Cuba. I felt called to go but it was a call I resisted. It scared me. It was out of my comfort zone. I couldn’t even speak Spanish! I responded to a pilgrimage I needed to take. I went to attempt to heal something in my hungry, empty soul. I hoped and prayed that if I loved and served in a new way my hungry, empty soul might be filled. Every morning two women cupped their hands and blew on a spark to start a charcoal fire for preparing breakfast. It was the love and compassion of colleagues in a grace filled community, eating breakfast together, working for others who loved us in return that filled the dark empty place in my soul. They loved me. I loved them. We worked in community, and Jesus brought light into the darkness of our lives and the lives of those we served. God healed my hungry, empty soul through the ones I went to serve—with charcoal, a compassionate community filled with Grace, in Cuba.

GRACIAS SENOR!

Originally posted at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

This column also was posted at the website for the Day1 radio network.

Passover 2013: Eliminating—and Welcoming—Bread

March 24, 2013 by

By Lynne Meredith Golodner

THIS PASSOVER comes at such an interesting time. Just days before my new book about bread debuts, I am emptying my cupboards of anything leavened.

This year, as my collaborative book The Flavors of Faith: Holy Breads, is published by ReadTheSpirit Books, I am more in the mindset than ever before about the significance and symbolism of bread to elevate our lives or plunge us into the depths of despair.

I used to feather-dust under and inside my cupboards, ferreting out any last crumbs before the arrival of the Passover holiday. In my more religious days, we spent weeks cleaning, emptying freezers and cupboards and ridding our lives of the arrogance represented by leavened foods for an eight-day holiday that transformed our perspective.

I don’t do that anymore.

While I am no longer rigidly religious, I am intensely spiritual in a more universally accepting and enlightened way than ever before. And after spending the last two years creating Holy Breads, I am more aware than ever about how we make the simple sustaining presence of bread something magical, mystical or mythical in our spiritual lives every day.

Passover is the Jewish holiday that commemorates the Jews’ Exodus from Egypt millennia ago. Every year, we are commanded to retell the story around our beautiful tables and feel as if we ourselves had fled slavery under the harsh rule of Pharoah. We are to sit on pillows to remind us that we are free. We are to clear out any crumbs from our homes and eat only approved foods for a week.

The night before the holiday, we hide several pieces of bread throughout the house and by candlelight, have the children look for them, so we can finally and poetically burn the last pieces of leaven before commencing the holiday.

Holidays are as much about religious revelation and reverence as they are about family connection. Last week, I pulled out the yellowed, crisp piece of lined paper on which I wrote my grandmother’s chicken soup recipe more than 15 years ago. The blue ink is smeared in places where drops of water tainted the writing.

I’ve made my big pot of Grandma’s chicken soup, flavored with dill so I know it is hers. I can almost hear my grandfather’s voice as he breaks the middle matzah, or Afikoman, to place under his pillow at the head of the table and entice the children to steal it and hide it. Somewhere in my closet, I have squirreled away the silver dollars I received every year when negotiating the return of this precious symbolic “dessert” so we could end the Seder meal.

‘Part of Something Bigger’

My connections to identity and legacy come through the holiday table. While I cannot quite feel like I was a slave in the desert, I can relate to some of the commentaries in the collection of Haggadahs that we use in my house every Passover. When I read about equating the slavery of Egypt to ways we enslave ourselves today (think: iPhone, workplace, our over-burdened schedules), I come close.

But the greatest lesson I take from these holidays is that I am part of something bigger, a community, a mindset, a belief system that is universal in its desire to spread peace through the world.

I can’t even say it’s ironic that my debut book on how bread is symbolic and significant in many faith communities comes back from the printer in the midst of the one holiday of the year when we Jews don’t eat, touch or look at bread.

For one week, we rid our homes, our bellies and our thoughts of the rising in a food we take for granted year round. It is a food that represents simultaneously holiness and extravagance, dependence and redemption, and one that brings with it the sustenance of life, the bare minimum we need to sustain our bodies.

What bread symbolizes is the most basic sustenance and the extravagance with which we feed ourselves every day. It seems so easy to spend a week without this most basic of foods. A week. Eight days. There are so many other foods to eat.

But what it becomes for so many is a burden and an ache. The focus is not on the freedom of doing without but the prison of restriction.

I don’t live that way. Long ago, I gave myself permission to observe what is meaningful to me and leave what is not. That is the lesson of spirituality – it is a deeply personal thing, a way to live one’s life, with only the Self to answer to.

‘With less, we see more, we shine brighter.’

Recently, I hired a stylist to guide me in choosing clothing that is flattering for my body size and shape. For years, I’d walk into my packed closet, shirts pressed tightly together, so many things to choose from and no clue what to wear and what matched. I invited Jessica into my closet and let her loose.

The result was a mountain of discarded clothing that either made me look too old or too young, that didn’t fit properly or was long since out of style. Of course, I maintained veto power and there were 2 or 3 items that found their way back inside my closet.

But at the end of that day, I was left with a closet in which I could breathe. Clothes hung comfortably on the rods; one shelf lay bare. Everything I owned could be seen easily, and folded well, rather than stuffed into shelves close to overflowing. Jessica and I later went shopping, and she found pants and tops and boots for me that fit the way they should. (What a revelation that I’d been buying jeans two sizes too big!) Now, I have a greatly reduced collection of clothing to choose from—but everything I put on fits me well and I feel so good when I step outside.

Passover is a similar quest. We eliminate so much from our lives. It’s a shame that it takes a religious mandate to do a massive spring cleaning—but whatever gets us there is useful, to be sure. It’s a huge undertaking, emotionally and physically, to let go of what is not needed and a huge revelation to realize that we are just fine without all of it. Perhaps even better off.

Simplicity is a gift to treasure. With less, we see more, we shine brighter. Years ago, I hated the burden of preparing for a religious Passover—nights of cooking in my basement, using the laundry tub as a sink, and scrubbing every room of the house to rid my family of leavened products.

And then, after all the cleaning and cooking was done, I was left with the most basic of ingredients. We couldn’t use bottled salad dressings, so I whisked the juice of a lemon with olive oil, salt and pepper. We bought cases of fruit and baked apples and pears as dessert. We traded complex and manufactured for whole and simple.

I don’t mind Passover because I see it for what it is: an opportunity to slow down and focus on the meaning behind the words. An opportunity to pare down, to simplify. A time to gather together and remember our roots.

Lynne Meredith Golodner is the author of the soon-to-be-released The Flavors of Faith: Holy Breads. She blogs at www.lynnegolodner.com and owns Your People LLC (www.yourppl.com), a Michigan company that provides public relations and marketing/communications consulting services.

Lenten Journey 7: Sacred doors into Fridays, Saturdays & Sundays

March 24, 2013 by

This entry is part 6 of 8 in the series Lenten Journeys

By the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Pratt

“YOU ARE HERE!”

We’ve all read the signs. They remind us of our current pinpoint on Earth—and, if we prayerfully reflect, we realize that these are sacred truths:
We are here.
We are among the living.
We stand on a tiny spot of God’s Creation—ready to take a step.

For Christians around the world this week, that next step carries us into the three most important days of the year. So, let’s pause in our Lenten Journey. Remember where we started? I wrote these words: “Holidays are history. That’s the way most of us approach the ancient traditions and family customs that we love to repeat each year. But, the yearlong cycle of Christian holidays are much more than that. These seasons are timeless, yet they also are very clear invitations to affirm our personal journey as God’s people.”

Remember how far we have come? You may want to review the earlier parts in this series.

Now, in Holy Week, everything we have summoned in this Lenten Journey rises and converges in a kaleidoscope of life and death, hope and tragedy, community and isolation. In these final days before Easter, we pass through enormous sorrow and abandonment as we move toward the spectacular joy we proclaim as Christians. On Good Friday, Jesus was tacked to a tree—his spirit broken. Holy Saturday is a long period of waiting when, some Christian traditions say, Jesus descended into Hell. Easter brings—resurrection.

We might think of Friday as the day of “NO!” As we experience Good Fridays, life throws us against a rock, tacks us to a tree, devastates our innocence and dreams for our marriage, our country, our children, our lives. That “NO!” breaks our spirit and almost destroys our faith in the goodness of God. On such Fridays, the pain is excruciating, and it is appropriate to be angry, enraged and in deep grief.

Saturday is “I DON’T KNOW.” We move—as Jesus’s followers did 2,000 years ago—into a soft cynicism or despair. We can’t stay in Friday’s intense pain, but we haven’t reached Easter’s joy. Saturday is the janitorial day. We can’t mourn; we can’t celebrate. So, we get up and start moving through our many tasks. Grief and anger from Friday evolves into a flat, soft, lazy, cynical bitterness, a spiritual deadness. This is life without any spice, vitality or vigor. This is spiritual accidie—a term I describe in my books on Ian Fleming and on coping with the challenges of caregiving.

And, Sunday? “YES!” We yearn for Easter, when we are reborn with new directions, new possibilities. It is the day of a clean and restored heart. We are able to sing praises and live with purpose, compassion and gratitude. The Psalmist writes: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit, not a cynical spirit, not a bitter spirit. You will not reject a humble and repentant heart, O God.” (Psalm 51)

LINKS IN THIS TRIDUUM

Perhaps you can see, already, that this Lenten journey really is a cycle through which we live, over and over again, throughout our lives. The Catholic Church calls this the Easter Triduum—three inextricably linked days packed in Catholic tradition with more sacred firepower than Christmas. Bishops around the world bless all the holy oils that priests will use for 365 days until the next Triduum. The church’s mighty leaders wash the feet of the powerless, including at the central altar in the Vatican. Good Friday becomes the only day of the year without a Mass. And the liturgies for Easter? The Eastern Orthodox prayers go on for hours and hours—and hours.

In some Easter vigils, outdoor fires are lit and carried in processions. Such powerful images in these three days! My own prayers in recent years begin with images. I crave the clarity of images that reflect awe, gratitude, hospitality, compassion, fear, anxiety and hope—a vast array of feelings. These images may turn into words, some of which I record, but often I stay in the meditative clarity of the images. I often carry a camera and sometimes, I simply capture an image whole and wordless. I have given you lots of words, so let me turn to images for this most important of all periods in our journey.

PAUSE A MOMENT AT THESE THREE DOORWAYS

You may want to set aside a few minutes to read these next three paragraphs. You may want to gather up a notebook or journal to record your reflections.

A FRIDAY IMAGE: Remember the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre? Some images are burned into our collective memories: that single-file row of fleeing students and, later, the tears in President Obama’s eyes as he spoke to the nation. But, now, turn your mind’s eye toward another detail—one we all missed. As the tragedy unfolded, parents were told to report to a local fire station to pick up their children. Officials tried to bring all of the surviving students to that fire station to send them home in an orderly way. Envision a doorway—the doorway to that fire station. You are among the parents coming to take your children home. Then, you realize that all of the surviving children have been hugged and taken home. People are staring at each other, now. Weeping. Some parents are left standing. Some can no longer stand. The truth is: No more children will go home. A shocking image, isn’t it? Yet, that is what happened on Friday, December 14, 2012.

A SATURDAY IMAGE: On Saturday, January 8, 2011, U.S. Rep. Gabriel “Gabby” Giffords was shot numerous times in a Tucson shopping center. Initial news reports declared her dead, but an intern in her office, Daniel Hernandez, Jr., ministered so effectively to the severely wounded congresswoman that she was alive when she reached the hospital. During and after surgery, she was placed in a medically induced coma. She did not open her eyes for days. Imagine the doorway of her hospital room on that Saturday night: a white-wrapped body all but lifeless. It was a Saturday in which the whole nation could say only: “I don’t know.”

A SUNDAY IMAGE: Gabby Giffords has had many spectacular Easter moments over the past two years. Sunday June 22, 2011, we all saw her again—for the first time since the shooting—in two photographs she and her family released to newspapers and TV news that day. But think of another Sunday, July 31, 2011, when we all heard the news that Giffords would return to Congress the next morning! Hearts stirred in Washington and nationwide as each of us heard this news and prepared for what would unfold on that morning of Monday August 1. Focus your mind’s eye on the doorway into the U.S. House of Representatives as Giffords approached that portal. Inside, hundreds were poised to leap to their feet and applaud. In that moment at the doorway, envision the radiance of joy and purpose on her beautiful face—the resurrected image of a woman who will always live with the marks of her Friday but who lives with courage, purpose and faith in the future.

Wondering where you are this Lenten season? These three days take hold of us from that despair we all feel when we are utterly lost and scream: “No!” We have no choice but to move through those first stumbling Saturday steps—without much hope at all—admitting: “I don’t know.” And then, our faith says, we reach the “Yes!” of Easter. The Good News comes to us with that sign so clearly in our eyes again—pinpointing our sacred spot in God’s great Creation and allowing us to live again:

“YOU ARE HERE!”

May the One who called you unto life and who will call you unto death—the One who holds you Beloved and yearns that you know Eternal Life now, Bless you so that you may be an instrument of Peace, Love, Hope, Compassion and Forgiveness to all whom you encounter.
Amen.

Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

This column also was posted to the website for the Day1 radio network.

Passover, by Debra Darvick from This Jewish Life

March 21, 2013 by

Click the book cover to visit its webpage.DEBRA DARVICK is a nationally known columnist (you may have seen her stories in Good Housekeeping and other magazines) as well as an author who has just released This Jewish Life: Stories of Discovery, Connection & Joy. That book contains dozens of true stories about Jewish families as they move through a typical year. The following overview of Passover is from the introduction to that section of her book. (Learn more about Debra’s book by clicking here or on the book cover at right.)

Passover

Passover affirms the great truth that liberty is the inalienable right of every human being.
M. Joseph

By Debra Darvick

Pesach, Passover, follows Purim by a month and a day and commemorates the liberation of the People of Israel from Egyptian slavery. Outside of the High Holidays, Passover is likely the most widely observed holiday of the Jewish calendar. Celebrated for eight days—seven in Israel and by Reform Jews—Passover begins with a ritual meal called a Seder, an hours-long celebration filled with food, discussion and singing that enables Jews to fulfill the commandment to retell the story of our going out from Egypt.

The most distinguishing feature of Passover is matzah, a flat cracker that substitutes for bread during the holiday. When the People of Israel fled Egypt, there was no time to allow their dough to rise. The flattened cakes they ate come down to us as matzah. The laws of Passover dictate that prior to the beginning of the holiday, the home must be cleaned of all chametz, that is, any food that might have any leavening in it whatsoever. No bread, no noodles, no cereal or cookies. The night before the holiday begins, some families conduct a chametz search. By candlelight, children se tout with a wooden spoon and feather to collect bits of chametz that their parents have set out around the house for them to find. These last bits of chametz are set aside to be burned the following morning. Those who observe the law in the strictest sense will have in their homes only those foods that ahve been certified kosher for Passover.

On the Seder table are other foods symbolic of the Passover story—saltwater simulates the tears of the Hebrew slaves; horseradish represents the bitterness of their lives. An egg symbolizes the cycle of life; charoset, a savory mixture of wine, cinnamon, apples and walnuts, symbolizes the mortar used in construction of the Egyptian cities. Greens, called karpas, symbolize spring; a shank bone, zeroah, symbolizes the sacrifice of the Pascal lamb. Four glasses of wine are drunk, at prescribed times during the meal.

To entertain the children during the long meal, a tradition developed to hide a small piece of matzah called the afrikomen during the early part of the meal. Toward the close of the evening, all children present are invited to search for the afrikomen and then ransom it back to the head of the household.

The Passover story is told in a book called a Haggadah. Haggadot, the plural form of the word, may be simple or ornately illustrated. They have long been an art form in and of themselves; there are hundreds of Haggadot to choose from.

Lenten Journey 6: ‘Look into it.’ And, ‘Wonder.’

March 17, 2013 by

This entry is part 5 of 8 in the series Lenten Journeys

FOR LENT 2013, ReadTheSpirit has two offerings for you:

1.) DAVID CRUMM’S ‘Our Lent’ Thousands of readers have enjoyed the day-by-day book of inspiring stories, Our Lent: Things We Carry.

2.) LENTEN JOURNEY The Rev. Dr. Benjamin Pratt, author of Ian Fleming’s Seven Deadlier Sins & Guide for Caregivers is publishing a new Lenten series:
Part 1: Introduction and ‘Deep Calls to Deep’
Part 2: ‘Rituals & Practices (and Flowing Water)’
Part 3: Surprised? Or, is this an invitation to a blessing?
Part 4: Legacy of imperfection and grace.
Part 5: In death … is life.

6: Intimate Departures—
‘Look into it.’ And, ‘Wonder.’

“When Pilate learned from the centurion that Jesus was dead, he granted the body to Joseph (of Arimathea). Then Joseph brought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock.”
Mark 15: 45-6

By the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Pratt

Photograph by David Crumm.I HELPED TO DRESS my father and mother—and place them in their caskets. It was an intimate and sacred way to express my gratitude to them for their gift of life and their care of me. It was also an aide in my grief journey with each parent.

My mother died at age 63 in 1980 from a stroke following hip surgery. My last act while she was conscious was feeding her. The funeral director was more resistant to my request to participate in the burial preparation than my brother. When we arrived to assist in the process, her body was in a private viewing parlor resting on a gurney. She was respectfully clad in undergarments and a full-length slip. Our task was to assist in dressing her in a skirt, blouse and jewelry. It was a tender and emotional time for me as I thought about how she had nurtured me into life, fed, clothed and bathed me; laughed with and cried with me. Numerous memories, painful and joyful, filtered through my mind and heart. My brother and I worked quietly, sharing brief images, and then lifted her gently into her casket.

A similar process was repeated five years later with my father. Again, one of my last memories was feeding him before he slipped away. At the funeral home it was different. The director said that he had honored many requests to assist in the preparation of a body for a funeral, especially among parents who had lost children and infants. They knew how important the intimacy of departure can be when saying goodbye.

For my father, the deed was not done in the fancy parlor. We were escorted directly to the staff’s preparation workroom. Our father, wearing only boxer shorts, was laid out on a stainless steel worktable. As we dressed him my mind flashed through a kaleidoscope of scenes from life with him. Again, my brother and I worked quietly and carefully we placed him in his casket.

What led me to risk this behavior was observing some Roman Catholic brothers prepare the body of one of their own to bury him. It felt so right, so respectful, and so sacred. I wanted to extend the same to my beloved. Dying and death are part of our lives. To extend our caregiving to our deceased by participating more intimately in their departure is a sacred gift that walks with our beloved on their journey to eternity.

Most of us have moved away from the intimacy of our grief and turned the process of care and burial over to professionals. Perhaps we need to reconsider the emotional and spiritual price we pay for that exchange. Robert Frost exposes the painful aloneness of parents who bury a child in “Home Burial.” The father who had dug his child’s grave pleads with his wife: “Let me into your grief.”

Once again, some people are initiating home funerals as a way of assisting their grief process and making the life/death experience more intimate. Conversations are beginning to take place in Death Cafés, perhaps an off-putting name but certainly an idea that has enticed many to engage in conversations about end of life issues across our nation. These venues date to 2004, when sociologist Bernard Crettaz began hosting such cafés in Switzerland. Generally coordinated by hospice workers, these cafés have been spawned from California to Maine.

Not long ago, I was deeply moved when I attended a showing of the tender, respectful Japanese film, Departures, which tells the story of a cellist who loses his job when an orchestra disbands. He retreats to his hometown and winds up taking a job as an undertaker, performing the elaborate preparations of bodies after death. At first, his family is horrified. Later—well, watch the film unfold and you will appreciate the stirring conclusion.

Many cultures around the world follow such intimate traditions to this day. In American Muslim communities, among the men and women who attend prayers at each mosque there often are a handful trained in the sacred preparation of the dead for the simplicity of Muslim burial. This places an extra reminder in the gathering of a Muslim community: Someone praying next to you, shoulder to shoulder, may be the person who one day will bathe and wrap your lifeless body.

These are wonderments—profound, ancient stirrings of our faith—that we have tried so hard to hermetically seal away. America’s most famous undertaker, poet and essayist Thomas Lynch, won the American Book Award for The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade. He argues that our desire for up-beat memorial services, often with the loved one invisibly reduced to an attractive little container of ashes, rob us of one of life’s deepest spiritual truths.

In the final pages of his book, Lynch writes: “You should see it till the very end. Avoid the temptation of tidy leavetaking in a room, a cemetery chapel, at the foot of the altar. None of that. Don’t dodge it because of the weather. We’ve fished and watched football in worse conditions. It won’t take long. Go to the hole in the ground. Stand over it. Look into it. Wonder. And be cold. But stay until it’s over. Until it is done.”

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Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

This column also has been published at the website for the Day1 radio network.

Lenten Journey 5: In death … is life.

March 10, 2013 by

This entry is part 4 of 8 in the series Lenten Journeys

FOR LENT 2013, ReadTheSpirit has two offerings for you:

1.) DAVID CRUMM’S ‘Our Lent’ Thousands of readers have enjoyed the day-by-day book of inspiring stories, Our Lent: Things We Carry.

2.) LENTEN JOURNEY The Rev. Dr. Benjamin Pratt, author of Ian Fleming’s Seven Deadlier Sins & Guide for Caregivers is publishing a new Lenten series:
Part 1: Introduction and ‘Deep Calls to Deep’
Part 2: ‘Rituals & Practices (and Flowing Water)’
Part 3: Surprised? Or, is this an invitation to a blessing?
Part 4: Legacy of imperfection and grace.

5: In death … is life.

By the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Pratt

THIS MORNING I WITNESSED IT—and I cannot keep it to myself. As often as we may see this in the natural world, the experience is riveting. Some truths we do not face easily.

Something must die for us to live.

That’s a fact. An axiom. A truth of nature: In death is life. This process unfolds all around us all the time, as simple as arising each day and eating breakfast—even our cereal was once a green and thriving plant.

So, there I stand, looking out the window, pondering the new day, enjoying a squirrel grazing beneath our feeders. Plumping himself against the winter chill; munching on grains as I had. Chickadees, Sparrows, Cardinals, Wrens peck at these kernels of life that we provide in our backyard buffet. As they crowd our feeders, they scatter an overflow on the squirrel’s head. Even a Downy Woodpcker’s sweet suet bits cascade over this fortunate grazer. Bounty showering all around him, he munches in fat contentment.

Then, a flash.

The birds explode from the feeders—gone—which is what I chiefly notice, at first. Until I realize the squirrel is gone as well. Where? I did see it unfold, I realize. The hawk shot down with talons and beak poised for the strike.

Now, I see that hawk lifting him almost softly—softly to my eyes. The squirrel utters one, short, sharp, final squeak. Soaring to a broad tree limb—50 feet above the fray. I witness a meal that will steel this regal hawk against the winter chill.

The danger past, the other birds return to the feeders one by one. Soon that colorful community is restored. But I cannot turn my eyes from the tree branch. I cannot help but watch—like catching a glimpse in my mind’s eye of myself in a coffin.

We say: In death is life. We know it. But, this is a hard truth, isn’t it? I sit down and jot this prayer, which I share with you today:

O Lord, I eat flesh and I eat grains.
All die that I may live.
This is not a prayer of guilty confession;
I pray in humble thanksgiving today.
Grant me awareness to undergird my choices:
Turn my competition and violence,
Toward stewardship and compassion,
Toward justice, kindness, mercy
And thanks for the promise of life.

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Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

This column also has been posted to the website of the Day1 radio network.