Faith & Marriage: Research into marriage benefits—and costs

May 19, 2013 by

ReadTheSpirit welcomes back Ahead of the Trend columnist David Briggs. His last column was about growth in the Catholic church. Today, he writes about the economics of faith and marriage, including a researcher who asks:

‘Holy matrimony, Batman!
Why do the devout pay so much for marriage?’

By DAVID BRIGGS

The economics of relationships are shifting, and generally not in a positive way for the institution of marriage.

The recession, the rising financial independence of women and cultural shifts and technological advances that make single-parent families more acceptable and feasible are contributing to fewer people walking down the aisle.

Religious groups are not immune to these trends, but new research indicates faith is a powerful force slowing the decline.

Regular church attenders marry at higher rates, divorce at lower rates, are less likely to engage in extramarital sex and have more children than the general population, one new study found.

And highly religious individuals are most likely to hold up traditional models of marriage despite the financial costs involved, including the loss of income when one parent cares full time for children.

In a separate study, nearly half of married white women raising young children who attended religious services more than once a week were not employed. In contrast, just 29 percent of women with low to moderate levels of religious participation did not hold an outside job.

The two studies presented at the recent annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics and Culture provide insights into why people of faith are more willing to pay the high costs of marriage and raising families even in an economic downturn.

“Religious incentives play a central role in marriage decisions and should play a role in any economic model of marriage,” researcher Brian Hollar of Marymount University said in his presentation, “Holy matrimony, Batman! Why do the devout pay so much for marriage?”

The marriage benefit

There are unhappy and abusive unions, but research has indicated numerous benefits associated with married life. Married people, in general, live longer, are happier, have better mental health and are less likely to suffer from long-term illnesses or disabilities, studies have found.

Religious communities also may serve to “sanctify” marriages, endowing them with transcendent significance that can encourage couples to see their relationship in a favorable light, said researchers Frank Fincham of Florida State University and Steven Beach of the University of Georgia.

“Likewise, spiritual activities such as prayer may encourage greater focus on sustaining relationships and so increase positive behaviors in the relationship or enhance forgiveness or commitment,” they wrote in an article reviewing research on marriage in the Journal of Marriage and Family.

But these benefits may also come at an economic price.

From 2000-2010, white, married fathers ages 25 to 54 who attended church at least two to three times a month earned on average $50,900, or almost $20,000 a year more than similarly devout single men ages 25 to 54, Hollar of Marymount University found in his study using data from the General Social Survey.

However, devout married white women earned $27,100 a year during the same period, or $7,000 a year less than single women who frequently attended services.

In fact, high levels of religious participation may be associated with the enduring gender gap in wages, suggests a separate study of white married women with young children that uses data from the 2006 to 2010 National Survey of Family Growth.

Forty-eight percent of women who attended services more than weekly and 39 percent of women who attended services weekly were not employed, reported economists Evelyn L. Lehrer and Yu Chen of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The study also found religious attitudes emphasizing traditional gender roles in raising families influenced labor market choices. Forty-three percent of married mothers from conservative Protestant denominations were not employed, compared to 28 percent of mothers from mainline Protestant denominations.

Yet, weighed against the religious capital accrued through their faith, it is a sacrifice many Americans are willing to make.

Faith & marriage linked to ‘human flourishing’

In examining General Social Survey data from 1972 to 2010, Hollar found decreasing rates of marriage across the board, but “a much more rapid drop-off” among those with lower ties to religion.

At any given age, Hollar found, “devout men are approximately 9.4 percent more likely to have married than non-devout men, and devout women are approximately 4.4 percent more likely to have married than non-devout women.”

Similarly, frequent church attenders were much less likely to divorce, Hollar reported.

“Religion has a very positive effect on family. It has a very positive effect on strengthening marriage and reducing the possibility of divorce,” Hollar noted.

And the sense of satisfaction is not just in the United States.

A study of adults in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Northern Ireland and Sweden found religious affiliation, religious attendance and marriage were all associated with greater happiness and satisfaction in life.

“Taken together, these three conclusions provide support among the people of contemporary Europe for Durkheim’s classic thesis linking the two institutions of marriage and religion with human flourishing,” researchers Emyr Williams, Leslie Francis and Andrew Village wrote in the journal of Mental Health, Religion and Culture.

That does not mean the pressures on marriage are going away. The wider array of choices available to women as their incomes rise and continued economic uncertainty among young adults, along with the greater acceptance of alternatives such as cohabitation and single-parent families, are having a significant impact.

But the potential financial costs or benefits are not all that matters in why people decide to get and stay married. Religious beliefs, including the idea of being part of a divinely ordained union, also can make a major difference.

(This column originally was published at the home of Ahead of the Trend, the website of the Association of Religion Data Archives. Reposted here with permission.)

The Debra Darvick Interview: Why the stories in ‘This Jewish Life’ make it a part of your life, too

May 5, 2013 by

TODAY, ReadTheSpirit is proud to welcome author and columnist Debra Darvick into our online magazine and our bookstore. You may have enjoyed her columns in national magazines, including Good Housekeeping.  Now, you can enjoy her wide-ranging stories every week. Plus, starting today, you can order her signature collection of real-life Jewish stories: This Jewish Life.

VISIT DEBRA’S NEW ONLINE HOME: Debra brings hundreds of stories with her in the relaunch of her Debra Darvick online home today. Please, get to know Debra and, when you  have time, explore her rich array of online stories.

READ DEBRA’S BOOK: As you will discover right here—in our author interview with Debra today—This Jewish Life is for everyone. But, let’s invite Debra to speak for herself. This is our weekly author interview with ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm.

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH DEBRA DARVICK
ON THE LAUNCH OF THIS JEWISH LIFE

DAVID: Jewish families are a tiny minority in the world. Why are millions of people still so fascinated with Jewish faith and culture?

DEBRA: But let me answer your question in another way. The Jewish people have something to say that is valuable in our world today. Judaism’s ancient wisdom survives because it speaks to every generation of people, not just to Jews.

DAVID: Let me underline that point you’re making. The Gallup Poll occasionally asks Americans to name their favorite books of the Bible. Far and away, the Bible’s most popular book is always Psalms, followed by Genesis. Gallup finds that the majority of Americans say they read the Bible at least occasionally and their first choices after Psalms and Genesis are Matthew, John, Revelation, Proverbs, Job and Luke. That means 4 of the 8 most popular books of the Bible are from the original Jewish collection of scriptures. You do, indeed, have something to say.

DEBRA: That Gallup Poll doesn’t surprise me at all. Genesis is the fist book in the Bible; it has the most lively, visual stories: the Garden of Eden, the snake, the flood, animals two by two. Millions of little children grow up on these stories. And Psalms? They are comforting. Throughout human history, people have wanted to know—needed to know—that there is a force bigger than we are as mere humans. Where do people turn when horrible things happen to find words calling out in faith and hope? They turn to Psalms.

DAVID: Of course, we’re also talking about something much deeper than a popularity poll. Scholars widely credit Judaism as a foundation of Western tradition. That may sound like a startling conclusion if our readers haven’t thought about that before. But I can tell you that you’ll find such conclusions in world histories—and it’s a point made by Pope John Paul II, as well, as he wrote about the origins of Western faith and culture.

DEBRA: The Jewish religion’s ethical and social principles are inseparable from the watershed concept of monotheism—one God—that Judaism gave to the Western world. Think about the power of these ideas: Billions of people now believe that there is one God who set the world in motion. For the Jewish people, this was a singular Divine Force who gave a people a set of laws—the 10 Commandments—to model in the world and to share with others. This was a historic break with the religious and cultural norms of the era in which the Jewish religion emerged.

DAVID: The influence is even larger than these associations, right? We see Judaism’s wisdom among great artists and writers—and even in our governance.

DEBRA: Yes, that’s right, there are people who like to say that America is a Christian nation. And we also can recognize Jewish wisdom in our tradition of law and deliberation. America is a nation of law. The writers of the Constitution were well grounded in the Hebrew Bible. Our Supreme Court’s process of deliberation and interpreting the Constitution echoes the rabbinic process of deliberating and interpreting what the laws in the Torah really meant.

‘This Jewish Life’: Marking Our Sacred Time

DAVID: We also have inherited the Jewish approach to marking our sacred time. Of course, since Jesus and all of his first followers were Jewish, it’s natural that the Christian calendar is associated with a number of Jewish milestones in the calendar. More importantly, I think, Jewish holidays and festivals highlight major themes that matter to millions of families around the world, whether they are Jewish or not.

I know that a festival like Hanukkah is actually a relatively minor observance in the Jewish calendar—but the Hanukkah theme of religious freedom is an issue shared by people all around the world.

DEBRA: That’s true with many of the seasons and holidays included in the book. On the Jewish calendar right now, we are in a period called the counting of the Omer. This is a seven-week period between Passover (and the Exodus from Egypt) and the holiday of Shavuot which celebrates the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. On the Christian calendar, Shavuot, which literally means weeks, is called Pentecost.

In the book, the Passover story is that of a Russian family who were immigrants to America. The theme of Passover is liberation—the Exodus story that is so important in African-American churches. You can imagine the painful situation of Russian Jews for so many decades under Communism. This family you will meet in the book could only walk past a locked synagogue on Jewish holidays. Passover is the story of liberation and here is a family who lived through one of the world’s most dramatic times of liberation. The foundational text reading for Shavuot is the Book of Ruth. In This Jewish Life, the Shavuot story is that of a convert to Judaism (like the Biblical Ruth).

DAVID: These are good examples about the way we mark sacred time and use those periods to remember our most important shared stories. Judaism also established even larger spiritual themes that have shaped world religion to this day—like monotheism, the faith in a single God as opposed to many gods. In your book, I think another big theme readers will discover is the universal yearning for home. A famous Christian writer, Frederick Buechner, says that all religious journeys really are about a yearning for home. That’s something we inherit from the Jewish people.

DEBRA: The Hanukkah story is a great example of that. It’s a soldier’s story that I’m sure any soldier or veteran who reads this book will understand.

DAVID: I love that story, too. It’s set in the First Gulf War, more than 20 years ago, and is told by a young American Jewish soldier who finds himself stationed in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, awaiting battle. Then, it’s Hanukkah, and he finds his way to a small gathering of U.S. soldiers about to mark the holiday.

Here’s part of what he says: “I had tucked a trio of letters addressed to ‘Any Jewish Soldier’ in my back pocket. There we were in the desert about to go to war, singing songs of praise to God who had saved my ancestors in battle. The feeling of unity was as pervasive as our apprehension, as real as the sand that found its way into everything from our socks to our toothbrushes. … That Hanukkah in the desert solidified for me the urge to reconnect with my Judaism.”

Now, Debra, I think so many readers who have family members connected with the military will read a chapter like that and feel a strong emotional connection to these men and women.

Debra Darvick: ‘We all long for home.’

DEBRA: I agree and I’ve been really pleased when non-Jews come up to me and tell me how much they have enjoyed this book. This book does serve to educate people about Jewish life, but these stories also inspire, soothe and make people rethink the really important values in their own lives.

That’s an important truth you’ll find in this book. We share so much. We all long for home. We all weep sometimes. We all have moments of great joy. We all know about kids who make decisions we’re not happy about. Families. Homes. Love. Tragedy. Forgiveness. If you’re not Jewish and you read this book, you will realize right away that these are universal experiences, universal truths.

I like to think of this book as similar to Abraham’s tent—open on all four sides. If you’re not familiar with some of the terms, there is an extensive glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish words to help people quickly discover those words. There are short introductions to each section of the book to help people understand the major themes in these seasons.

DAVID: The stories are so well told! And, the pacing is perfect. Even busy readers can enjoy meeting these people in the pages of your book—a little bit each day.

DEBRA: The stories are short; most are about five pages long. You can read them out loud and even kids as young as 8 or 9 might enjoy sitting around and listening. There are stories about young people, too. The Rosh Hashanah story is about a college student who spends the new year’s holiday on a boat during a semester at sea.

DAVID: That’s another story about the yearning for home—combined with a story of dramatic self-discovery. This girl actually is suffering from a deep home sickness as the big holiday approaches, knowing how her family back home would be celebrating. She’s off the coast of Asia at that point. But, instead, she and some other students—Jewish and non-Jewish—wind up sharing the holiday. It becomes a new starting point in her life.

I could name a dozen stories that I would call my favorites in your book. How about you? Do you have a favorite story in the book?

DEBRA: That’s like asking which of your children is your favorite. But, yes, among these stories some do stand out. There is one story about a man who was in Paris at the liberation as World War II was ending. He describes what it was like to be part of the first Jewish service when the ark was opened again. I get shivers just retelling that story. He describes what it was like to bring out the Torah—so much outpouring of feeling that people ran up to kiss the Torah. They were so overjoyed. He recalls the moment when a young girl ran up to him, pulled the yellow star from her coat and placed it in his hands. So dramatic! But that’s just one story in the book. Many are appropriate to the seasons of the year; many are appropriate to different settings in which people may read the book.

‘This Jewish Life’: Experiencing gratitude

DAVID: What did you learn while writing This Jewish Life?

DEBRA: One of the most important things I learned is gratitude. This definitely was not a one-woman endeavor. As I spoke to all of the people who appear in the book, I had to think about my identity as a writer. Over time, I realized that this wasn’t about me seeing my name on the cover of a book but about the gift God gave me to listen and help people express their deepest selves.

As I worked on a person’s story, we would talk and I would write up a draft. Then, I would call each one on the telephone and read the story to see if I had told it right. Sometimes, I would get to the end and there would be silence on the phone. The first couple of times that happened, I would freak out, thinking that the silence meant I had blown it. But, no, they were silent because they were crying. They were feeling such emotion because their story finally was brought to light—their story was made cohesive so that others could now share in it. It was deeply moving to know I was helping people to make their inner-most experiences real in these stories.

Want to read some stories by Debra?

Check out Debra Darvick’s new online home at ReadTheSpirit. Or, visit the Bookstore page for This Jewish Life.

(This interview originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, values and cultural diversity.)

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.

The Love and Salt interview: Why letter writing still builds friendship and unlocks our spiritual vision

April 15, 2013 by

Christianity was founded on letters. St. Paul’s letters carried the faith into the world years before the four Gospels were published. Much later, America was founded on letters, which is why John Adams is associated with the current National Card and Letter-Writing Month. In the civil rights struggle, a letter from a Birmingham jail 50 years ago ignited a national movement for justice. (Read more about the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous letter in a second story, today.)

Recently, two American women—one who lives in Illinois and one in Virginia—published a collection of their letters, spanning three years and some tumultuous changes in their lives. Their project is a unique window into the spiritual lives of American women—wives, mothers and professionals in their 30s. While American women are the greatest consumers of spiritually themed media—books, magazines and websites—they usually find publishers offering them a heavy diet of older male voices. Instead, Amy Andrews and Jessica Mesman Griffith wrote their own inspirational Christian classic from scratch.

At ReadTheSpirit, we are not alone in praising Love & Salt. Gregory Wolfe, founder of Image magazine and a leading talent in American spiritual letters, described the book this way: “There are a lot of good books about the spiritual life out there, but one of their drawbacks is that they tend to organize experience into categories and abstractions and steps. … What if a book about God was something more like a conversation between two thoughtful people recording the messy vicissitudes of everyday life, including marriage and children, circling around important topics without schematizing them, sharing what they observe and read and care about? That’s precisely what we get in Love and Salt.”

TODAY, rather than tell you more about Love and Salt, ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm talks with Amy and Jessica. Much as they do in their letters, they are able to share personal insights into what makes their three-year journey both unique—and universal.

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW ON ‘LOVE & SALT’
WITH AMY ANDREWS & JESSICA MESMAN GRIFFITH

DAVID: Fans of TV series and movies about women will be surprised to learn that your letters rarely mention shopping; your letters contain a lot about relationships, but not about sex; and your letters spend a lot of time focused on something that is rarely mentioned in Hollywood—your spiritual lives. What’s remarkable is that you two chose that theme and stuck to it for three years.

AMY: The basic premise was that we were going to write letters, telling each other stories about the state of our souls—stories about how we came to that place in our lives, each day.

JESSICA: We certainly didn’t set out to write a book! Honestly, I’m shocked by this book every time I re-read it. We were just two people who started this conversation through letters. The providential nature of what we tried to do is shown in how important our friendship would become. We were serious about writing letters as we started out, but we had no idea what our friendship ultimately would mean to us—or how much our growing faith would mean to us.

We were surprised that that, all of a sudden, what we were doing in writing and mailing these letters became a really important part of our lives. Eventually, these letters became something we had to do to survive. You can see in our early letters that we were wondering about our faith, pondering some theological ideas—then, as time passed, we began living out our faith. I’m still blown away by how this story unfolded. I lived through it. I wrote half the letters. But it’s as though the book wrote itself through all we experienced together.

DAVID: We won’t include spoilers to this interview, but I can say that your phrase—“all we experienced together”—includes intense heartbreak at one point in the overall story.

Before we talk further about what happened, I’m sure lots of readers are going to want to follow your example. So, let’s explain how you did this: You two met in a writing workshop and you both were interested in the Catholic Church. Jessica already was Catholic; Amy was going through the process to officially become a Catholic. Jessica, you agreed to be Amy’s sponsor as she formally joined the church. As part of your dual journeys both into writing and into the church, you decided to write these letters back and forth starting in Lent 2005.

What were the first steps? Did you go out and purchase stationery? Were you interested in fountain pens? Old-fashioned typewriters?

LOVE AND SALT:
‘THE CONVERSATION WAS THE PRIMARY THING’

AMY: We never used email. These letters were either typed or handwritten and the majority of them were handwritten.

DAVID: Typed? I’ve been a journalist long enough that I actually started out using a typewriter like the drawing on the cover of your book.

AMY: No. We typed them on the computer, then printed them out before mailing them. But, we didn’t even want these letters to stay resident on our computers. Often, I got rid of the computer copies after they were printed. We wanted these to be physical letters, and we still have big boxes of them.

I was never enamored of beautiful stationery or special pens or anything like that. This was a big commitment to write so regularly to each other, so we needed to approach this like a workhorse. The conversation was the primary thing. I would grab whatever I could to write my next letter. I sent a few cards here and there but I often wrote on legal pads. Once, Jess wrote to me in crayon on some used construction paper, because she was sitting in her car and that’s all she could find.

JESSICA: I usually wrote on legal pads, too, because I had a stack of them in my office. When I started with this, I was a development officer at Notre Dame. I served as a ghost writer for the president in thanking various people who supported Notre Dame, and I wrote those letters first on legal pads.

So, it was natural for me to write to Amy that same way. Just reach for the legal pad. We agreed that this wasn’t a precious project. We didn’t choose special paper or fountain pens. We were so focused on the letters themselves that sometimes, yes, I did write on trash I had at hand.

At one point, my daughter was very young and had trouble getting to sleep, so like a lot of parents we would use the trick of driving her around until she would fall asleep. This was particularly true at naptime. One time I did that and was just sitting in the car, letting her sleep, and I found this old piece of construction paper. I didn’t have a legal pad handy, so that’s what I used for the next letter. And, no, even though there is an old-fashioned typewriter on the cover of the book, neither of us used one.

LOVE AND SALT:
INFLUENCE OF C.S. LEWIS AND THE INKLINGS

DAVID: Any of our readers who love Christian classics, including C.S. Lewis and the Inklings, will find kindred spirits in the two of you. Your book is a treasure trove of recommendations that you make to each other about terrific literary voices—mostly Christian writers. People will close your book with a wonderful reading list in hand from the books you two share. Here’s my question: Were you surprised to find the Inklings such an inspiration? I can’t imagine a more crusty bunch of older male academics. The Inklings were an honest to goodness “old boys club.” Yet, you two love these writers.

AMY: I grew up in an agnostic/atheist family, although my whole family now is Christian of some variety. One of the very important influences in my family was when my father started reading C.S. Lewis. I was then a senior in high school and he was reading Lewis’s The Abolition of Man. Then I became philosophically interested in C.S. Lewis, too. In college, I read tons of C.S. Lewis. I was interested in him as a thinker, then became enamored of all the Inklings. There was something so beautiful in these people coming together to talk about these ideas. These were Oxford dons who also wrote novels and children’s books for real people—not for other Oxford dons. They weren’t focused on small scholarship—they were focused on big ideas. I’ve referred to our exchange of letters as our own Oxford pub.

JESSICA: Yes, the Inklings are huge for us. They’re like role models. We want to be in that Oxford pub, talking about God and life and death and heaven and miracles. We crave that kind of serious intellectual engagement with faith that we see in the Inklings—and we also see their deep friendships. That was very appealing to us.

DAVID: I’m curious Amy, because you teach math now at Northwestern University, whether Lewis’s very logical style appealed to you. He has been both praised and criticized for the logic he tries to lay out in his Christian apologetics.

AMY: Interesting you would ask that. When I was in college, that’s exactly what I wanted: logic. I started out as an English major and then I began to study science and math and I wanted things to be rational. So, I would say, I used to love Lewis. But now I’m much more of a Tolkien fan. One of my favorite Tolkien pieces is his essay, On Fairy Stories. He essentially says: Ultimately what is true about life comes to us in story form.

DAVID: Yes, it’s a popular piece. As he reaches the end of that essay, he argues that the Christian message is such a vast, cosmic truth that the finite human mind is incapable of grasping the entire truth. So, we receive it in the form of stories. However, Tolkien says: “This story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.”

JESSICA: The Inklings were a mystical bunch. I enjoy the novels of Charles Williams and, among the Inklings, Williams was really out there. Just the other day, I was re-reading a portion of his Descent into Hell. Now, I’m not saying that I totally agree with everything Williams wrote, but he has a lot of interesting ideas. One of the ideas he writes about, and we see in the other Inklings as well, is this idea of bearing each other’s burdens. They were exploring a much deeper idea here of spiritually committing to help bear each other’s burdens. This idea appeals to me, because Amy and I don’t live in the same part of the country. So, how is it possible that we can try to bear each other’s spiritual and emotional burdens?

LOVE AND SALT:
CHOOSING TO FOLLOW IN THE STEPS OF RUTH AND NAOMI

DAVID: You also draw a lot from the Bible, including the central theme that runs through the entire book: “Where you go—I will go.” That’s the timeless line that comes to us from the first chapter of the book of Ruth. I mention this because, among the millions of small groups that meet coast to coast, many of them are “Bible studies” and the participants like to touch on biblical themes. Readers certainly will find that in many forms throughout this book. I could envision a really wonderful small-group series in which people would agree to read sections of your book, each week, and then prepare to begin writing letters as they complete the series. So, let’s talk for just a moment about Ruth and Naomi. You stumbled upon this passage of the Bible at the very beginning of your friendship and it has become an important touchstone throughout your friendship.

AMY: I’m very slow to say that anything is providential. But, it’s hard not to view our discovery of Ruth and Naomi at the beginning of our friendship as anything other than providence. We were walking around New York and talking. We wanted to find something to read together, so we stepped into a bookstore and we wound up with this story.

JESSICA: It was a gift. I don’t talk that way very often, but this was a gift—in some strange way we happened upon that story in that store full of books. We were walking around Manhattan and just enjoying talking with each other. We were not setting out to read the Bible together. But we were in this bookstore in Greenwich Village and she just happened to reach onto a shelf where there was a Bible. And, we just happened to end up with Ruth and Naomi.

It was only later that we even realized that reading scripture aloud is a traditional form of praying. We were just captivated by the story of Ruth and Naomi. We liked the idea of making a vow to each other as friends. The idea of one woman committing to a friendship with another woman is a very powerful idea. Then, as we went through this friendship—and encountered tragedy together—we would remember that day in the bookstore and it gave us a noble way of thinking about our friendship.

LOVE AND SALT:
‘WHERE THE REAL STORY BEGINS’

DAVID: I have to urge readers who have enjoyed this interview—and who click over to Amazon and buy a copy—to commit to reading the first third of the book. It starts slow. Your first letters are good reading, but those opening pages aren’t what would inspire someone to call a friend and start a discussion group about this book. It’s when you reach the middle of this book that you really see the larger power of this whole story. And, no spoilers here, but I have to say:

One of the big influences on my life is my late grandmother, Mabel Yunker, a towering figure of a churchwoman in northern Indiana. She had a saying that it took me well into my 50s to understand: “Pray when you don’t need it—so when you need it, you don’t have to pray.” I’d say that’s a central truth in your book.

AMY: I’ll be interested to see what Jessica has to say about this, because she lost her mother when she was 13 and grief has been a reality for her throughout her life. But for me, grief wasn’t so real. I had an awareness of mortality, but it was theoretical for me. As we started this friendship and these letters, it was a beautiful experience for us—but it was beautiful in a poetic, abstract way. We only realized later that we were doing all of this long before we understood the depth and the power of this practice. We didn’t know how much we would need this.

JESSICA: Yes, I appreciate your saying that to readers, David, because you have to follow this story and trust that the real story will begin for you, as a reader, where it truly began for us. Think of the opening portion of the book as our training for what would come later.

DAVID: And that’s a perfect set up, Jessica, for the final question: So, what comes later for you two in 2013 and beyond?

AMY: Well, I’m 42 and, yes, we have been writing letters ever since. But there are gaps in our letters now. Having small children around the house makes it harder to produce every day. Then, there was a nine-month period where we wound up living in the same place and it didn’t make as much sense to write letters. Will there be another volume of letters? Who knows. We had no intention of creating a book in the first place. So, I could say with fear and trembling: Yes, there might be another book of letters.

JESSICA: I’m 36 and I am a writer, and this is a weird position for me as a writer to be known for my letters. We wrote these letters without any intention of turning them into a book. That came later. But, as a writer, I don’t want us to become known as just “The Letter Writing Ladies.” I’m more interested in sharing our story and letting other people take inspiration and perhaps start writing themselves. We would love it if other people were moved to take up their pens, too.

Click on the book cover above to order a copy of Love & Salt.

(Read more about the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous letter in a second story, today.)

(This interview was originally published in readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, values and cross-cultural issues.)

The Heather Jose Interview: Learning to thrive—not just survive—in life’s toughest struggles

March 30, 2013 by

HEATHER JOSE is passionate about helping millions of Americans with crises like cancer—because she’s been through such a life-and-death struggle herself. Today, she is a nationally known writer, speaker and workshop leader focusing on three groups: cancer patients (helping them play an active role in their cancer treatment), medical professionals (helping them to engage with patients in new ways)—and caregivers (helping them to plan for their own well-being even as they aid others).

TODAY, Heather Jose talks with ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm in our weekly author interview about her new memoir, Every Day We Are Killing Cancer. At the end of today’s interview, you’ll find several ways you can connect with Heather’s ongoing work.

OUR INTERVIEW WITH HEATHER JOSE,
AUTHOR OF ‘EVERY DAY WE ARE KILLING CANCER’

DAVID: Your title, Every Day We Are Killing Cancer, is dramatic! Tell us how that defined your approach to recovery.

HEATHER: Those words really describe the mindset that empowered me throughout this long journey. I was able to take the driver’s seat in my own recovery—and those words also signaled to medical professionals and caregivers that this was our purpose. Some people have told me they are turned off by the word “killing.” Hey, I’m a peaceful person, too, but I think it’s OK to say we’re killing cancer cells. (laughs) After all, that’s what chemo and radiation are intended to do.

I still remember my doctor initially telling me to go home and get ready to “start killing cancer.” I took that instruction to heart and I didn’t want anyone around me to step back from the challenge we faced together.

DAVID: You actually printed these words on a sign, right?

HEATHER: Yes, I tell that story in my book. I made this little sign that said, Every Day We Are Killing Cancer, then my daughter Sydney who was very young at the time decorated it with some of her scribbles. I had the sign at home and I took it with me when I went back to the hospital for treatments. I wanted anyone stepping through my doorway to know—that’s our attitude here.

HEATHER JOSE: A NATIONWIDE MESSAGE

DAVID: Years later, you’ve now crisscrossed the country as a speaker and you also write about these issues in both weekly columns as well as your new book. At the core of your message, you’re still telling people: Attitude matters! You say that a person needs to take charge of his or her life. Why is that so important?

HEATHER: Number 1—no one is invested in you as much as you are yourself. Number 2—you have the ability to make the deepest impact in the most ways. Your doctor can help with medicine. Your husband can make a great meal for you. But, ultimately, you’re the one making most of the decisions throughout each day—so you have to be invested. You have to take charge.

DAVID: OK, that’s an inspiring idea. But you’ve also become a leading advocate for caregivers—the millions of Americans who care for others with conditions like cancer or the disabilities of old age or other health crises. So, how do you balance those two goals: Taking charge of your own care—and actively working with caregivers?

HEATHER: The goal is to identify what you’re good at—then, as the captain of your wellness team, focus on those areas in which you are talented and have energy. Once you understand what you can do, you can supplement that with caregivers who are strong in areas where you’re weak. This isn’t a cookie cutter approach for everyone. You have to start by weighing your strengths and your energy—then find caregivers to do the rest. Sometimes, you’ll be surprised by what caregivers can do, if you carefully organize your team.

HEATHER JOSE: IDEAS FOR ORGANIZING CAREGIVERS

DAVID: Your book explains how you did this. Then, your weekly WeAreCaregivers columns give lots of additional tips. But give our audience a couple of examples. Here’s the common situation: A major catastrophe strikes and friends will say, “If you need anything, just call me.” Or, they cook something and show up at the door with a dish in their hands. Neither of those responses is bad—but you say those are just first steps. What do you suggest, when people start offering to help?

HEATHER: First, I need to say: It’s natural that you get a lot of general offers from friends and family. That’s a good thing. People want to help—but, they don’t know what to do yet. That’s why you need to organize. As you’re putting together your caregiving team, it’s your responsibility to tell people what you really need.

One thing you need is accountability. In my case, I needed people in my life who would hold me to a certain standard, have expectations for me. We all get a little complacent and it can be easy to fall into the role of a victim. But with caregivers there to encourage you to participate in daily life and activities that are beneficial for killing cancer, you are much better off.

Here’s another example of how we organized caregivers: At one point in my treatment, we had a three-hour round trip each day for radiation. My husband was working. I didn’t have the energy to drive myself. So, our church let us pass around a sign-up sheet for a transportation schedule. We actually passed it through the pews, inviting people to sign up to make the drive with me. That was a big help and people were happy to do that.

Another example: People wanted to make food for us. But, in my case, my diet was carefully planned. Instead, people provided gift certificates for food. That allowed us to use those options when we really needed them. It gave us choices. We got some pizza coupons, which were wonderful. I couldn’t eat pizza, but my husband loves pizza and he got tired of my diet. So, sometimes, it was great to have an easy dinner with my food for me—and a takeout pizza for my husband. People usually wouldn’t think of this unless you talk it over with friends and family and suggest the idea.

DAVID: Through those years of recovery, you did an amazing job. And you share lots of ideas in your book and your weekly columns. However, you also point out that not all volunteers are up to the task, right?

HEATHER: Yes, you need to be honest with yourself about which caregivers are helping you—and which could be draining you. For example, some people just can’t avoid telling you lots of stories of other people who had cancer, including stories about people who died of cancer. Stories like that really dragged me down. That’s just one example, but it is true: Some people who might volunteer to help are more needy than you are. You can actually wind up draining yourself that way. So, I say: It may sound harsh, but you’ve got to be selfish enough to organize your circle of caregivers to welcome those people who actually will strengthen you.

HEATHER JOSE: CARING FOR THE CAREGIVERS

DAVID: We should explain more about this term “caregivers.” National reports tell us that about one in three American households includes a caregiver. There are millions of men and women doing this work on a daily basis. From your perspective, can you explain the term?

HEATHER: A caregiver is anyone who is providing regular, necessary care for a person who is going through a disease or is challenged by a disability, so this ranges from aiding people with cancer to taking care of a disabled adult son or daughter. One thing we do know about caregivers: Their lives are busy! They’re juggling jobs and family duties and their caregiving tasks. These are normal people—people you meet everyday—who are doing an extraordinary amount of work to help others.

DAVID: One of your major campaigns right now is spreading the word coast to coast that caregivers need more help, right?

HEATHER: That’s right. And the first thing caregivers need is to take care of themselves as well as their loved ones. Here’s the challenge they face: Their time is at a premium. They need to consciously plan how they are going to take care of themselves. How are they going to eat well, exercise, pray or somehow quiet their minds? They can’t refresh themselves if they don’t consciously plan for this.

DAVID: You’ve got lots of suggestions about this. So do other writers who sometimes appear in the WeAreCaregivers website that you host. Dr. Benjamin Pratt wrote a whole book on it, Guide for Caregivers. But let’s give our audience, in this interview, an example: You advise people to keep a personalized list of quick refreshers. You actually tell them to organize the list by the minimum amount of time these activities require—5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes and so on.

HEATHER: Everyone is different. Everyone has a different list, but the idea is to keep adding to your list of things you’d love to do if you just had 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes. That may sound unworkable. But stop and think about this. For me, if I have just 5 minutes, that’s enough time for me go outside and sit in the sun for those minutes. I love that. Or, I can take a walk through my garden and see if I can find any new blossoms. If I have 10 minutes, I can put together a fast, healthy lunch so I’m not grabbing something at a drive-through window. Those are on my list, but you’ll want to make your own list.

If you’ve got a list, then you’ve got a plan for how to use those brief breaks as they arise in your day. If you don’t think about using those short breaks, then you waste them. This idea is about finding activities that give you some joy and replenish your spirits—and making sure they can fit into your day.

HEATHER JOSE: TURNING SURVIVORS INTO THRIVERS

DAVID: You urge people to take a positive approach toward these challenges. In fact, you’re one of the key people trying to change our everyday language from “cancer survivor” to “cancer thriver.” Why are you campaigning for that change?

HEATHER: This is important because your mind can do amazing things. I’m not alone in saying this. Recently, Deepak Chopra was making this same point on one of the network talk shows. Simply changing the way we talk about things can make a big difference.

Here’s an example: I’ve heard people say, “Oh no! This new chemo drug is so painful and it makes me feel so horrible. I hate it.”

That’s a natural reaction, because some of those chemo treatments are horrible. But we could take a different approach and say: “OK, this new treatment may feel terrible, but this is a very powerful drug and it’s really going to kill some cancer cells! I’m ready!”

Those are two ways of responding to the situation. One drags you down; one keeps you in charge of your recovery. Becoming a cancer thriver depends on lots of those small choices we make everyday in our lives.

Another idea? Stop reading all of those labels that detail side effects. Sure, it’s good that we are informed about possible complications. You may want to have someone you trust read the side effects for you. But, here’s the problem: Just reading about them can manifest these problems. A label may say: Can cause cramps in hands. Then, one day, your hand aches and you start thinking: Oh no! I’ve got a side effect! I’m sure of it! Maybe you just strained your hand or you’ve got arthritis.

We become cancer thrivers through making a lot of small choices in our attitudes each day.

HEATHER JOSE: A COMPASSIONATE IDEA
(THAT CAN HELP CHURCHES GROW)

DAVID: Faith played a big role in your recovery. You talk a lot about physical fitness, diet and medical options—but you also encourage people to explore spiritual resources, as well. I know that your own community church has been a big help in your recovery. What advice can you share for reaching out to congregations?

HEATHER: First, you need to share with people what’s going on so they can help you. If you want people to pray for you, share honestly and be specific. When I was in the midst of this, my husband and I would tell people about specific tests coming up or other steps in my treatment—so they could pray with us about these milestones.

From the moment I was first diagnosed, our Sunday School group became a core group in my recovery. Sometimes close friends would even come over to our home and pray with us before a particularly big test or treatment or procedure.

I talk a lot more about this in my book, in my columns and in talks I give to groups that are interested in hearing about the spiritual part of this.

DAVID: Unfortunately, studies show that most churches really aren’t well equipped to help people—even though congregational leaders may think they’re good at it.

HEATHER: There’s a lot to discuss about how congregations can respond. We can talk about programs. We can talk about how individuals respond to your condition.

For example, some church people respond by saying: “God’s will be done.” That’s something I come across a lot in Christian groups. And I understand the background of that kind of prayer, but it may not be helpful to people who have just received a diagnosis. That kind of response could signal to people: Just sit back and do nothing—and that’s not a helpful message. I’ve come to believe that we want to form a partnership with God: I’ll do my part as a cancer thriver; and God, I’m asking, will you do your part.

The Bible can help. I know that I loved hearing verses of the Bible that tell us things like: “Have the faith of a mustard seed …” or “Faith can move mountains.”

DAVID: This actually is a wonderful area for churches to explore, because it can lead to church growth—partly through the re-activation of members who have fallen away. We’ve seen this happen in congregations that take caregiving seriously. The problem is that most pastors and lay leaders have never stopped to think about how many caregivers are right there in the community—but have fallen away from active involvement.

HEATHER: You’re right. This is a really big issue that hasn’t been addressed in most churches. First, caregivers do tend to fall away on Sundays. They can’t find anyone to relieve them of their duties on Sundays, so they can’t come to church. Over time, we forget about them. We need to start honest conversations about how many people in our communities are caregivers. If you do that, you’ll be surprised! A simple idea like organizing some rotating respite care to help free caregivers on Sundays—that alone can grow your community. And, there’s so much more you can do. You need to start by asking the caregivers in your community what they actually need.

This is a big, untapped area for congregations. Sure, we all start by praying for people with illnesses or other problems in their lives—but too many people stop there. The result is that we’re abandoning a big portion of our community.

HEATHER JOSE: GET A FREE HEALING AGREEMENT

DAVID: In your book, you explain that you summarize your mindset in a one-page “Healing Agreement.” When you give talks and lead workshops, you give participants a copy of this agreement. And now, you’re giving it to people free online—to download and print out for themselves. Can you explain this idea?

HEATHER: Sure. The Healing Agreement came about because we realized that not everyone is an extrovert. Not everyone is ready to charge forward and clearly tell people what they intend to do. It’s tough talking with doctors and health-care providers for some of us.

The Healing Agreement opens up an ongoing conversation between health-care providers and patients—to communicate about what is helpful and what isn’t helpful. We want to empower patients to take a leading role in their own care. And, medical professionals also are better served if they know what’s going on with you as a patient. If you don’t make a commitment like this, there’s a temptation to become passive when you’re receiving treatments. Or you may just focus on the steps for the current medical procedure and never talk to your health-care providers about what you should be doing all the days you’re not in the health-care facility.

DAVID: Where do you see all of this going?

HEATHER: I’m not arguing that we need to spend a lot more money or suddenly find more time. I’m focused on using the tools we already have as individuals to make a better healing environment for everyone. Health care providers can work much more effectively if they train themselves in interacting better with patients. And, if you’re someone with an illness or disability, you need to realize that daily choices you make—often small choices—can have a big impact on the rest of your life.

LEARN MORE FROM HEATHER JOSE …

GET A COPY OF HER BOOK: Click on the book cover above to learn more about Every Day We Are Killing Cancer. The book page allows you to read the Preface by best-selling nutrition author David Grotto, you can see the book’s Table of Contents—and more. To help support Heather’s work, please consider buying a copy of the book.

ENJOY HER (FREE) WEEKLY COLUMNS FOR CAREGIVERS: Every week, Heather hosts the new www.WeAreCaregivers.com column—dedicated to freely sharing ideas to help caregivers improve their lives.

FOR CANCER THRIVERS: Heather also writes a quarterly column for Breast Cancer Wellness Magazine.

SCHEDULE A TALK OR WORKSHOP: Heather travels coast to coast, speaking to three kinds of groups: Medical professionals, people whose lives have been affected by cancer and caregivers. She has provided everything from keynote addresses at major conferences—to workshops and classes that count as continuing-education credits. (If you’re interested in scheduling an event, email us at [email protected].)

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.”

.

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.

Join in an Intimate Lenten Journey that leads us home

February 10, 2013 by

This entry is part 1 of 8 in the series Lenten Journeys

U.S. Navy men and women participate in an Ash Wednesday service aboard the USS Wasp in the Atlantic Ocean. Electronics Technician 3rd Class Leila Tardieu receives the sacramental ashes from a chaplain. (U.S. Navy photo by Brian May released for public use.)

CLICK THE COVER to learn more about this book and to read sample chapters.MILLIONS OF MEN and WOMEN around the world begin the journey of Lent this week with Ash Wednesday. When Eastern Orthodox Christians begin their Great Lent, starting a few weeks later this year, a total of more than 2 billion souls will share this journey toward new life.
THIS YEAR, ReadTheSpirit has two, inspiring offerings for Lent:

1.) DAVID CRUMM’S UPDATED
‘OUR LENT: THINGS WE CARRY’

Thousands of readers around the world have enjoyed ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm’s day-by-day book of Lenten stories, called Our Lent: Things We Carry. Small groups and even entire congregations have enjoyed “group reads” of the book, discussing it week by week. Now, you can enjoy this updated second edition. CLICK on the book cover, at right, to learn more about the stories in this book. On that book page, links in the left margin invite you to read the book’s Preface, Table of Contents, and Sample Chapter. Purchasing a copy of OurLent helps to support ReadTheSpirit’s ongoing work.

2.) COME ALONG! JOIN US IN THIS INTIMATE LENTEN JOURNEY …

One of our most popular columnists and authors is the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Pratt, a retired pastoral counselor who published books on wrestling with temptations (Ian Fleming’s Seven Deadlier Sins and 007’s Moral Compass) as well as helping others (Guide for Caregivers). His online columns are free for you to share with others (if you credit Dr. Pratt and readthespirit.com as the source). In addition, many of his columns are shared with the website of the Day1 radio network.
For Lent 2013, we are proud to publish Dr. Pratt’s once-a-week series …

Intimate Lenten Journey: Introduction …

By the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Pratt

One of the earliest portraits of Jesus Christ still in existence. A Roman-era mosaic now in the British Museum. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.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 year-long 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.

In Advent, we start the yearly cycle by preparing to receive the Lord, coming into this world to accompany us. Jesus is born at Christmas, but it is also the season to celebrate our own birth into the faith. Epiphany is more than just a historical memory of three Magi bringing gifts to honor this babe. Epiphany is an invitation for each of us to affirm the gifts we bring to the table shared by all of God’s people. By the time we reach Lent each year, we have jumped through more than three decades of Jesus’ life and the world’s two billion Christians recall Jesus’ last journey to Jerusalem.

Lent is history, but it also is the most intimate invitation to men and women to journey in the Way of Jesus—the way of compassion, love, peace, hope, joy and forgiveness.

There is enormous loss and spectacular hope in Lent. And, each year, we all are invited to share our own losses and hopes as we journey together with each other and with Jesus toward the crescendo of Easter. That’s why these annual holidays and festivals have lasted for 2,000 years. That’s why, today, 1 in 3 people walking the Earth claims to be Christian and will in some way mark the Lenten journey. This is history, yes—but it also is an intimate invitation every year. “Intimacy is our capacity for closeness and tenderness in moments of risky self-disclosure,” says Father Richard Rohr, whom we just welcomed into the pages of this online magazine.

Each week during Lent, I will share some intimate stories—with an emphasis on that word “share.” I want you to feel free to share my stories with others. And I hope that my stories will prompt you to remember and share your own stories that are part of this journey. Perhaps you might carry these columns into your small group and invite people to discuss them. You will discover that the hallowed places I plan to take you in these six weeks are well-trod ground for many people. Perhaps they are hallowed ground you recognize.

This year, proclaim to the world that Lent and Easter are history, sure enough—but they also are personal invitations to journey together. Come along with me?

An Intimate Lenten Journey, Part 1:
Generation Calls to Generation; Deep Calls to Deep

THIS ROMAN-ERA CREMATORY URN, uncovered by archaeologists and dated to about 2,000 years ago was accompanied by a second smaller container to its right, apparently a vessel containing a gift of something precious to accompany the departed. Photo by Robert Valette, released for public use.‘TWAS A GRACIOUS OFFER we extended to the family—as so many grandparents do. We thought about it carefully, then waited for an appropriate gathering of the whole gang and announced: “We are getting old and will soon leave our home of many years. We want each of you grandchildren to choose some things to remind you of life with us.”

They stared at us for a moment, pondering this strange invitation. We could see them thinking through the meaning of what they had just heard. But, after questions, hugs, consoling grins and sighs—they took us at our word.

Finally, the respectful question came back to us: “What should we pick?” So, the walk began—all around our old house. What fun for my wife and me! I am known as “PopPop,” the patriarch over this gang of grandchildren. And soon PopPop was happily explaining the connections and personal history that oozes from every picture, pot, post and table—the collage of memories that drapes our home.

As the tales flowed, their pencils moved, making lists that included antique pictures where no one smiles back, a page from a 1611 Bible, Civil War bullet castings, pie-top and drop-leaf tables, rope beds—and even modern art. Clearly, they were excited by all of these offerings. We assured them that no request was out of bounds.

That is when a 9-year-old boy surprised us. He said: “I want PopPop’s ashes. That’s my first choice. That way, I can always have him close and talk with him.”

Nervous chuckles erupted from the others—uncertain what to say—and then gentle teasing and flat-out joking about how and where my ashes should, one day, be stored.

Soon, I could see that 9-year-old boy needed a hug to reassure him that his sincere question wasn’t being dismissed. I whispered in his ear: “I like your choice.”

I heard his question as he meant it: I don’t want to be without him; he doesn’t want to be without me. As in families around the world, we had cared for each other, laughed with each other, shared stories, comforted each other when sick. We had giggled, danced, read, laughed, played, wrestled, snuggled, talked about God and girls. He knows my love. I know his love.

And so this request: “I want PopPop’s ashes.”

And in that request was the truth so unvarnished and hard-edged: I shall leave him before he leaves me. It is in the nature of families. It is in the nature of relationships when the circle of friends realizes that one—perhaps even the leader of the whole big gang—is destined to leave first.

Just a 9-year-old boy, but the question was crystal clear.

Across the generations, his deep was calling to my deep.

…

AND FROM PSALM 42 …

AS A DEER longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.

 

When shall I come and behold
the face of God?

…

My soul is cast down within me …
Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me.

 

By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.

…

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.

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