Grief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  man who shall not succeed in his days; for none of his offspring shall succeed . . .” (22:30). The tear in the heart of Jeremiah is unspeakable. He does not gloat or rejoice. He would rather this king could rescue royal Judah—but it is very late. The prophet knows he is inadequate for the grieving of Israel’s death, so he asks for public grief: “Take up weeping and wailing for the mountains, and a lamentation for the pastures of the wilderness” (9:10). In this he echoes the expectation of Amos that what is to happen must be brought to public expression: In all the squares there shall be wailing; and in all the streets they shall say, “Alas! alas!” They shall call the farmers to mourning and to wailing those who are skilled in lamentation. (Amos 5:16) Not only did Amos call for grief, but he did so as he presented forsaken ravaged Israel: Fallen, no more to rise, is the virgin Israel; forsaken on her land, with none to raise her up. (Amos 5:1-2) That image of a dying one is picked up by Jeremiah and characteristically made more radical, for now the lady is no longer a virgin but a tramp, a whore all dressed up with no place to go: And you, O desolate one, what do you mean that you dress in scarlet, that you deck yourself with ornaments of gold, that you enlarge your eyes with paint? In vain you beautify yourself. Your lovers despise you . . . For I heard a cry as of a woman in travail, anguish as of one bringing forth her first child, the cry of the daughter of Zion gasping for breath, stretching out her hands, Woe is me! I am fainting before murderers. (Jer 4:30-31) It is like a woman in labor, but there is no birth here, only death; there is the desperate gasping and then there is silence. Judah has ended. First the prophet states his own grieving. Then he “goes public” and includes the professionals. And then in a remarkable statement he depicts the mother of Israel, beloved Rachel, grieving: [13] A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are not. (Jer 31:15) Neither Jeremiah nor his contemporaries are adequate to this grief. It must be done by the one who in anguish gave birth and in anguish now faces her children’s death. There is no comfort anymore; not comforted: they are not! The death of the unthinkable end is matched to the birth of the unthinkable miracle of beginning. Now it has been said. They are not; not exile; not punished. Just not! And that is beyond either consolation or explanation. This poetry is among the boldest in ancient Israel, for the situation requires audacity. Imagine bringing back mother Rachel to grieve her darling. There can only be grief, for Your hurt is incurable,

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  THEOPHYLACT. Or he takes up the cross of Christ, who comes from the village; that is, he leaves this world and its labours, going forward to Jerusalem, that is, heavenly liberty. Hereby also we receive no slight instruction. For to be a master after the example of Christ, a man must himself first take up his cross, and in the fear of God crucify his own flesh, that he may so lay it upon those that are subject and obedient to him. But there followed Christ a great company of people, and of women. BEDE. A large multitude indeed followed the cross of Christ, but with very different feelings. For the people who had demanded His death were rejoicing that they should see Him dying, the women weeping that He was about to die. But He was followed by the weeping only of women, not because that vast crowd of men was not also sorrowful at His Passion, but because the less esteemed female sex could more freely give utterance to what they thought. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. Women also are ever prone to tears, and have hearts easily disposed to pity. THEOPHYLACT. He bids those who weep for Him cast their eyes forward to the evils that were coming, and weep for themselves. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. Signifying that in the time to come women would be bereft of their children. For when war breaks out upon the land of the Jews, all shall perish, both small and great. Hence it follows, For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, &c. THEOPHYLACT. Seeing indeed that women shall cruelly roast their children, and the belly which had produced shall miserably again receive that which it bore. BEDE. By these days He signifies the time of the siege and captivity which was coming upon them from the Romans, of which He had said before, Woe to them that are with child, and give suck in those days. It is natural, when captivity by an enemy is threatening, to seek for refuge in fastnesses or hidden places, where men may lie concealed. And so it follows, Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For Josephus relates, that when the Romans pressed hard upon them, the Jews sought hastily the caverns of the mountains, and the lurking places in the hills. It may be also that the words, Blessed are the barren, are to be understood of those of both sexes, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake, and that it is said to the mountains and hills, Fall upon us, and Cover us, because all who are mindful of their own weakness, when the crisis of their temptations breaks upon them, have sought to be protected by the example, precepts, and prayers, of certain high and saintly men.

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  to the glory of God the father. (Phil 2:5-11) [20] That tradition of radical criticism is about the self-giving emptiness of Jesus, about dominion through the loss of dominion, and about fullness coming only by self-emptying. The emptying is not to be related to self-negating meditation, for it is a thoroughly political image concerned with the willing surrender of power; it is the very thing kings cannot do and yet remain kings. Thus the entire royal self-understanding is refuted. The empty one who willingly surrendered power for obedience is the ultimately powerful one who can permit humanness where no other has authority to do so. The Politics of Justice and Compassion The crucifixion, then, is not an odd event in the history of faith, although it is the decisive event. It is, rather, the full expression of dismantling that has been practiced and insisted upon in the prophetic tradition since Moses confronted Pharaoh. As with Moses, so Jesus’ ministry and death opposed the politics of oppression with the politics of justice and compassion. As with Moses, so Jesus’ ministry and death contradicted the religion of God’s captivity with the freedom of God to bring life where he will, even in the face of death. The cross is the ultimate metaphor of prophetic criticism because it means the end of the old consciousness that brings death on everyone. The crucifixion articulates God’s odd freedom, his strange justice, and his peculiar power. It is this freedom (read religion of God’s freedom), justice (read economics of sharing), and power (read politics of justice) that break the power of the old age and bring it to death. Without the cross, prophetic imagination will likely be as strident and as destructive as that which it criticizes. The cross is the assurance that effective prophetic criticism is done not by an outsider but always by one who must embrace the grief, enter into the death, and know the pain of the criticized one. Prophetic criticism aims to create an alternative consciousness with its own rhetoric and field of perception. That alternative consciousness, unless the criticism is to be superficial and external, has to do with the cross. Douglas John Hall has explored how we might think about this, suggesting that creative criticism must be ethically pertinent and premised on our own embrace of negativity. [21] This kind of prophetic criticism does not lightly offer alternatives, does not mouth assurances, and does not provide redemptive social policy. It knows that only those who mourn can be comforted, and so it first asks about how to mourn seriously and faithfully for the world passing away. Jesus understood and embodied that anguish Jeremiah felt so poignantly. 1 . That same contrast and alternative between powerful king and new claimant is presented in the

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  pointed hour, and that she had performed a manifest miracle, inasmuch as by a single word she had cured a man of a malady for which all the faculty could find no remedy. The evening he so longed for being come, he went to the trysting-place with a joy so extreme that, as it could not augment, it could not of necessity but di- minish and come to an end. He had not long to wait for her he loved more than his soul ; nor did he waste time in making long speeches. The fire that consumed him made him rush promptly to the pleasure he prom- ised himself, and which he could hardly believe was within his reach. Too much intoxicated with love and volup- tuous delight, and thinking he had found the remedy that would prolong his life, he found that which hastened his death ; for heedless of himself in his ardent passion for his mistress, he did not perceive that his arm had come unbound. The wound opened afresh, and the poor gentleman lost so much blood that he was quite bathed in it. Believing that the excess he had indulged in was the cause of his lassitude, he attempted to return home. Then love, which had too much united them, so dealt with him that on quitting his mistress his soul at the same time quitted his body. He had lost so much blood that he fell dead at the lady's feet. The awful surprise, and the thought of what she had lost in so perfect a lover, of whose death she was the sole cause, put her beside herself. Reflecting, besides, on the shame that would devolve on her if a dead body was found in the house with her, she called to her aid a trusty woman-servant, and they carried the body into the street. But not choosing to leave it alone, she took the sword of the deceased, and being resolved to follow bis destiny, and punish her heart, which was the cause of her calamity, she pierced herself with the sword, and Fifth day:\ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 423 fell dead on her lover's body. That sad spectacle was the first thing that met the eyes of her father and mother when they came out of their house in the morning. Af- ter the lamentations due to so tragic an event, they had them both interred together. This, ladies, was an extreme disaster, which could only be ascribed to a love as extreme. "That is what I like to see," said Simontault ; "a love so reciprocal that when the one dies the other will not survive. Had I, by God's grace, found such a mis- tress, I believe that no man would ever have loved more perfectly than I."

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  They were cooing to each other and having a wonderful time—until the mother leaned in to nuzzle him and the baby, in his excitement, yanked on her hair. The mother was caught unawares and yelped with pain, pushing away his hand while her face contorted with anger. The baby let go immediately, and they pulled back physically from each other. For both of them the source of delight had become a source of distress. Obviously frightened, the baby brought his hands up to his face to block out the sight of his angry mother. The mother, in turn, realizing that her baby was upset, refocused on him, making soothing sounds in an attempt to smooth things over. The infant still had his eyes covered, but his craving for connection soon reemerged. He started peeking out to see if the coast was clear, while his mother reached toward him with a concerned expression. As she started to tickle his belly, he dropped his arms and broke into a happy giggle, and harmony was reestablished. Infant and mother were attuned again. This entire sequence of delight, rupture, repair, and new delight took slightly less than twelve seconds. Tronick and other researchers have now shown that when infants and caregivers are in sync on an emotional level, they’re also in sync physically.[6] Babies can’t regulate their own emotional states, much less the changes in heart rate, hormone levels, and nervous-system activity that accompany emotions. When a child is in sync with his caregiver, his sense of joy and connection is reflected in his steady heartbeat and breathing and a low level of stress hormones. His body is calm; so are his emotions. The moment this music is disrupted—as it often is in the course of a normal day—all these physiological factors change as well. You can tell equilibrium has been restored when the physiology calms down. We soothe newborns, but parents soon start teaching their children to tolerate higher levels of arousal, a job that is often assigned to fathers. (I once heard the psychologist John Gottman say, “Mothers stroke, and fathers poke.”) Learning how to manage arousal is a key life skill, and parents must do it for babies before babies can do it for themselves. If that gnawing sensation in his belly makes a baby cry, the breast or bottle arrives. If he’s scared, someone holds and rocks him until he calms down. If his bowels erupt, someone comes to make him clean and dry. Associating intense sensations with safety, comfort, and mastery is the foundation of self-regulation, self-soothing, and self-nurture, a theme to which I return throughout this book.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  The feminist theorist Germaine Greer wrote about the treatment of her father’s PTSD after World War II: “When [the medical officers] examined men exhibiting severe disturbances they almost invariably found the root cause in pre-war experience: the sick men were not first-grade fighting material.…The military proposition is [that it is] not war which makes men sick, but that sick men can not fight wars.”[14] It seems unlikely the doctors did her father any good, but Greer’s efforts to come to grips with his suffering undoubtedly helped fuel her exploration of sexual domination in all its ugly manifestations of rape, incest, and domestic violence. When I worked at the VA, I was puzzled that the vast majority of the patients we saw on the psychiatry service were young, recently discharged Vietnam veterans, while the corridors and elevators that led to the medical departments were filled by old men. Curious about this disparity, I conducted a survey of the World War II veterans in the medical clinics in 1983. The vast majority of them scored positive for PTSD on the rating scales that I administered, but their treatment focused on medical rather than psychiatric complaints. These vets communicated their distress via stomach cramps and chest pains rather than with nightmares and rage, from which, my research showed, they also suffered. Doctors shape how their patients communicate their distress: When a patient complains about terrifying nightmares and his doctor orders a chest X-ray, the patient realizes that he’ll get better care if he focuses on his physical problems. Like my relatives who fought in or were captured during World War II, most of these men were extremely reluctant to share their experiences. My sense was that neither the doctors nor their patients wanted to revisit the war. However, military and civilian leaders came away from World War II with important lessons that the previous generation had failed to grasp. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, the United States helped rebuild Europe by means of the Marshall Plan, which formed the economic foundation of the next fifty years of relative peace. At home, the GI Bill provided millions of veterans with educations and home mortgages, which promoted general economic well-being and created a broad-based, well-educated middle class. The armed forces led the nation in racial integration and opportunity. The Veterans Administration built facilities nationwide to help combat veterans with their health care. Still, with all this thoughtful attention to the returning veterans, the psychological scars of war went unrecognized, and traumatic neuroses disappeared entirely from official psychiatric nomenclature. The last scientific writing on combat trauma after World War II appeared in 1947.[15]

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  18. Filling in the Holes: Creating Structures 19. Applied Neuroscience: Rewiring the Fear-Driven Mind with Brain/Computer Interface Technology 20. Finding Your Voice: Communal Rhythms and Theater Epilogue: Choices to Be Made Acknowledgments appendix: Consensus Proposed Criteria for Developmental Trauma Disorder Resources Further Reading Notes Index _154510493_ To my patients, who kept the score and were the textbook. PrologueFacing Trauma One does not have to be a combat soldier, or visit a refugee camp in Syria or the Congo to encounter trauma. Trauma happens to us, our friends, our families, and our neighbors. Research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown that one in five Americans was sexually molested as a child; one in four was beaten by a parent to the point of a mark being left on their body; and one in three couples engages in physical violence. A quarter of us grew up with alcoholic relatives, and one out of eight witnessed their mother being beaten or hit.[1] As human beings we belong to an extremely resilient species. Since time immemorial we have rebounded from our relentless wars, countless disasters (both natural and man-made), and the violence and betrayal in our own lives. But traumatic experiences do leave traces, whether on a large scale (on our histories and cultures) or close to home, on our families, with dark secrets being imperceptibly passed down through generations. They also leave traces on our minds and emotions, on our capacity for joy and intimacy, and even on our biology and immune systems. Trauma affects not only those who are directly exposed to it, but also those around them. Soldiers returning home from combat may frighten their families with their rages and emotional absence. The wives of men who suffer from PTSD tend to become depressed, and the children of depressed mothers are at risk of growing up insecure and anxious. Having been exposed to family violence as a child often makes it difficult to establish stable, trusting relationships as an adult. Trauma, by definition, is unbearable and intolerable. Most rape victims, combat soldiers, and children who have been molested become so upset when they think about what they experienced that they try to push it out of their minds, trying to act as if nothing happened, and move on. It takes tremendous energy to keep functioning while carrying the memory of terror, and the shame of utter weakness and vulnerability.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  Another survivor, Charlotte Delbo, describes her dual existence after Auschwitz: “[T]he ‘self’ who was in the camp isn’t me, isn’t the person who is here, opposite you. No, it’s too unbelievable. And everything that happened to this other ‘self,’ the one from Auschwitz, doesn’t touch me now, me, doesn’t concern me, so distinct are deep memory and common memory.…Without this split, I wouldn’t have been able to come back to life.”[29] She comments that even words have a dual meaning: “Otherwise, someone [in the camps] who has been tormented by thirst for weeks would never again be able to say: ‘I’m thirsty. Let’s make a cup of tea.’ Thirst [after the war] has once more become a currently used term. On the other hand, if I dream of the thirst I felt in Birkenau [the extermination facilities in Auschwitz], I see myself as I was then, haggard, bereft of reason, tottering.”[30] Langer hauntingly concludes, “Who can find a proper grave for such damaged mosaics of the mind, where they may rest in pieces? Life goes on, but in two temporal directions at once, the future unable to escape the grip of a memory laden with grief.”[31] The essence of trauma is that it is overwhelming, unbelievable, and unbearable. Each patient demands that we suspend our sense of what is normal and accept that we are dealing with a dual reality: the reality of a relatively secure and predictable present that lives side by side with a ruinous, ever-present past. Nancy’s StoryFew patients have put that duality into words as vividly as Nancy, the director of nursing in a Midwestern hospital who came to Boston several times to consult with me. Shortly after the birth of her third child, Nancy underwent what is usually routine outpatient surgery, a laparoscopic tubal ligation in which the fallopian tubes are cauterized to prevent future pregnancies. However, because she was given insufficient anesthesia, she awakened after the operation began and remained aware nearly to the end, at times falling into what she called “a light sleep” or “dream,” at times experiencing the full horror of her situation. She was unable to alert the OR team by moving or crying out because she had been given a standard muscle relaxant to prevent muscle contractions during surgery. Some degree of “anesthesia awareness” is now estimated to occur in approximately thirty thousand surgical patients in the United States every year,[32] and I had previously testified on behalf of several people who were traumatized by the experience. Nancy, however, did not want to sue her surgeon or anesthetist. Her entire focus was on bringing the reality of her trauma to consciousness so that she could free herself from its intrusions into her everyday life. I’d like to end this chapter by sharing several passages from a remarkable series of e-mails in which she described her grueling journey to recovery.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  There was at Amboise a saddler named Brimbau- dier, who worked for the Queen of Navarre. It was enough to see the man's red nose to be assured that he was more a servant to Bacchus than to Diana. He had married a worthy woman, with whom he was very well satisfied, and who managed his children and his house hold with great discretion. One day he was told that his good wife was very ill, at which he was greatly af- flicted. He went home with speed, and found her so far gone that she had more need of a confessor than of a doctor, whereat he made the most doleful lamentations that ever were heard ; but to report them properly one ought to speak thick like him ; but it would be better still to paint one's face. After he had rendered her all the good offices he could, she asked for the cross, which was brought her. The good man, seeing this, threw ,^8 THE HEPTAMRRON OF THE [A^ovel 71. himself on a bed howling and crying, and ejaculating, with his thick tongue, " O Lord, I am losing my poor wife. Was there ev^r such a misfortune ? What shall I do ? " and so forth. At last, there being no one in the room but a young servant, rather a good-looking girl, he called her to him in a faint voice, and said, " I am dying, my dear, and worse than if I was dead all out, to see your mistress dying. I know not what to say or do, only that I look for help to you, and beg you to take care of my house and my children. Take the keys that hang at my side ; do everything in the house for the best, for I am not in a condition to attend to such things." The poor girl pitied and tried to comfort him, beg- eing; him not to be so cast down, lest besides losing her mistress she should lose her good master also. " It can't be, my dear," said he, " for I am dying. See how cold my face is ; put your cheeks to mine to warm them." As she did so he put his hand on her bosom, whereat she offered to make some difficulty, but he begged her not to be alarmed, for they must by all means see each other more closely. Thereupon he laid hold of her, and threw her on the bed. His wife, who was left alone with the cross and the holy water, and who had not spoken for two days, began to cry out, as well as her feeble voice enabled her, " Ah ! ah ! ah ! I am not dead yet ! " And threatening them with her hand, she repeated, " Wicked wretches, I am not dead yet ! "

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  Jeremiah In this context I suggest Jeremiah as the clearest model for prophetic imagination and ministry. He is a paradigm for those who address the numb and denying posture of people who do not want to know what they have or what their neighbors have. Jeremiah is frequently misunderstood as a doomsday spokesman or a pitiful man who had a grudge and sat around crying; but his public and personal grief was for another reason and served another purpose. Jeremiah embodies the alternative consciousness of Moses in the face of the denying king. [9] He grieves the grief of Judah because he knows what the king refuses to know. It is clear that Jeremiah did not in anger heap scorn on Judah but rather articulated what was in fact present in the community whether they acknowledged it or not. He articulated what the community had to deny in order to continue the self-deception of achievable satiation. He affirmed that all the satiation was a quick eating of self to death. Jeremiah knew long before the others that the end was coming and that God had had enough of indifferent affluence, cynical oppression, and presumptive religion. He knew that the freedom of God had been so grossly violated (as in Genesis 2–3) that death was at the door and would not pass over. The prophets do not ask much or expect much. In his grieving, Jeremiah asked only that the royal community face up to its real experience, so close to the end. What both prophet and king knew was that to experience that reality was in fact to cease to be king. The grief of Jeremiah was at two levels. First, it was the grief he grieved for the end of his people. And that was genuine grief because he cared about this people and he knew that God cared about this people. But the second dimension of his grief, more intense, was because no one would listen and no one would see what was so transparent to him. So his grief was kept sharp and painful because he had to face regularly the royal consciousness, which insisted “peace, peace” when apparently only he knew there was no peace. I think I do not exaggerate or overstate here. My judgment is that nearly every situation of ministry includes this component of deception and the terrible dread of letting

• From White Oleander (1999)

  I couldn’t find words, I had no words. In the courtroom she wore a white shirt. I saw that shirt when I was awake and I saw it when I slept. I saw her on the stand in that shirt, her eyes blank as a doll’s. I saw her back in that white shirt walking away. Thirty-five to life, someone said. I came home and counted roses, and slept. WHEN I WAS AWAKE , I tried to remember the things she taught me. We were the wands. We hung our gods from trees. Never let a man stay the night. Don’t forget who you are. But I couldn’t remember. I was the disability girl, stones in my mouth, lost on the battlefield, plastic sheets on the bed. I was the laundry monitor, I helped the niece take the laundry to the Laundromat. I watched the laundry go around. I liked the smell of it, it made me feel safe. I slept until sleep seemed like waking and waking like sleep. Sometimes I lay on my bed in the room with the roses and watched the girl in the other bed make scar tattoos on her ashy dark skin with a safety pin, a diaper pin with a yellow duck. She opened her skin in lines and loops. It healed over into pink pillowy tissue. She opened them again. It took me a while, but finally I understood. She wanted it to show. I dreamed my mother was hunting me in the burnt-out city, blind, relentless. The whole truth and nothing but the truth . I wanted to lie, but the words deserted me. She was the one who always spoke for us. She was the goddess who threw out the golden apples. They would stoop to pick them up, and we’d make our escape. But when I reached into my pocket, there was only dust and dried leaves. I had nothing to protect her with, to cover her naked body. I had condemned her by my silence, condemned us both. ONE DAY I woke to find the girl from the other bed going through my drawer in the dresser. Looking at a book, flicking through the pages. My mother’s book. My slender, naked mother, alone among the blackshirts. She was pawing my mother’s words. “Get out of my stuff,” I said. The girl looked up at me, startled. She didn’t know I could talk. We had been in this room for months now and I’d never said a word. “Put it back,” I said. She broke out in a grin. Grabbed a page, crumpled it and tore it out of the book, watching me. What would I do. My mother’s words in her scaly-knuckled hand. What would I do, what would I do. She took another page, tore it out and stuffed it in her mouth, the pieces hanging from her blistered lips, grinning. I fell on her, knocked her down.

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  Jesus’ Crucifixion It is the crucifixion of Jesus that is the decisive criticism of the royal consciousness. The crucifixion of Jesus is not to be understood simply in good liberal fashion as the sacrifice of a noble man, nor should we too quickly assign a cultic, priestly theory of atonement to the event. Rather, we might see in the crucifixion of Jesus the ultimate act of prophetic criticism in which Jesus announces the end of a world of death (the same announcement as that of Jeremiah) and takes the death into his own person. Therefore we say that the ultimate criticism is that God embraces the death that God’s people must die. [16] The criticism consists not in standing over against but in standing with; the ultimate criticism is not one of triumphant indignation but one of the passion and compassion that completely and irresistibly undermine the world of competence and competition. The contrast is stark and total: this passionate man set in the midst of numbed Jerusalem. And only the passion can finally penetrate the numbness . Passion Announcements. The radical criticism embodied in the crucifixion can be discerned in the “passion announcements” of Mark’s Gospel: And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. (Mark 8:31) “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” (9:31) “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise.” (10:33-34) There is no more radical criticism than these statements, for they announce that the power of God takes the form of death and that real well-being and victory only appear via death. So the sayings dismantle the dominant theories of power by asserting that all such would-be power is in fact no-power. Thus the passion

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  Here the weeping is over Jerusalem, beloved city of God. Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem, like his weeping over Lazarus, is a sharing in an anguish unto death. The difference is that everyone knew Lazarus was dead, and Jesus raised him to new life. The grieving was finished for Lazarus, whereas everyone thought Jerusalem was alive, and he grieved the death of the city. The grief over the city is ironic because Jerusalem is the main sponsor of numbness and lives itself in denial of grief. Indeed, the governors in Jerusalem want especially to keep the grieving from happening because they cannot and do not wish to acknowledge the end. The grief of Jesus, like the grief of Jeremiah (notice that Luke 19:43 is reminiscent of Jer 6:6), is that this center of promise is now ended and bankrupt. And so the words of Jesus describe the destruction. In the Matthean counterpart, the grief over Jerusalem is preceded by a series of woes (Matt 23:13-33); but woes serve the same purpose, announcing a grieving over death. [15] The compassion of Jesus has two sides. On the one hand, it is a frontal attack upon the dominant culture. He grieves over the death of the old world and the old city even when most did not know it was dead. His criticism is not in anger but in pathos, for none loved the city more. Nonetheless, he knew about the deathly conflict between his own mission and the dominant culture of Jerusalem, for he understood early that he must die at the hands of Jerusalem. Jesus’ compassion is not only criticism of what is deathly, for in his criticism and solidarity he evidences power to transform. So his embrace of the death his people are dying leads to a restored Lazarus, to healed people, to fed crowds, to a cared-for man, to an accepted son, and to good news for the harassed and helpless. The heavy criticism of Jesus holds the offer and possibility of an alternative beginning.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Back to the grind and the groceries. But what happens when the groceries remind us of that time we made root beer floats together and watched the Chicago Cubs win their first World Series championship since 1908? I’ll tell you, we crack wide open and don’t feel OK or normal talking about our anguish. Instead, we go radio silent. For me, there was this sense that if I talked about my grief past an acceptable period of time (whatever that is), I would seem childish and immature or, worse, tedious. Those beliefs kept me silenced. I didn’t want to be a burden or a bummer; no one does. In the wake of my dad’s passing, there’s a part of me that will never be OK. There’s a hole in my heart that will always need my care and attention. I can’t fully move on and I never will. But in embracing my grief, I can begin to imagine what moving forward might look like. While there’s no time limit on grief, we also don’t want it to dominate our lives to the point that there isn’t room for much else. The hope is to extend grief an ongoing invitation to come home whenever it needs comfort—just like a loving parent would offer their child when they needed support. Even when we’re grown-ass humans, we all still have moments of feeling like little kids on the inside. When we ache, we want to be soothed, especially by our primary caregivers. We want to know that it will be OK, and so will we. The loss of our parents is one of the most destabilizing and emotionally significant experiences we will ever go through. It kicks up deep feelings of fear and abandonment, wounds and behaviors that are passed down in our very DNA. It changes both our lives and our brains (which we’ll explore in a coming chapter). It’s OK to actually feel the immensity of this loss. It doesn’t go away, just like our love doesn’t go away. But over time, the waves get easier to surf. Especially when we remember the love as much as, if not more than, the grief. CASH-ONLY BAR Sometime after the jackhammer incident, when the veil kept getting thinner by the day, Dad caught me as I was walking out of his room. “Kristin?” he called. His voice was soft but serious. Assuming he needed water or more pain meds, I turned and said, “Yeah, Dad?” “Remember,” he shared in his morphine haze, “it’s a cash-only bar.” Good to know, Dad. Now, I don’t know where we go when we die or how we get there, but apparently they don’t take credit cards.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  I’ll say it again: basically every weird thing going on is normal. Emulate the energy you admire: Think about a person whose energy you love to be around, someone who makes you feel really good. You leave your time together feeling more buoyant than when you arrived. For me, people like that exude calmness and joy, they’re easy to talk to, and they’re wonderful listeners. This is the kind of energy we want to emulate when we’re lucky enough to be with someone who is transitioning. Oh, and one more thing. You’re doing a really great job with this really tough stuff. If I could hug you right now, I would. Let’s keep going. CHAPTER 10 L OVE I S L OVE , G RIEF I S G RIEF How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. — WINNIE-THE-POOH Grief is nothing if not humbling. We’re forced to come face-to-face with our pain, in all its complicated, braided-together, grief-train glory, to reckon with the messy parts of ourselves that are not so attractive, like the judgments we sometimes harbor. In grief circles, I’ve sometimes found that there’s a lens through which our pain is filtered and even ranked. While there are certainly different degrees of complicated grief and tragic outcomes, one thing is clear: you do you . What other people think of your grief is none of your business; what matters is what you think. Whatever your heart is feeling matters. As any pet owner who has mourned their beloved Fluffy heading over the rainbow bridge knows, the world is divided into two kinds of people: those who get it and those who don’t. I was reminded of this when my dog Buddy died in 2016, just weeks before my dad was diagnosed with cancer. Buddy’s loss felt as real as anything . . . because it was. Pain is pain. With that in mind, this chapter is for anyone who’s ever felt sheepish about grieving something deemed “not significant.” IN DOGS WE TRUST While my great-great-grandfather put his bet on God, I choose dogs. Dogs (or any pets, for that matter) are our chosen family. They don’t have the baggage that comes with actually being related to you. They don’t ask you to drive them places and give them money. They don’t marry deadbeats or leave their dirty underwear on the floor. And when you want to binge-watch Judge Judy , they’re more than happy to join you—no complaints. To them, you are Christmas morning. They’re always ecstatic to be with you. Whether you’ve been gone for a week or you’re just returning from changing a load of laundry, it’s like, OMG, you’re back! It’s sooo good to see you! Truth be told, sometimes I love animals more than people. Maybe it’s because as a child, I had more fourlegged friends than two-legged ones.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  The nurses taught us how to use the “comfort kit” they’d made for us—a white paper bag filled with morphine and other prescriptions to help with any breakthrough pain. Comfort kits are designed to keep patients out of the hospital—the last place Dad wanted to be. According to the Hospice Foundation of America, many individuals and families could benefit from hospice care sooner than they get it, but people don’t often know how to access the services. Some are afraid to discuss it or don’t want to concede “defeat.” Some wait for a physician to suggest it, unaware that they can initiate care on their own, as long as eligibility criteria are met. A person doesn’t have to be bedridden or in their final days of life to receive care, either. When there’s a significant decline in health, and comfort is the only thing left to give, hospice is there. Here in the U.S., hospice is covered by Medicare, and in almost every state by Medicaid. It’s also covered by most private health insurance to varying degrees. BE MINDFUL OF YOUR ENERGY Another thing the hospice team taught us was to be mindful of our own energy when we were in his space. “Though he is now in the active phase of dying, just because he can’t talk to you, doesn’t mean he can’t hear you or pick up the vibes. Talk to him. Tell him you love him. But don’t bring stress here or talk about things you wouldn’t talk about in front of him.” This made me realize just how sensitive we all are to energy—especially when our own energy is diminished. We absorb vibes like little sponges. We’re impacted by feelings and moods (ours and other people’s). That’s why learning to care for and protect our energy is so valuable. When friends and family got overly emotional, Dad’s pain would increase. He’d be agitated and need more morphine when they left. I suspect it was because he took on their pain in addition to his own but was totally incapable of doing anything about it. Some folks understood when we’d asked them to be mindful of the energy they brought into the room; others didn’t (they weren’t allowed back). Dad’s coma-like state lasted five days. I sat with him and caught him up on “what was doin’,’’ just as I would when he could respond. “The next-door neighbors painted their house white; it looks really nice.” Or I’d just quietly work on a jigsaw puzzle, keeping him company. “Dad, I’m having a heck of a time finding this one piece,” I’d say. “It’s probably right in front of my eyes, but damn if I can see it.” Turns out I’d never find it. The puzzle would never be complete again, and neither would our family. At a certain point, those transitioning stop eating and drinking. I mean, I guess I knew that.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  After about three months in country Tom led his squad on a foot patrol through a rice paddy just before sunset. Suddenly a hail of gunfire spurted from the green wall of the surrounding jungle, hitting the men around him one by one. Tom told me how he had looked on in helpless horror as all the members of his platoon were killed or wounded in a matter of seconds. He would never get one image out of his mind: the back of Alex’s head as he lay facedown in the rice paddy, his feet in the air. Tom wept as he recalled, “He was the only real friend I ever had.” Afterward, at night, Tom continued to hear the screams of his men and to see their bodies falling into the water. Any sounds, smells, or images that reminded him of the ambush (like the popping of firecrackers on the Fourth of July) made him feel just as paralyzed, terrified, and enraged as he had the day the helicopter evacuated him from the rice paddy. Maybe even worse for Tom than the recurrent flashbacks of the ambush was the memory of what happened afterward. I could easily imagine how Tom’s rage about his friend’s death had led to the calamity that followed. It took him months of dealing with his paralyzing shame before he could tell me about it. Since time immemorial veterans, like Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, have responded to the death of their comrades with unspeakable acts of revenge. The day after the ambush Tom went into a frenzy to a neighboring village, killing children, shooting an innocent farmer, and raping a Vietnamese woman. After that it became truly impossible for him to go home again in any meaningful way. How can you face your sweetheart and tell her that you brutally raped a woman just like her, or watch your son take his first step when you are reminded of the child you murdered? Tom experienced the death of Alex as if part of himself had been forever destroyed—the part that was good and honorable and trustworthy. Trauma, whether it is the result of something done to you or something you yourself have done, almost always makes it difficult to engage in intimate relationships. After you have experienced something so unspeakable, how do you learn to trust yourself or anyone else again? Or, conversely, how can you surrender to an intimate relationship after you have been brutally violated?

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  Foreword The bibliography of works by Walter Brueggemann is astounding, surely unparalleled among his peers. He has published at a dizzying pace on a vast array of subjects in multiple genres, including works of critical scholarship, reviews, sermons, poetic prayers, and more. That so much of Brueggemann’s variegated and sprawling corpus is already anticipated in this slim book is therefore astonishing. In his “Preface to the Revised Edition” (2001), Brueggemann declares that this book was his “first publication in which I more- or-less found my own voice.” At the risk of oversimplification, I think that the argument that he voices here involves a few clear steps. Brueggemann approaches exploitative societies as sustained by various ideologies. Such ideologies silence any actual or imagined threats to the reigning inequities that consolidate wealth and power for the benefit of a few to the exclusion of others. The prophetic task begins with grief that names the realities within such a social situation of pain, loss, fear, resentment, and antagonism. Such mourning enables a community to break through the denial, numbness, and inhumanity of exploitation. As the prophetic cry loosens the grip of dominant ideologies, it also energizes and empowers a community out of indifference into action. Now engaged, hope becomes possible not only for healing but also for an alternative mode of life, which prophets must articulate and enact with artistry potent enough to resist domestication. Prophetic imagination proceeds through these three basic steps: (1) it refuses denial and penetrates despair with honest cries over pain and loss that result from social injustices; (2) it overcomes amnesia by drawing on ancient, artistic traditions that energize the community to imagine and live into a more just order; and (3) it ends in hope and gratitude for the surprising gift of an emancipated future. These steps have remained

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  Jesus had understands Jeremiah. Ecclesiastes said only that there is a time to weep and a time to laugh; but Jesus sees that only those who mourn will be comforted (Matt 5:4). Only those who embrace the reality of death will receive the new life. Implicit in his statement is that those who do not mourn will not be comforted and those who do not face the endings will not receive the beginnings. The alternative community knows it need not engage in deception. It can stand in solidarity with the dying, for those are the ones who hope. Jeremiah, faithful to Moses, understood what numb people will never know, that only grievers can experience their experiences and move on. I used to think it curious that, when having to quote scripture on demand, someone would inevitably say, “Jesus wept.” It is usually done as a gimmick to avoid having to quote a longer passage. But now I understand the depth of that verse. Jesus knew what we numb ones must always learn again: (a) that weeping must be real because endings are real; and (b) that weeping permits newness. His weeping permits the kingdom to come. Such weeping is a radical criticism, a fearful dismantling because it means the end of all machismo; weeping is something kings rarely do without losing their thrones. Yet the loss of thrones is precisely what is called for in radical criticism. 1 . Rubem A. Alves has said this most eloquently in Tomorrow’s Child: Imagination, Creativity, and the Rebirth of Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). The practice of imagination is a subversive activity not because it yields concrete acts of defiance (which it may), but because it keeps the present provisional and refuses to absolutize it. The practice of a historical imagination maintains the possibility of a future that is not continuous from the present. It is the intent of every totalitarian regime to force the future to be only an unquestioned continuation of the present. ↵ 2 . As indicated in chapter 2, reference to Ecclesiastes here means no questioning of the conventional Hellenistic dating but only the observance that the cynicism of that period found a correlate in the cynicism of the Solomonic environment. Socially, the two periods are to be contrasted for Israel; but in terms of the human spirit, the two seem to come to the same sorry situation. ↵ 3 . R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience (New York: Pantheon, 1967), chap. 1. His programmatic statement is: “If our experience is destroyed, our behavior will be destructive” (12). The contrast between experience and behavior illuminates the recent statement of Martin Marty, A Nation of Behavers (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1976). It is the argument of this chapter that Israel’s

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Clifford thought of the way he had been betrayed by the woman Connie, and in a contagion of grief, tears filled his eyes and began to run down his cheeks. He was weeping for himself. Mrs. Bolton, as soon as she saw the tears running over his blank face, hastily wiped her own wet cheeks on her little handkerchief, and leaned towards him. "Now don't you fret, Sir Clifford!" she said, in a luxury of emotion. "Now don't you fret, don't, you'll only do yourself an injury!" His body shivered suddenly in an indrawn breath of silent sobbing, and the tears ran quicker down his face. She laid her hand on his arm, and her own tears fell again. Again the shiver went through him, like a convulsion, and she laid her arm round his shoulder. "There, there! There, there! Don't you fret, then, don't you! Don't you fret!" she moaned to him, while her own tears fell. And she drew him to her, and held her arms round his great shoulders, while he laid his face on her bosom and sobbed, shaking and hulking his huge shoulders, whilst she softly stroked his dusky-blond hair and said: "There! There! There! There then! There then! Never you mind! Never you mind, then!" And he put his arms round her and clung to her like a child, wetting the bib of her starched white apron, and the bosom of her pale-blue cotton dress, with his tears. He had let himself go altogether, at last. So at length she kissed him, and rocked him on her bosom, and in her heart she said to herself: "Oh, Sir Clifford! Oh, high and mighty Chatterleys! Is this what you've come down to!" And finally he even went to sleep, like a child. And she felt worn-out, and went to her own room, where she laughed and cried at once, with a hysteria of her own. It was so ridiculous! It was so awful! such a come-down! so shameful! And it _was_ so upsetting as well. After this, Clifford became like a child with Mrs. Bolton. He would hold her hand, and rest his head on her breast, and when she once lightly kissed him, he said: "Yes! Do kiss me! Do kiss me!" And when she sponged his great blond body, he would say the same: "Do kiss me!" and she would lightly kiss his body, anywhere, half in mockery. And he lay with a queer, blank face like a child, with a bit of the wonderment of a child. And he would gaze on her with wide, childish eyes, in a relaxation of madonna-worship. It was sheer relaxation on his part, letting go all his manhood, and sinking back to a childish position that was really perverse. And then he would put his hand into her bosom and feel her breasts, and kiss them in exaltation, the exaltation of perversity of being a child when he was a man.