Reading #1 (721) They Are With Us Still Kathleen McTigue
(Reader will read the non-italicized text)
(Everyone join in together for the italicized text)
In the struggles we choose for ourselves, in the ways we move forward in our lives and bring our world forward with us,
It is right to remember the names of those who gave us strength in this choice of living. It is right to name the power of hard lives well-lived.
We share a history of those lives. We belong to the same motion.
They too were strengthened by what had gone before. They too were drawn on by vision of what might come to be.
Those who lived before us, who struggled for justice and suffered injustice before us, have not melted into the dust, and have not disappeared.
They are with us still. The lives they lived hold us steady.
Their words remind us and call us back to ourselves. Their courage and love evoke our own.
We, the living, carry them with us: we are their voices, their hands and their hearts.
We take them with us, and with them choose the deeper path of living.
Reading #2 Why Should I Cry For You? Gordon Sumner (Sting)
Under the dog star sail
Over the reefs of moonshine
Under the skies of fall
North, Northwest, the stones of Faroe
Under the Arctic fire
Over the seas of silence
Hauling on frozen ropes
Fall all my days remaining
But would north be true?
All colors bleed to red
Asleep on the ocean’s bed
Drifting in empty seas
For all my days remaining
But would north be true?
Why should I? Why should I cry for you?
Dark angels follow me
Over a godless sea
Mountains of endless falling,
For all my days remaining
What would be true?
Sometime I see your face,
The stars seem to lose their place
Why must I think of you?
Why must I? Why should I?
Why should I cry for you?
Why would you want me to?
And what would it mean to say,
That, “I loved you in my fashion”?
What would be true?
Why should I? Why should I cry for you?
Sermon Grief and Renewal
I had thought about using paper to write names of those we’ve recently lost and then burning the paper in a symbolic release. But we did that last week, and I have to confess, the two things that I on wrote on my paper that I thought I needed to let go of were stress and perfectionism….
Hopefully I’ve re-set the tone and expectations for this sermon; I really hope people weren’t expecting something along the lines of one of Matt’s wonderful and didactic sermons. I would like to begin with a memorable experience during my freshman year of college. I had just completed my first semester and was very pleased to find myself still academically eligible for the spring semester. Actually, I’d surpassed my expectations and was beginning to think this college stuff was a snap - much easier than High School. Then my academic advisor (an alumnus of the college, but who had no knowledge whatsoever of sciences courses that required laboratory time) suggested that, along with my biology, inorganic chemistry, and calculus courses, I should fill the final spot with a sociology course entitled Death and Dying. My advisor took the course when he was an undergraduate and told me that the course made a lasting impression on him and the professor was one of the best on campus. He was correct on both accounts – the professor was so good that he turned a simple lecture-style course into a near-death experience! This turn in my fortunes caught me completely by surprise. He skewered my logic and reason, ridiculed my writing style, left the disemboweled carcass of my papers outside of his office door, dripping red with corrections for all to see, and buried my GPA so deep, it took the rest of my college career to resuscitate it and give it a pulse. But even as I trudged back to my dorm, I wasn’t bitter. His critique, while scathing and without remorse, was accurate. As my academic advisor predicted, that course did make a lasting impression. I survived that semester (just barely). I don’t think it was so much, “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” It was more along the lines of a renewal of motivation, a renewal of personal adjustments, re-engaging with intellectual challenge, recognition of strengths and limitations, and an honest self-assessment – do I want to be here. As our culture so often makes a point of emphasizing in subtle, and not so subtle ways – I needed to dig down deep within myself and see what I was truly made of. But was that really the answer? Was that how my academic trial-by-fire and resurrection really happened?
This time of year is very emotionally charged because it is intertwined with a host of holidays celebrate around the world by family and friends, and the holidays that recognize the passing of time: Kwanza, Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice (Yule), the New Year; and let’s not lose sight of those birthdays, weddings, and anniversaries that often get overlooked by the bright lights and blaring commercialism. There is, of course, the anticipated change of seasons which often serves to highlight or elevate a feeling of loss – fewer hours of daylight, severe cold, and the bare limbs of trees that resemble skeletal remains of nature. But occasionally sometimes there is the occasional unexpected event that is a bit more jarring; you don’t get a chance to meet with friends over the holiday break, for the first time entire family is unable to come together and celebrate the holidays, family or friends move away, or even worse, a friend or family member passes away. Even if someone is frail or in poor health, we seem to expect that they will at least make it through the holiday and into the New Year. A loss at this time of the year still seems to catch people by surprise, no matter the warning signs, making the days seem that much grayer, the nights that much darker, and the wind that much colder.
Has anyone noticed the thriving market of self-help books and motivational gurus these days? Why do we seem to focus on the need to help ourselves? Is it that test of mythical proportions that we read about in so many books or see in movies - digging deep and finding what we are truly made of? “We can’t let IT beat us” (whatever IT might be). Or is it simply the Easy Button for recovery and renewal. Read a book or watch a video and it will all go back to the way it was. Psychological studies strongly support a need for the individual to recognize life-changing events, especially those that cause grief and/or pain. But once that loss or dramatic change is acknowledged, then what? Where does one go from there, especially if that loss involved a significant part of our existence, helped make us what we are today, or had the potential to help us to become more than what we are today? The desire to hang on to that memory is obvious and powerful.
Has anyone seen the recent PBS documentary This Emotional Life? I think it does a wonderful job of introducing us to the complexities of what it means to be happy and the challenges, social and biological, that often short-circuit that pursuit.
One particular part caught my attention; the classic study with monkeys and maternal separation performed in the 1950-60s by the psychologist Harry Harlow. When new-born monkeys were raised in isolation for a few months and then given a choice between two artificial surrogate mothers – one, a wire frame that provided milk (physical sustenance), and the other simply a frame covered in cloth – the infant monkeys choose the cloth-covered surrogate mother over the surrogate mother that provided food! The isolated infant monkeys also exhibited a range of disturbing social breakdowns. Harolow’s conclusion from these experiments: bonding is a basic survival need for animals, especially hominids. Starting at birth, “happiness” involves forming supportive social bonds. More recent research at the University of Wisconsin indicates formation of social bonds involves the hormone oxytocin – already known to be important during childbirth and for the stimulation of breast milk production; it is now also shown to act as a neurotransmitter in the central nervous system. Just the physical contact between parent and child soon after birth stimulates increased production of oxytocin in the child. And in most parents, this interaction also stimulates the same centers of the brain associated with essential needs, such as food and reproduction. Children who have experienced little if any social bonding during their early years (such as abandonment) do not show any significant increase in oxytocin. Children who exhibit severe social disorders show this same lack of oxytocin production, even with significant social interaction.
Why have I digressed from grief and renewal? There is growing evidence of significant biochemical reasons why we form social bonds and why some social bonds are more important to us than others. Early social interactions stimulate biochemical responses that seem to stimulate neural growth and connections. These connections, in turn, enhance our ability to respond to further social interaction, and the cycle continues. Specific types of social interactions initiate chemical signatures that create unique responses within each of us. Now suppose that these social interactions are removed. It becomes easier to understand why it is so difficult to deal with loss or dramatic change. Not easier to deal with, just easier to understand why attachment is so ingrained – whether that that bond had been supportive or antagonistic.
As you listened to today’s words and readings, I hope you’ve noticed an emphasis on the human element and the importance of human interaction. Some of the most successful approaches to dealing with grief and loss involve stepping out of our selves and interacting with others. Whether it involves struggling with grief caused by the death of a loved one, struggling with grief caused by addictions such as alcohol or food, or struggling with our own biochemical variation, renewal involves a series of steps that begin with recognizing the problem and then taking the very intimidating steps of reaching out to others for help or social bonds. As one very famous animated French chef – Auguste Gusteau – put it (Ratatouille), “If you focus on what you’ve left behind, you will never be able to see what lies ahead.” Successful transition and renewal eventually involves the critical step of turning from inner contemplation into the arms and minds of others. Whether we are cognoscente of a need to move forward, or it is the insight of others who encourage, entice, or cajole us into moving forward – at some point those two forces meet and help with the transition of renewal. I predict that if researchers perform a study comparing those who are successful in their transition to those who become mired in grief, in those who are successful they will find a positive correlation between forming new social bonds and re-establishing the production of critical neurotransmitters such as oxytocin.
Returning to my first year of college. After my out-of-student-body experience with the Death and Dying class, I returned with a renewed commitment to my college career. Was it because of some deep internal desire to prove that I had what it took? Perhaps. But what really kept me going and furthered my development in new and unexpected ways were the interactions I continued to make with my peers and other faculty. The formation of certain social bonds with friends who were experiencing similar struggles, and some who were battling even more complicated issues, cemented a desire to remain and a realization of what it would take to continue.
Please take a moment and look around. Notice the physical differences between each of you; biologist call that variation – height, eye color, facial features, to name just a few. Now try to imagine all of the biochemical variation that could possibly exist within each of us. I included the reading from Gordon Sumner (Sting) – Why should I Cry for You? - along with examples of children who are born with social skills that deviate from the average child in order to raise a question. Just because anecdotal and scientific evidence strongly supports the need to from social bonds in order to make the transition from grief to renewal, does that mean everyone must go through these stages after experiencing grief or loss? Is grieving a biological and cultural requirement for renewal? What if, do to some extenuating circumstance or biochemical variation, someone simply does not have need or the capacity to grieve. Should we drag them into the process? At what point, if at all, should we engage someone, and break that personal space to ask how they are doing or tell them they need help? Is grieving a right, a personal choice, or a necessity for renewal? These are all questions I don’t have answers for, but I hope will initiate some discussion during coffee hour or later in the day?
Finally, I would like everyone to think of a person (or persons) who they know fairly well, who you may have lost touch with for awhile, and would like to reconnect with. (Wait) Now make a promise to yourself to contact them by mail, phone, carrier pigeon, whatever, within the coming year. Make a point to reach out to those around you, build that social web of interaction and connections, see what lies ahead.
(Reader will read the non-italicized text)
(Everyone join in together for the italicized text)
In the struggles we choose for ourselves, in the ways we move forward in our lives and bring our world forward with us,
It is right to remember the names of those who gave us strength in this choice of living. It is right to name the power of hard lives well-lived.
We share a history of those lives. We belong to the same motion.
They too were strengthened by what had gone before. They too were drawn on by vision of what might come to be.
Those who lived before us, who struggled for justice and suffered injustice before us, have not melted into the dust, and have not disappeared.
They are with us still. The lives they lived hold us steady.
Their words remind us and call us back to ourselves. Their courage and love evoke our own.
We, the living, carry them with us: we are their voices, their hands and their hearts.
We take them with us, and with them choose the deeper path of living.
Reading #2 Why Should I Cry For You? Gordon Sumner (Sting)
Under the dog star sail
Over the reefs of moonshine
Under the skies of fall
North, Northwest, the stones of Faroe
Under the Arctic fire
Over the seas of silence
Hauling on frozen ropes
Fall all my days remaining
But would north be true?
All colors bleed to red
Asleep on the ocean’s bed
Drifting in empty seas
For all my days remaining
But would north be true?
Why should I? Why should I cry for you?
Dark angels follow me
Over a godless sea
Mountains of endless falling,
For all my days remaining
What would be true?
Sometime I see your face,
The stars seem to lose their place
Why must I think of you?
Why must I? Why should I?
Why should I cry for you?
Why would you want me to?
And what would it mean to say,
That, “I loved you in my fashion”?
What would be true?
Why should I? Why should I cry for you?
Sermon Grief and Renewal
I had thought about using paper to write names of those we’ve recently lost and then burning the paper in a symbolic release. But we did that last week, and I have to confess, the two things that I on wrote on my paper that I thought I needed to let go of were stress and perfectionism….
Hopefully I’ve re-set the tone and expectations for this sermon; I really hope people weren’t expecting something along the lines of one of Matt’s wonderful and didactic sermons. I would like to begin with a memorable experience during my freshman year of college. I had just completed my first semester and was very pleased to find myself still academically eligible for the spring semester. Actually, I’d surpassed my expectations and was beginning to think this college stuff was a snap - much easier than High School. Then my academic advisor (an alumnus of the college, but who had no knowledge whatsoever of sciences courses that required laboratory time) suggested that, along with my biology, inorganic chemistry, and calculus courses, I should fill the final spot with a sociology course entitled Death and Dying. My advisor took the course when he was an undergraduate and told me that the course made a lasting impression on him and the professor was one of the best on campus. He was correct on both accounts – the professor was so good that he turned a simple lecture-style course into a near-death experience! This turn in my fortunes caught me completely by surprise. He skewered my logic and reason, ridiculed my writing style, left the disemboweled carcass of my papers outside of his office door, dripping red with corrections for all to see, and buried my GPA so deep, it took the rest of my college career to resuscitate it and give it a pulse. But even as I trudged back to my dorm, I wasn’t bitter. His critique, while scathing and without remorse, was accurate. As my academic advisor predicted, that course did make a lasting impression. I survived that semester (just barely). I don’t think it was so much, “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” It was more along the lines of a renewal of motivation, a renewal of personal adjustments, re-engaging with intellectual challenge, recognition of strengths and limitations, and an honest self-assessment – do I want to be here. As our culture so often makes a point of emphasizing in subtle, and not so subtle ways – I needed to dig down deep within myself and see what I was truly made of. But was that really the answer? Was that how my academic trial-by-fire and resurrection really happened?
This time of year is very emotionally charged because it is intertwined with a host of holidays celebrate around the world by family and friends, and the holidays that recognize the passing of time: Kwanza, Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice (Yule), the New Year; and let’s not lose sight of those birthdays, weddings, and anniversaries that often get overlooked by the bright lights and blaring commercialism. There is, of course, the anticipated change of seasons which often serves to highlight or elevate a feeling of loss – fewer hours of daylight, severe cold, and the bare limbs of trees that resemble skeletal remains of nature. But occasionally sometimes there is the occasional unexpected event that is a bit more jarring; you don’t get a chance to meet with friends over the holiday break, for the first time entire family is unable to come together and celebrate the holidays, family or friends move away, or even worse, a friend or family member passes away. Even if someone is frail or in poor health, we seem to expect that they will at least make it through the holiday and into the New Year. A loss at this time of the year still seems to catch people by surprise, no matter the warning signs, making the days seem that much grayer, the nights that much darker, and the wind that much colder.
Has anyone noticed the thriving market of self-help books and motivational gurus these days? Why do we seem to focus on the need to help ourselves? Is it that test of mythical proportions that we read about in so many books or see in movies - digging deep and finding what we are truly made of? “We can’t let IT beat us” (whatever IT might be). Or is it simply the Easy Button for recovery and renewal. Read a book or watch a video and it will all go back to the way it was. Psychological studies strongly support a need for the individual to recognize life-changing events, especially those that cause grief and/or pain. But once that loss or dramatic change is acknowledged, then what? Where does one go from there, especially if that loss involved a significant part of our existence, helped make us what we are today, or had the potential to help us to become more than what we are today? The desire to hang on to that memory is obvious and powerful.
Has anyone seen the recent PBS documentary This Emotional Life? I think it does a wonderful job of introducing us to the complexities of what it means to be happy and the challenges, social and biological, that often short-circuit that pursuit.
One particular part caught my attention; the classic study with monkeys and maternal separation performed in the 1950-60s by the psychologist Harry Harlow. When new-born monkeys were raised in isolation for a few months and then given a choice between two artificial surrogate mothers – one, a wire frame that provided milk (physical sustenance), and the other simply a frame covered in cloth – the infant monkeys choose the cloth-covered surrogate mother over the surrogate mother that provided food! The isolated infant monkeys also exhibited a range of disturbing social breakdowns. Harolow’s conclusion from these experiments: bonding is a basic survival need for animals, especially hominids. Starting at birth, “happiness” involves forming supportive social bonds. More recent research at the University of Wisconsin indicates formation of social bonds involves the hormone oxytocin – already known to be important during childbirth and for the stimulation of breast milk production; it is now also shown to act as a neurotransmitter in the central nervous system. Just the physical contact between parent and child soon after birth stimulates increased production of oxytocin in the child. And in most parents, this interaction also stimulates the same centers of the brain associated with essential needs, such as food and reproduction. Children who have experienced little if any social bonding during their early years (such as abandonment) do not show any significant increase in oxytocin. Children who exhibit severe social disorders show this same lack of oxytocin production, even with significant social interaction.
Why have I digressed from grief and renewal? There is growing evidence of significant biochemical reasons why we form social bonds and why some social bonds are more important to us than others. Early social interactions stimulate biochemical responses that seem to stimulate neural growth and connections. These connections, in turn, enhance our ability to respond to further social interaction, and the cycle continues. Specific types of social interactions initiate chemical signatures that create unique responses within each of us. Now suppose that these social interactions are removed. It becomes easier to understand why it is so difficult to deal with loss or dramatic change. Not easier to deal with, just easier to understand why attachment is so ingrained – whether that that bond had been supportive or antagonistic.
As you listened to today’s words and readings, I hope you’ve noticed an emphasis on the human element and the importance of human interaction. Some of the most successful approaches to dealing with grief and loss involve stepping out of our selves and interacting with others. Whether it involves struggling with grief caused by the death of a loved one, struggling with grief caused by addictions such as alcohol or food, or struggling with our own biochemical variation, renewal involves a series of steps that begin with recognizing the problem and then taking the very intimidating steps of reaching out to others for help or social bonds. As one very famous animated French chef – Auguste Gusteau – put it (Ratatouille), “If you focus on what you’ve left behind, you will never be able to see what lies ahead.” Successful transition and renewal eventually involves the critical step of turning from inner contemplation into the arms and minds of others. Whether we are cognoscente of a need to move forward, or it is the insight of others who encourage, entice, or cajole us into moving forward – at some point those two forces meet and help with the transition of renewal. I predict that if researchers perform a study comparing those who are successful in their transition to those who become mired in grief, in those who are successful they will find a positive correlation between forming new social bonds and re-establishing the production of critical neurotransmitters such as oxytocin.
Returning to my first year of college. After my out-of-student-body experience with the Death and Dying class, I returned with a renewed commitment to my college career. Was it because of some deep internal desire to prove that I had what it took? Perhaps. But what really kept me going and furthered my development in new and unexpected ways were the interactions I continued to make with my peers and other faculty. The formation of certain social bonds with friends who were experiencing similar struggles, and some who were battling even more complicated issues, cemented a desire to remain and a realization of what it would take to continue.
Please take a moment and look around. Notice the physical differences between each of you; biologist call that variation – height, eye color, facial features, to name just a few. Now try to imagine all of the biochemical variation that could possibly exist within each of us. I included the reading from Gordon Sumner (Sting) – Why should I Cry for You? - along with examples of children who are born with social skills that deviate from the average child in order to raise a question. Just because anecdotal and scientific evidence strongly supports the need to from social bonds in order to make the transition from grief to renewal, does that mean everyone must go through these stages after experiencing grief or loss? Is grieving a biological and cultural requirement for renewal? What if, do to some extenuating circumstance or biochemical variation, someone simply does not have need or the capacity to grieve. Should we drag them into the process? At what point, if at all, should we engage someone, and break that personal space to ask how they are doing or tell them they need help? Is grieving a right, a personal choice, or a necessity for renewal? These are all questions I don’t have answers for, but I hope will initiate some discussion during coffee hour or later in the day?
Finally, I would like everyone to think of a person (or persons) who they know fairly well, who you may have lost touch with for awhile, and would like to reconnect with. (Wait) Now make a promise to yourself to contact them by mail, phone, carrier pigeon, whatever, within the coming year. Make a point to reach out to those around you, build that social web of interaction and connections, see what lies ahead.
