One of the things I love about this time in my life is the opportunity to do more social justice work than ever before. As part of that I decided to face an ugly fact and research my mother’s family’s slave holding. I figured the south being the south at the time, and power being power there were probably children born into slavery whose father was my uncle many generations back.
I found Landon Carter Haynes as my maternal several greats (though not great to me) uncle. Wiki has him written up at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landon_Carter_Haynes. His home, Tipton-Haynes Place is now an historic site in Jonson City, Tennessee. Landon Carter Haynes owed his step brother George (presumably Haynes), and indeed put him up as collateral for personal debts. George was not actually sold through that process, however. George returned to his half brother/owner’s home and had a son named Habakkuk. I am looking for decedents of George and have hit a hard wall. Tipton-Haynes house was happy to put me on a register of decedents, along with dozens if not hundreds of white decedents, and not a single African American decedent. What is that about? African American’s not reaching out? Those requests being lost or relegated to the trash? The imbalance makes me furious and I know that isn’t even the tip of the iceberg.
My journey is about facing parts of my privilege as a white person and I hope getting to know people who are relatives, and were on the other side of slavery. It has been emotionally hard researching this information and I’ve told myself on more than one occasion that this isn’t the time for my white fragility to surface. This is a time to be real and face these facts. And I also do want to cry and I also want to say that I’m sorry this is all true.
One of the steps in ministerial formation for Unitarian Universalists is taking Clinical Pastoral Education (aka CPE). Unit 1 of this rigorous program gives students a chance to work as volunteer chaplains in hospitals with patients in need of care for a total of about 400 hours. Most people take the full time summer program and describe it is immersion, exhausting, and eventually maybe they will get around to saying it is transformative. But it is a lot like granny’s secret recipe for brownies, people don’t say much about the elements of that change. I didn’t think I had the stamina for the intensive as the summer program is rightfully called. So I’m now a few months into an extending program, half time for 22 weeks. There are 2 main parts to CPE. Each week there is group work, with your cohort of students also serving as chaplain interns. We meet and discuss cases and learn about theories of pastoral care, cultural differences and more. The second part involves ministry to patients by spending time on the floors, and working with the interdisciplinary teams that provide quality care to patients. I’m at the National Institutes of Health, on a children’s floor (mostly leukemia, though some other very difficult diagnoses as well) working with pain and palliative care, and on a general ward where I’ve seen a lot of people with hepatitis and a sprinkling of people with other life threatening conditions as well. NIH is the nation’s premier bio-medical research center. All care is free, and almost everyone I see is there because standard treatment for their condition has failed. Or there is no standard treatment because the condition is so rare. Treatment has failed, or there is no standard of care.
When I see a patient in my mind I make a bowl of my two hands and prayerfully place the spirit or maybe even the soul of each patient in that bowl. Their heart, in my spiritual care for a moment, or repeatedly for weeks. I try to just put the little bit of each of them I can hold in my hands, into a container of lovingness, and see how long I can hold that position. I’d want someone to do that for me if I was struggling with an incurable disease. My supervisor calls it “getting into the boat with them, helping them row”. Across nationalities, diseases, faith traditions, language barriers, age and all the rest, whether they are awake or in a pain medication induced sleep I try to be with them deeply for a few minutes. Maybe it is that simple and that hard and maybe that is why no one talks about what CPE is really about.
Before I was a Unitarian Universalist I was a Quaker. I love group silence. There is something about collectively sitting silently that always brings God to my mind. Recently Starr King has been working with Parker Palmer’s book A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life and in particular his approach to discernment which is the Clearness Committee. Clearness Committees are an established way that Friends use community and silence to help the “focal person” resolve, or at least move forward with an issue or concern. After reading Parker Palmer’s book and a few days of training in a workshop, Starr King students formed Clearness Committees with student volunteers as the focal person.
As I read Palmer’s book, this popped out at me:
Formation may be the best name for what happens in a circle of trust, because the word refers, historically, to soul work done in community. But a quick disclaimer is in order, since formation sometimes means a process quite contrary to the one described in this book-a process in which the pressure of orthodox doctrine, sacred text, and institutional authority is applied to the misshapen soul in order to conform it to the shape dictated by some theology. This approach is rooted in the idea that we are born with souls deformed by sin, and our situation is hopeless until the authorities “form” us properly… Here formation flows from the belief that we are born with souls in perfect form. As time goes on, we are subject to powers of deformation, from within as well as without, that twist us into shapes alien to the shape of the soul. But the soul never loses its original form and never stops calling us back to our birthright integrity.[1]
This is my kind of formation, in beloved community, with lots of silence moving toward integrity and wholeness. Formation with the wrong goals is deformation. I know the women who bound little girl’s feet in China before the revolution viewed themselves as forming the feet. But they broke bones and warped the foot to a totally unrecognizable shape. I want formation that brings me to a richer wholeness and deep authenticity. Oh and please let it give me some skills for the hard parts of ministry. Thank you God.
[1] Parker J. Palmer. A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life (Kindle Locations 603-608). Kindle Edition.
I grew up in this quirky 2 person family. Just my dad and me. My mother wasn’t a big part of our lives which is a story for another day.
In my 2 person family the intimacy was intense. Things that one of us cared about tended to be front and center in the other’s life as well. Certainly my dad’s obsession with dying in a controlled way was his focus for all of his life and was also part of the air I breathed. I won’t say it was healthy or normal, but throughout my childhood he regularly reminded me that if he was paralyzed one blink was yes and two was no. That I was responsible for “tripping over the respirator” if he was ever on one to ensure he didn’t live without the vitality and control he required. These missives got abbreviated and repeated so often I’d just get an email saying “one blink is yes, two is no” with no reference to the presumed paralysis. The meta-message was that it was my responsibility to ensure he didn’t linger in death, never lived in a nursing home, and really that he never suffered. This was a weighty and awesome responsibility he attempted to give me from about age 13. My Bat-mitzvah or coming of age.
As my dad aged, as he got first a heart condition then Parkinson’s these messages just became more frequent and nuanced. I would tell him that I would do what I could but as the mother of a young child I was not going to go to prison to ensure his wishes were met. He reassured me (can I really call it that?) that he had saved pills so would take his life at the right time. He reassured me that he had sharp knives around the house and would slit his wrists if he fell etc.
So the time he decided on came and he took those pills. He didn’t tell me he was going to do it, but in retrospect, he was falling a lot, he was so weak he could hardly turn over and his will to live was pretty well gone after the big event of his 90th birthday. But the pills didn’t work, and it is hard to slit your wrists when you have Parkinson’s and can’t control your hands. Finally he shot himself with the gun he’d gotten as a wedding present 60 years before.
I’m an advocate for Death with Dignity. But I don’t want to just be the “death lady” in ministry. Yet, somehow that facet of my formation just keeps on keeping on. I’ve spoken in important public venues for legislation to allow doctors to prescribe fatal mediation to adults with a terminal condition and with 6 months or less to live. People who are in sound mind and failing body, and whose doctors agree with both parts of that statement should have that choice.
And now calls and emails come in the night. “My mother is dying, what can I do” or “My mother was dying and determined to not take action, then she heard you on the so and so show, and she stopped eating then to die days later. I’m writing a book about that and I want to use your name, I want to quote you I wanted let you know.” Weather I want this theme to form me or not it is.
I wonder what a different path of formation would look like. I know someone who is forming around her deep relationship with natural beauty, and someone else who is forming around the deep calculated beauty of math. I know another who has so much heart to give. But death and dying are central to my formation.
I’m thinking about the words of Forrest Church, one of the great contemporary UU ministers:
“I didn’t become a minister in any meaningful sense until I conducted my first funeral. Of all the things I am called on to do, none is more important, and none has proved of greater value to me, than the call to be with people at times of loss. When asked at a gathering of colleagues what gives most meaning to my work, I replied that, above all else, it is the constant reminder of death. Death awakens me to life’s preciousness and also its fragility.”
Church, Forrest. Love & Death
UNCONDITIONAL
Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I gain the embrace of the universe;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.
Each condition I flee from pursues me.
Each condition I welcome transforms me
And becomes itself transformed
Into its radiant jewel-_like essence.
I bow to the one who has made it so,
Who has crafted this Master Game;
To play it is pure delight,
To honor its form — true devotion.
by Jennifer Welwood
Meg Riley from the Church of the Larger Fellowship has resumed her seminarian’s support group for the fall. I can use all the support I can get and am delighted to return. This is a support group with a difference since often, as today we explore errors, then consciously forgive ourselves for them. Today her theme was privilege and she invited us, after reading this poem to consider sharing one of the times we showed privilege through things we wish we hadn’t said or done to someone who had less privilege in life or at least that situation. People talked about what I’ll call slips in consciousness in hurtful words they had said, to a person who is racial minority, transgender or agender folks, or about body shape and ableist language they had used. Worse all of us knew that whatever work we did to prevent these slips from escaping our mouths next time, something else would pop out like Jack escaping his proverbial box. Part of the process of the group is to consciously re-open the wound we carry about our slip, admit it, learn from it, and then forgive ourselves. It was powerful. This group is one of my spiritual homes. The poem took us into the place where we are welcoming transformation, turning toward the fear of saying or doing the wrong thing regarding privilege.
When Meg had us read the poem initially, I was thinking about formation. It seems right on for that point. But then maybe everything is about formation for me these days.
We ended our discussion with what Meg said was the original version of Rob Eller-Isaacs reading (#637):
A Litany of Atonement
For remaining silent when a single voice would have made a difference
I forgive myself, I forgive you, we begin again in love
For each time that our fears have made us rigid and inaccessible
I forgive myself, I forgive you, we begin again in love
For each time that we have struck out in anger without just cause
I forgive myself, I forgive you, we begin again in love
For each time that our greed has blinded us to the needs of others
I forgive myself, I forgive you, we begin again in love
For the selfishness which sets us apart and alone
I forgive myself, I forgive you, we begin again in love
For falling short of the admonitions of the spirit
I forgive myself, I forgive you, we begin again in love
For losing sight of our unity
I forgive myself, I forgive you, we begin again in love
For those and for so many acts both evident and subtle which have fueled the illusion of seperateness
I forgive myself, I forgive you, we begin again in love.
