Care

Yesterday I witnessed medical care both progressive and arrogant, in the person of one surgeon.

 

And then I witnessed a ninety-year-old mother in a wheelchair at the bedside of her sixty-three year old son, speaking to him gently as he shook off the anesthesia and absorbed the news that the procedure he had so feared was behind him.



 

How Do You Pray? (Friday Five on Monday)

Jan shared the following Friday Five last week.  I didn't have the time then even to think about it, but the questions address one of my favorite topics, so I thought I'd work through them this morning:

Jan says, "At the beginning of this past week, I attended a conference on contemplative prayer entitled "Turning to the Mystics" at the 2013 Summer Institute at the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX. The speakers were James Finley, author and former novice of Thomas Merton; Mirabai Starr, author, translator, and speaker; and Father Ronald Rolheiser, author and president of OST. We were encouraged to regularly sit in quiet to come to realize our union with the Divine, who continually loves us into being."

So for this Friday Five, let us share about our prayer practices, whether silent or not:

 

1. How do you pray?

Most often I use the website Pray As You Go, which provides a daily 12-15 minutes of music, scripture, and questions to ponder.  Some days I sit with a journal and spend an hour on it, some days I listen as I get dressed, some days I listen as I walk. 

 

Other than that I tend to vary what I do.  Some days the Daily Office readings at this site, some days the lectionary or other Scripture passages, some days some sort of devotional book, my favorite being Celtic Benediction.  Some days silence for long periods of time. I tend to use my walks for intercessory prayer. 

 

Sometimes my prayer is all about journaling; sometimes, coloring; sometimes, photography; sometimes, listening to music. 

 

I try to pray the daily examen, which I have been moving to mornings, since I tend to fall asleep in the middle if I leave it till nighttime!

2. How has your idea of prayer changed over time? 

I was introduced to imaginative prayer, to repetitive reflection, to prayer as listening, and to "everything as prayer" when I made the Spiritual Exercises.  I suppose that I had been praying reflectively, mulling things over in the context of scripture, music, and sermons, for a long time before I stumbled upon the Exercises, but without any sort of framework. 

 

The biggest change over the past decade is that prayer is now a constant for me.  Something that at one time I struggled to incorporate into my life in some form or other, even for just a few minutes, now pervades my days. 

3. Do you ever sit in silent prayer? How does it go?

Often, and it varies. I am challenged by distractions the same as everyone else is. 

4. Do you have any difficulties and/or pleasures in prayer?

I have difficulties, but these days most of them have to do with exercising forbearance in the face of the language others often use to pray.  Pleasures these days have mostly to do with listening to others describe their own lives of prayer. So often one would never guess at the profound interior lives of and spirit-led transformations occurring in people who look just like the rest of us, ordinary people going about ordinary lives of family, friends, and work. And so often they exert far more impact on me and my own journey with God than I could ever expect to foster in them.

 

5. What is the best advice that helped you with prayer?

 

I have been graced with extraordinary teachers in the life of prayer; it would be impossible to and ferret out one strand of best advice.   I suppose that there are probably two succinct phrases that I try to remember: "We are all always beginners" and "Listen."

 

Bonus: Share something about prayer or an example of a prayer you like.

 

These days I am listening to two sets of CDs in the car that each, in its own way, is affecting my life of prayer.  One is a new series on the daily examen, the practice reviewing your day in the light of your movements toward and away from God.   I've read lots of material on the examen (reading is always so much easier than practicing!), but this particular series by Howard Gray, S.J., my spiritual director through the Exercises, is filled with riches in insight and eloquence. 

 

The other is Barbara Brown Taylor's sermon series on water, preached at Chautauqua last summer.  Each summer week of the Chautauqua season is devoted to a theme around which morning lectures, daily worship, afternoon speakers, and other special programming spins. BBT did a magnificent job last year of drawing drink from, as she says, "the big book of creation and the little book of scripture."


 

TEN

 

 

Ten years, ten months, ten days . . . what would you do if that's what was left to you?

 

It's an old question, I know.  I'm feeling the urgency of it these days.

 

Looking ahead: I'll be sixty in a few weeks.  I figure that gives me ten years of energy at the level to which I've become accustomed.  Not anything approaching the energy I possessed five years ago, but still.  Enough.  Ten years in which to pastor a church and/or accomplish some other things which matter to me.  Ten years before I will perhaps want to make completely different choices about how to spend my days than I do now.

 

(And yes, I'm presuming health, which is nothing more than a fragile hope.  I have a routine colonoscopy scheduled in a couple of weeks.  Once one of those routine tests alters your life for year or more, as a mammogram did for me, you no longer view them with quite the equanimity you once did.  But let's pretend.)

 

Looking back, the last two months have been fuller than I would have liked (and probably account for how sick I've been the last few days).  The usual church stuff plus some difficult conflicts.  Three funerals, a new member, two people having and still facing major surgeries.  (And while I've never had a pastor come to visit me in the hospital, excepting after the birth of my boys nearly twenty-nine years ago, when my people go, I usually do as well.)  Extensive preparations for two major events, one of which I was unable to attend, due to one of the aforesaid funerals.  Three days of advocacy in Washington.  And some unbloggable stuff, some kind of difficult and some filled with promise -- or not.

 

I really am not at all sure how to approach these next ten years.  I feel very . . . scattered.  It's in the nature of parish ministry that one does many things, different things, sequentially and also often simultaneously.    I'm not sure that I want to live that way.  I look at some of the intensity with which others in my boat approach writing, or suicide prevention work, or bereavement work, and I think: Yes, I should be a more single-minded and focused person. 

 

Then I live with that sort of focus for a bit, and I miss the rest.  I loved being in Washington.  I loved the return to my driven lawyer self.  I loved the sense of community.  I loved being with 200 people who could talk about gruesome details of death by suicide without flinching.  (I guess that sounds weird.  But so often I have to sensor my reality . . . ). And yet, while I was there, I was planning worship for the next two Sundays in my head, I was texting with a parishioner with respect to one of those surgeries,  I was the grateful recipient of thanks for some liturgy I had prepared, and I was starting to plan a rather unusual retreat for myself for next winter -- a retreat I might actually need to make right now.  I seem to migrate toward the varied in spite of myself.

 

There is an actual thought forming itself as I write.  Hard to believe, I know.

 

More later.

 

 

 

 

 

Where Life and Death Take You

Just about 15 years ago, when Josh was a 13-year-old seventh grader, he and I spent two days in Washington, D.C.,  photographing monuments.  One of his Montessori school's seventh grade assignments was a Peace Project, and he decided to create his by melding his burgeoning love of black and white photography with architecture.  We reveled together in two days of sunshine and achy feet as we tromped all over the Mall and took the train out to the Iwo Jima Memorial.

 

I snapped this shot on the steps of the Supreme Court. (Sorry about the flash; what you see is a photo of a photo.)  As my new friend Emily and I walked passed the courthouse on Thursday, I was, of course, reminded of that joyous time all those years ago.

 

It's bewildering, this life.  Were Josh not my son, I would not have spent those Saturday hours in an Institute of Art darkroom, both of us absorbed in our own projects.   Were Josh not my son, I might not yet have seen the Vietnam or Korean War Memorial.  Were Josh not my son, I would not have celebrated a Christmas in France, or delighted in so many delightful days exploring the city of Chicago. 

 

Were Josh not my son, my feet would not have blisters from a day trudging the halls of Congress, seeking to influence mental health legislation.

 

They say that one gains knowledge and wisdom.  I suppose that one does.  It's all yours, if you want it.  (Which you do not; of that, I can assure you.)  I would prefer a couple of cameras, and a boy, and an afternoon of changing light.

Be The Change - Part III

Some moments from our day on Capitol Hill:

 

Russell Senate Building

 

All six of us Ohioans met with legislative aides to our two United States senators, and then we broke into pairs and met with five or six aides to our representatives.  In one case, the Representative himself joined his aide for a meeting with us.

 

 

 This one was fun!

 

 

Some of the aides are outstanding.  Health care clinicians in the case of both Senators, and one other knowledgeable, interested, and articulate aide - background unknown - to a representative.  All the aides were attentive and open to hearing from us, although one young man was clearly unsettled by the word "suicide."  I figure that it was a public service on our part to force him to listen to it, over and over again.

 

We told our personal stories, those also over and over again, and pushed our legislative agenda, over and over again.  Most of us had prepared one page vignettes (mine is a few blog posts back) to leave with the legislators.  It's a difficult moment, to push that picture and bio across a table and think, "It should be a wedding picture, or a photo with a new baby, or a picture taken ten years from now and marking a professional achievement -- all things which will never happen."

 

With United States Representative David Joyce of Ohio

 

I was paired with a dynamite young woman named Emily, about to graduate from college and begin graduate school in the same master's program in social work which my daughter completed a year ago, plus a certificate program in nonprofit management.  Emily's life trajectory was changed when her uncle died two years ago.  She makes a compelling case for the Mental Health First Aid Act when she describes his last hour on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, his only companion a young police officer who had no crisis training and did not even think to call for back-up.

 

As we talked to our legislators and to each other over the course of the nine-hour day, Emily and I found ourselves repeatedly expressing our astonishment at finding ourselves where we were.  From lives devoid of knowledge about or interest in suicide, to months of immobilizing shock and pain, to new priorities, to the halls of Congress.  Who could have imagined?  But there it is, as the quote that probably isn't Gandhi's at all says,

 

Be the change you want to see in the world.

 

Be The Change - Part II

"All you have to do to effect change is get 535 people to do the same thing at the same time."

So said the lobbying expert who offered us tips and inspiration for speaking to our congresspeople.  We would be on the Hill the next day to get 535 legislators to do the same thing: to listen and read our stories and to support the many legislative proposals now before or en route to Congress which affect mental health.

On Wednesday afternoon we gathered to introduce ourselves (quickly), learn about lobbying, and learn about legislation.

Ourselves: The most recent loss was three months ago.  The most distant: Over twenty years.  Lost to suicide: sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, uncles, aunts.  All kinds of people there, all kinds of ages and occupations and sorrows and hopes.  (One other pastor, an Episcopalian priest.)  I was in awe of the mother who lost her son three months ago.  I remember the three months marker, because that was when I went back to seminary.  I remember the fog, the searing pain, and my bewilderment at the utter ludicrousness of what I was trying to do.  I remember my daughter saying, "Mom, you have got to get out of bed."  I remember the couple of friends who became my armor, accompanying me everywhere, trying to make sure that I wouldn't fall down and die.  How did that woman get on a plane and fly to Washington?  How did I get in a car and drive to Pittsburgh?

 

There are a lot of really strong and brave people out there who could have been dining with their families and watching television on Wednesday night, but chose otherwise. Some of them are truly heroic.

The legislation: Full funding for the National Violent Death Reporting System, currently only accessible to 18 states.  The System would further comprehensive and accurate reporting of violent deaths, data essential to research and policy development. 

 

(It was to prove extremely fun the next day to calmly tell a member of the House Appropriations Committee that I wanted him to vote for $25 million dollars for this System.)

 

The Mental Health First Aid Act, which would funnel funds to states for mental health training for first responders.  As was pointed out to us, some decades ago, people thought it would be impossible or difficult to help those suffering from heart attacks -- and now CPR training is common across the country.  Wouldn't it be something if basic mental health first aid was as accessible?

 

And other legislation related to mental health and safety issues for schools, Indian reservations, and young people, and legislation designed to promote the development of medications.

 

After dinner we gathered in our state groups to figure out and practice how we were going to present ourselves and our issues.  We were well prepared and, I gotta tell you, Ohio was the last to leave the conference room!

*****

The quote comes from a Native American artist whose work we were to see at the American Indian Museum on Friday.  It seems appropriate to the entire enterprise in which we were engaged.

Be The Change - Part I

Two hundred people.  Some of them staff from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, most of us volunteers from 48 states -- and yes, including both Alaska and Hawaii.  We gathered in Washington, D.C. for three days of conversation, bonding, learning, and visits to Capitol Hill -- to all 535 legislative offices!  Those are the stats.  The experience was something else.

For me, this leg of the journey began a couple of months ago, when I received an invitation to attend the Annual Advocacy Forum.  I've only been a volunteer Field Advocate for AFSP for about a year and one-half, but I've fired off a number of emails to state and federal legislators, and I've been to Columbus to testify on behalf of state suicide prevention legislation.  A start. So I decided to go to Washington.

Next came a request that I set up the appointments with legislative offices (mostly with staff aides) for our state.  A thankless task if ever there was one.  It was a contribution I thought I could make, given my fairly easy schedule this past month (I didn't know about the upcoming parish funerals, of course, or the heart surgeries), but, oh! 

The phone calls and emails, the repeats, the lack of responses that required as many as five emails, the confirmations suddenly un-confirmed, all to get six of us into eighteen offices in five buildings over a six-hour period.  Some of our legislative aides were easily accessible and responsive, some not so much.  Only one of the eighteen simply refused a meeting, even with an aide -- her office agreed to an appointment, and then when I sent out my last round of confirmation emails, re-neged and said she only meets with constituents.  (She's a United States representative; believe me, if she ever runs for the Senate or for a statewide office, I'll do what I can not to become her "official" constituent!)

 

How many times did I groan to myself, "You know, you could be doing something else right now!"?

 

I held my breath Monday, spending hours at the hospital as a church member's fifty-year-old son had heart surgery while another member, ninety years old, headed to Columbus with his wife and daughter for tests for his own upcoming heart surgery.  I presided over a meeting Monday night with a disappointing attendance of two, at which a most disconcerting conversation developed.

 

And then, finally, more or less organized, I was off in a jet plane with two new friends and a bag full of schedules and hopes.