More Life

Tending to Ending (fifty-seven)

I found myself sneaking around, arranging Zoom meetings while my husband was at tennis. Even I didn’t know what to make of this behavior! I tend to be–as my friend Debbie calls it–an external processor, talking my way through any major decision.

I was pretty sure my hesitancy had little to do with John. In the twenty years we’ve been together, John has been supportive of so many of my endeavors: to become a freelance writer, to take on a leadership position at a college, to leave that job of ten years (health insurance and all) to be with my mom at the end of her life.

Sure, I support John’s passions too, but first I worry about how these changes might affect me. Only eventually do I remember that I love John and I want him to be happy and things always seem to work out well when we follow the nudging of our hearts.

For John, this process of jumping aboard with me seems to collapse into a millisecond if he has to go through it at all. When I tell him I’m writing a book or going to river guide school, he meets me with genuine enthusiasm. All this to say, I am very lucky.

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Yet, here I was during the two weeks John and I had together in Hawaii, hiding my journal beneath a stack of books, stepping out of the condo to take phone calls, being very intentional in not mentioning that I was researching graduate schools.

Seminaries to be more specific. Not telling most of my friends, either, as I visited virtual classes, talked with admissions counselors and current students, and contemplated signing on for a second post-graduate degree–this one a Master’s in Divinity with a focus in inter-religious chaplaincy.

Maybe I was waiting because I wasn’t sure and this thing I was considering is time consuming (I’m fifty-six!) and illogical (I don’t belong to a church!). But, I kind of specialize in impractical, time-intensive pursuits—I’ve been a triathlete, high school English teacher, mother of twins!

No, deep down I knew. The reason I wasn’t saying anything was because I probably was going to follow through with this particular endeavor and that would mean change.

One blog post is not enough for me to do justice to why I’m at this juncture right now–planning to attend classes (online) in fall at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. I’m not sure where this education will ultimately lead. But of course my interest is at least in part informed by the same questions that prompted me to start writing Tending to Endings, and so I wanted to write something about it here.

Being with the dying is many, many things–heartrending, confusing, transformative, messy, emotional, stressful, beautiful, strange. Also, sacred. Sacred the way being present to welcome a baby into the world is sacred.

The last days I spent with my friends Susan and Ellen, and the months I spent with my mom during her decline, revealed how hard it can be to make room for relationships during the final stage of life. Also, those experiences showed me that making a even a little room for relational, the communal, the spiritual, could bring a reprieve and even meaning to seemingly unbearable conditions.

After my mom’s long bleak trek through surgeries and treatments and waiting rooms and visits to the ER, my main question for the hospice intake counselor was simple: How do we get more life into the end of Mom’s life?

Hospice was incredibly helpful in making that possible. It still was not easy: caregiving continued to take the bulk of our time and energy. But there were also Scrabble games and songs sung together and Jane’s Big-Head book, which I now know from my doula training is called a legacy project. My family and I found opportunities to each say what was on our hearts. And there were stretches of time for staring out over the ocean together and noticing, suddenly, that the shadows in the reef below were turtles swimming.

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I don’t often write about my own spiritual journey directly. For one thing, it’s hard! Even Virginia Woolf thought so:

As for the soul… the truth is, one can’t write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes; but look at the ceiling, at Grizzle [the dog], at the cheaper beasts in the Zoo which are exposed to walkers in Regent’s Park, and the soul slips in.

Plus my religious education is a bit all over the map: a Lutheran Sunday school when I was very young; a Presbyterian church with a friend in grade school; at one time, I even joined the Catholic church for a relationship that lasted about two years.

My spiritual practice began in earnest, though, when I was still a teenager and alcoholism led me to a recovery community where I found an openness to all spiritual paths. Since then, prayer and meditation have been part of my everyday life, and I have found spiritual sustenance many places: meetings in church basements and yoga class and poetry books. On walks with friends, and around the campfire with family, and kayaking through a river canyon with John.

Recently, when I sat in on seminary classes while researching schools, I quickly learned my experience is not all that rare. I heard terms like “previously unchurched,” or “denominationally challenged,” which made me feel right at home! I still have many, many questions, and about all I know for sure about this next step is that I’m very excited to learn.

My secret from John did not last long. On the seventh day of our time in Hawaii, we sat on the lanai watching for sea turtles. There were an abundance of them near shore on this trip, as though the turtles had grown accustomed to having the beaches to themselves during the pandemic. Finally, I took a deep breath and told John I was looking into graduate schools, explaining that after doula training, which I loved, I knew I wanted to learn more.

“So what would the actual degree be?”

“A Master of Divinity.”

“Wow, that’s cool! Sounds like you should get a purple robe and wand when you graduate!”

“Probably not. But if I did the whole program, I’d be an interfaith chaplain, maybe a hospice chaplain.”

“You’d be good at that.”

Have I mentioned, I’m very lucky?

More Resources

Turns out there are many authors who are good at writing about the soul and so I thought I’d include some of my library in the resource section of this post. These are books I’ve turned to over the last few years. Some, old favorites like Mary Oliver and Parker Palmer. Others I’ve found recently: Linda Hogan, Henri Nouwen, Christian Wiman , and Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Many have been included in other posts, but they all feel like friends so I wanted to include them again. I have pulled one gem from each, which is not nearly enough to do them justice, but at least will give you a taste in case you want explore more.

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Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit, Parker J. Palmer

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.

Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Marie Rilke (also, Book of Hours: Love Poems to God edited by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

…I would like to beg you, dear sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, John O’Donohue (Also, Eternal Echoes)

As you begin to befriend your inner silence, one of the first things you will notice is the superficial chatter on the surface level of your mind, Once you recognize this, the silence deepens. A distinction begins to emerge between the images that you have of yourself and your own deeper nature.

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chodron

If we really knew how unhappy it was making the whole planet that we all try to avoid pain and seek pleasure–how that was making us so miserable and cutting us off from our basic heart and our basic intelligence–then we would practice meditation as if our hair was on fire.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer

What I mean of course is that our human relationship with strawberries is transformed by our choice of perspective. It is human perception that makes the world a gift. When we view the world this way, strawberries and humans alike are transformed. The relationship of gratitude and reciprocity thus developed can increase the evolutionary fitness of both plant and animal. A species and a culture that treat the natural world with respect and reciprocity will surely pass on genes to ensuing generations with a higher frequency than the people who destroy it. The stories we choose to shape our behaviors have adaptive consequences.

Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions. As I once put it: ‘As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I an a survivor of four camps–concentration camps, that is–and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.’

The Selected Works of Audre Lorde, Edited by Roxane Gay

And I remind myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die. It is very good for establishing perspective. (The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action)

The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin

We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.

My Bright Abyss, Christian Wiman

All too often the task to which we are called is to simply show kindness to the irritating person in the cubical next to us, say, or to touch the face of a spouse from whom we ourselves have been long absent, letting grace wake love from our intense, self-enclosed sleep.

Upstream, Mary Oliver (also, Long Life; Owls and Other Fantasies; and New and Selected Poems)

But first and foremost, I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple–or a green field–a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing–an artifact, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness–wonderful as that part of it is. I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak–to be company. (My Friend Walt Whitman)

Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life, Greg Levoy

The particle chamber is a container for making the invisible visible. So are the compass, microscope, telescope, radio and television; so are scientists, psychologists, and artists; so is conscious attention.

The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society, Henri J. M. Nouwen (also, The Way of the Heart)

What does hospitality require? It requires first of all that the host feel at home in his own house, and secondly that he create a free and fearless place for the unexpected traveler.

Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman

The first step toward love is a common sharing of a sense of mutual worth and value. This cannot be discovered in a vacuum or in a series of artificial or hypothetical relationships. It has to be in a real situation, natural, free.

The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning, Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham

Feelings are fine, but they are also transient and ephemeral; gratitude is not a feeling but an ongoing vision of thank-full-ness that recognizes the gifts constantly being received. A feeling is fleeting, and emotion for the moment; gratitude is a mindset, a way of seeing and thinking that is rooted in remembrance–the remembrance of being without the gift.

Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World, Linda Hogan

We have forgotten that this land and every life form is a piece of God, in divine community with the same forces of creation in plants as in people. All the lives around us are lives of gods. The long history of creation that has shaped plankton, and shaped horseshoe crabs has shaped our human being. Everything is Maker; mangroves, termites, all are resources of one creation or another. Without respect and reverence for it, there is an absence of holiness, of any God.(Creations)

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