Grief (for 365 days)

I am working on finishing up a project with 365 daily readings for folks in grief. This does not necessarily mean people going through the loss of a loved one, but can include loss of ability due to illness, grief after a divorce, or any time one is healing after a loss.

I have written large parts of the book, but it mainly consists of daily quotations from others. I am writing this to cast the net wide before wrapping up the project. Does anyone have quotes short or long that have helped in times of grief? Below is Day 6 of the 365 day project to give you an example.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

"He that conceals his grief finds no remedy for it."
~Turkish Proverb

"Every one can master a grief but he that has it."
~William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."
~Jesus (Matthew 5:4)

It’s alright to cry. What are you saving your tears for if not for this? It’s also alright to laugh and enjoy yourself when you can. Just because you laugh or have some fun, does not mean that your loss is any less real. Grief has lots of ups and downs. When you are feeling a little better, nourish that feeling, don’t fight it out of a misplaced sense of guilt. Both laughter and tears are gifts, receive them as such and be blessed. Fight back the tears, hold back the laughter and you hold back the healing they can bring over time.

God actually likes you

A lot of people feel, "God loves me because he has to. But does he like me?" God actually likes you. He made you, and he’s got a beautiful purpose for your life.

—Luis Palau

Holding Nothing Back

In tomorrow's Gospel reading, Mark tells us of an incident in the temple,

Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."

I wrote a sermon on this passage three years ago for The Episcopal Church's Sermons That Work series in which I said in part,

It would be nice if Mark filled in more details for us. Was Jesus’ arm around the woman as he said, “This poor widow has put in more …” or was the woman blending back into the crowd, never to be seen again? Or perhaps Jesus asked his own keeper of the purse, Judas Iscariot, to give something to this woman so that she would not go hungry that evening. Or better still, did the widow come to be a Christ follower? Did she join with the other women who journeyed with Jesus from Galilee to the cross and beyond?

The Gospel never answers these questions. The nameless widow who gave two small coins fades into the background. We may want to know her name in order to name churches, schools, and hospitals in her honor. We may want to give her a place of honor in Jesus’ stories alongside disciples whose names we know, though their trust in God wasn’t always so exemplary.

But perhaps namelessness is appropriate for this living parable. And maybe it is best, too, that we don’t find out how her story ends. The nameless woman whose ultimate fate we never know is perhaps an even better icon of trust, for her story was a precarious one. She went to the temple that day not knowing if she would ever have two little coins to call her own again. It could have been her path to a life of begging or even a station on the road to starvation.

But in facing an uncertain future, the widow reached out to God. She trusted that if she gave everything she had to God, even the little she gave would be honored. And whether she was repaid handsomely by Jesus himself, or God cared for her in some other way, we, too, have to trust. We trust that the widow’s story turned out all right. We trust that whether she lived or died, she was God’s.

And by her example, Jesus shows that what we withhold may matter more than what we offer. The widow was a woman of great faith, who held nothing back. She knew what Jesus’ disciples were just learning: we are to give, knowing that everything we have is God’s already. We can’t give God anything. But we can offer our very selves to the Kingdom of God, holding nothing back.

She was a woman. She was poor. She was a widow down to her last two coins. She was a child of God who placed her whole life back in her loving creator’s hands.

The full text of the sermon is online here: Holding Nothing Back.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

Can we get mad at God?

Face it. Sometimes God does not do what we want when we want. Who am I kidding? God often does not do what we want when we want it done.

Of course, that is probably a good thing. I am as capable as the next person of praying for something that may cause more harm than good in the long run. We trust in God’s heavenly perspective that the way God does act on our prayers will be for the best.

What about the other times? What about the times when things happen that leave us mad at God—not a little bothered or upset—but burning with anger mad.

If the Bible is our guide in answering this question, then you will see that God can take the heat. You could turn to the Book of Job or elsewhere, but I think the Psalms are the best example of anger at God. Some of the words the psalmist uses are burning hot with anger.

Psalm 22 begins “My God, My God why have you forsaken me and are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress?” Psalm 88:15 cries out, “Lord, why have you rejected me? Why have you hidden your face from me?” Psalm 44 is a lengthy cry for help that accuses God of having fallen asleep in a time of need. In Psalm 39, the Psalmist has had enough of God’s attention and says, “Turn your face from me, that I may be glad again, before I go my way and am no more.”

The Psalms are bold in the way they speak about God and to God. In fact, the most common type of Psalm is the lament Psalm. The lament Psalms are usually vague about the circumstances that have led to the distress, but they are vividly clear about how it feels.

The Psalmist writes in 6:6, “I grow weary because of my groaning; every night I drench my bed and flood my couch with tears.” Psalm 129:3 proclaims, “The plowmen plowed upon my back and made their furrows long.” These metaphors are strong images of very real emotional pain and turmoil. I think finding these expressions in scripture frees us up to get in touch with our anger, hurt, and disappointments. The Bible is a very realistic book and in the real world people suffer and feel abandoned by God. Scripture gives voice to these feelings.

Like Job, the lament Psalms rail against God refusing any false hopes or too pat answers. The Psalms take trust in God to a deeper level in which even our anger and disappointments with God are not out of bounds. It would seem that ancient Israel had a broader range of emotions in prayer than one finds today. The loud groan and the angry cry found their places alongside praise in the Psalms.

What is even more interesting is that Psalms were collected for public worship, not simply private devotions. The Temple in Jerusalem once rang out with people singing these Psalms in worship. In the process, they must have taken hold of a different understanding of how their times of personal prayer might sound.

The most important thing to me about the laments is that they are not simply cries of anger about a situation or cries of anger at God. The lament Psalms are also cries to God. No matter how hot the anger burns, the Psalmist stays in contact with God. The typical movement in a lament Psalm is from the lament to praise. This happens in a single verse without any description of a change in circumstances. The lament Psalms switch from angry cry to confident praise without missing a beat.

In Psalm 6, the mood switches like this, “My eyes are wasted with grief and worn away because of all my enemies. Depart from me, all evildoers, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my supplication; the Lord accepts my prayer.”

We get no report of an actual change in circumstances. This too is realistic. We turn to God in prayer and trust that God will take care of things, but there may be no immediate change or no change at all. The lament Psalms cause for rejoicing seems to be that the Psalmist has finally summoned up the courage to take all this anger and resentment about God to God. Having laid all the anger at God’s feet and not been struck by lightning, the Psalmist is now ready to praise God in advance believing that God will act for the best.

The lament Psalms teach that God can deal with your anger better than your silence. When you are angry with God, don’t be afraid to say so. If you are at a loss for words, try strolling through the Psalms as you will find plenty of anger directed at God within these ancient hymns. Tell God exactly how you feel. Don’t hold back. It may not provide an instant miracle of praise, but you will reopen up the channel of communication with God through prayer, which is what the lament Psalms accomplish best.

This is my religion column for today's issue of the Tribune & Georgian.

Advent Starts Sunday at King of Peace

Yes, I know that Sunday is November 8 and that means we have seven Sundays to go before Christmas. And yes, I know that expanding Advent seems more like what store owners might do than what a Christian church should do. But bear with me just a moment.

I shared a PDF here some weeks back that I have been reflecting on in the meantime: Anticipated Returns: The Advent project in which liturgist Bill Peterson shares the idea of expanding Advent back to its historic seven weeks as still practiced by Orthodox churches.

As we have a website visited by thousands each year for our Advent information and thousands more for our booklet Celebrating Advent in the Home which tout a four-week Advent, we will be practicing something other than what we preach. But at least we will be doing more, not less, than advertised.

This Sunday, we will begin the anticipation of Advent earlier than ever. We will see how this goes, reflect, report back to the project and decide what to do in future years.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Liturgical Experimentor

O come, thou Wisdom from on high,
who orderest all things mightily;
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Kairos

I am going to prison this afternoon. In doing so, I am joining a group of men from a variety of Christian denominations to put on a Kairos retreat at D. Ray James Prison in Folkston. Similar to Cursillo, the Kairos Retreat is a short-course in Christianity, but it is designed for prisoners. The main thing for Kairos is "Listen, Listen. Love, Love." Then you just repeat that process. By listening to prisoners and loving them it shows that God cares for them, for it is in response to the love God has shown us that the team goes into the prison. The strength of Kairos is that it has follow up weekends and welcomes the new participants into a community of previous participants, so that it is not a stand alone retreat, but part of an ongoing follow up.

Kairos is the New Testament Greek word for God's time, which is the right time or the appointed time. Unlike, Chronos, which is the time registering on a watch, Kairos describes things that happen at the time appointed by God. Chronos is a quanitfiable measure, while Kairos is a qualitative measure. Kairos describes how God's timing is right and perfect and fits in ways we could not have seen beforehand. In a Kairos retreat we pray for it to be a special time of a prisoner with his loving creator.

More information on Kairos is online at www.kairosprisonministry.org. Please pray for the Kairos weekend. I get out of prison on Sunday!

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

What Will Matter Most?

When you are in the final days of your life, what will you want?

Will you hug that college degree in the walnut frame? Will you ask to be carried to the garage so you can sit in your car? Will you find comfort in rereading your financial statement? Of course not. What will matter then will be people. If relationships will matter most then, shouldn't they matter most now?

—Max Lucado

It Is Well With My Soul

Hymns are an important source of our theology. The words work into our very being and speak to us when we need to hear them.

Sunday evening, I led a getting to know you session that kicked off our currently meeting Diocese of Georgia Clergy Conference. One of the tings I asked was for the group to go around and name favorite hymns and why they spoke to them. A couple of people mentioned Horatio Spafford's "It Is Well With My Soul." We sang it at my father's funeral and I have sung it many times elsewhere.

The story behind the hymn is an important window into its words as the hymn was written after series of crushingly traumatic events in Spafford’s life. His only son died in 1871. Close on the heals of that death came his financial ruin in the great Chicago Fire. Two years later, he was to travel to Europe with his family on the S.S. Ville du Havre, but business delayed him and the family went first. In making the Atlantic crossing, the Ville du Havre collided with another boat andquickly sank taking Spafford’s four daughters with it. Anna, his wife, survived the sinking and sent him a two word telegram, “Saved alone.” Spafford sailed to reunite with his grieving wife, and as his ship passed near the spot where his daughters had died, he penned these words:

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Refrain:
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:
If Jordan above me shall roll,
No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life,
Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.

But Lord, 'tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,
The sky, not the grave, is our goal;
Oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord!
Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul.

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

All Saints Day Photos

Yesterday was the Feast of All Saints. Bishop and Jan Louttit were with us for the last visit as diocesan bishop and wife. Eden and Arden were baptized. The bell choir made it debut playing together with the ensemble. The Memorial Garden was dedicated and a covered dish lunch wrapped up the morning. It was a great celebration. Here are some of the photos. Click on any picture to see a larger version of it.

In the Immense Sea

Geddes MacGregor in The Rhythm of God tells of a priest who, when asked, 'How many people were at the early celebration of the Eucharist last Wednesday morning?' replied, 'There were three old ladies, the janitor, several thousand archangels, a large number of seraphim, and several million of the triumphant saints of God.' Such a 'cloud of witnesses' answers a deep human urge to be part of something larger, to not stand alone, to give our little lives meaning. One drop of water, left alone, evaporates quickly. But one drop of water in the immense sea endures.

If You Had Been Here

In tomorrow's Gospel reading Lazarus has died and his sisters Mary and Martha express their disappointment that Jesus did not arrive in time to prevent his death. After weeping at the tomb, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.

In a sermon I wrote for The Episcopal Church's Sermons That Work site, I said in part,

John tells us that, “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’”

Then in that shortest verse in the Bible, we are told that “Jesus wept.”

Jesus loved Lazarus. He weeps at the grave of his friend. Yes, this makes sense in Jesus’ humanity, but if anyone believed in the resurrection, it should have been Jesus. Yet Jesus wept. This shows us that grief is not unchristian. Christ wept at the grave of his friend. We too weep over the graves of those we love. On this All Saints Day as we remember not just the great saints of the church, but also the saints in our own lives, we remember those we love who have died. That remembrance comes with sorrow.

It is a sorrow that does not go away. Real grief stays with you. In fact, not only can one not expect grief to go away completely, we also shouldn’t want it to. For as the person you loved is not returned to you, how can you stop grieving? The loss remains, and so does the sorrow. But grief can and does change. We pray not for an end to the grief, but for an unbearable sense of loss to be replaced by a sorrow we can bear. And in this, we are helped by the hope of the resurrection.

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus knew people would continue to die. He taught that not only do we find death in the midst of life, but we find life in the midst of death. Those who die will live again. This is Christian teaching and it is why even at the grave Christians can and do praise God.

So while grief is a Christian response to death, Mary and Martha’s line of reasoning is flawed. They said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” They assume Jesus was absent from the situation. But we know he was well aware of what was happening in Bethany and waited two days before going. After his resurrection and ascension, Jesus is even more fully present by the power of the Holy Spirit with those we love at the time of their death.

The full text of the sermon is online here: All Saints Day sermon.

Bishop Louttit will be with us at King of Peace tomorrow as we celebrate our tenth All Saints Sunday at King of Peace with our 92 and 93 baptisms on this anniversary of our first baptism.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

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