The Cross: Salvation, Scandal, Horror

Robert Berra

Good Friday Sermon

Holy Week 2014

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 10:16-25 or
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42
Psalm 22

Pilate therefore said to him, "Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?" Jesus answered him, "You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.” (Jn 19:10-11)

A priest I greatly respect once shared with me a conversation he had as a child.  His grandmother had given him a cross necklace when he was confirmed. He was in the sixth grade and he wore it to school one day.  On that day, one of his friends asked him that if Jesus had been killed by a gun, would he have worn a gun around his neck.  My friend thought that the question was ridiculous at the time; but for years, my friend has reconsidered the matter, and he thinks he was asked an important question.[1]  I agree with him.

The cross is laden with meaning.  Upon it Christ’s death wrought the work of salvation, and for that, Christians through the centuries rightly pointed to the cross as the proof of God and Christ’s deep love for us.  The message we hear and experience pushes us to gratitude of Christ for his voluntary death on the cross. 

But the cross is also scandal.  Then and today, the fact that Christians claim a God suffered death and allowed himself to be killed when we also claim he obviously could have avoided it…it’s utter foolishness.  No one would choose that!  Paul faced these questions too, and reminded the Corinthians that “we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”[2]  Paul is saying then, and now, that nothing about this situation is reasonable to the world!  It’s a scandal that a God would allow himself to die at the hands of mortals.  It is foolishness to believe that a man’s death on a cross, as a dissident in the Roman Empire, means anything other than utter humiliation. 

I think this notion of scandal is partly why my friend was asked the question about whether he would wear a gun if Jesus had been shot.  But I think there is something else here.  Something that might become fuzzy or lost as we remember Jesus’ death with gratitude—to the point of being grateful for the cross itself—and as we come to terms with the scandal of God dying for us mortals, which makes no sense to how the world understand the natural use of power.

I think that something else is horror.  We wear around our necks the representation of a device of torture.  We place crosses large enough to serve their original purpose in our sanctuaries.  We decorate them.  I think sometimes, when people see the cross, they remember what the cross actually was, and are repelled by it.  And I wonder if sometimes Christians forget how startling the representation of a torture device can be. 

So how might we reclaim the horror of the cross?  I think the six-grader’s question was a good start, because it would force us into remembering why crosses existed in Jesus’ time.  Would we wear a gun pendant if our Lord had been shot?  If Christ had been hanged, would it be a matter of devotion to wear a noose around our necks?  If Jesus had died in a waterboarding session as the Romans tortured him for information about a possible Jewish insurrection, would we consider making inclined tables and water-cans an integral part of our sanctuaries and letterheads? 

If not?  Why not?  Are the other torture and execution methods too horrible? Of the torture and execution methods I mentioned, crucifixion is still the messiest.  Imagine yourself at a crucifixion.  Imagine yourself at this crucifixion.  Imagine being as close as the Roman centurion was to the three crosses on the day on Golgotha.  Can you see it?  The blood pouring down the wood of the cross in rivulets from pierced ankles and wrists, soaking and staining it red in the noon sun?  Can you smell it?  The coppery scent of blood mixed with the stench of men who have soiled themselves from the pain?  Can you hear it?  The weakening gasping of men slowly asphyxiating, since the cross kills by slowly suffocating a person with the person’s own weight?  The snap of the bones in their legs as soldiers take a hammer to them?  All so the crowd can go home faster?

I think the cross horrifies because it reminds people of what it was used for, and when Christians hold the cross up as victory, it is sometimes unclear if we are too nonchalant about its original purpose.  Years of graduate work studying torture methods mean I cannot walk into a sanctuary without considering the cross for what it is.  The cross is repellent to me.  Yet my salvation was wrought upon it, and so it reminds me of all that Christ underwent.  The cross inspires within me silence, and yet I cannot help but speak.  The crucifixion’s work in our salvation is a mystery, but we proclaim the mystery as a wisdom unlike anything else in the world.  The cross is horrible, but I cannot dispense with it because I need to be reminded of what Christ did for us, and what humankind is capable of.

The horror of the cross reminds us of the full price paid by God for our salvation, but the horror of the cross is also necessary because the cross stands as God’s judgment upon the way we do business in the world—of how we handle power.

As Jesus falls silent before Pilate’s questions about his identity, Pilate asks “Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?”  That is a terrible power—the power given him by the state—even as Jesus reminds Pilate that he has this power only through God.  But Jesus knows something else.  The threat to use this power is a sign of fear.  It is a grasp for control of the situation.  It is the way earthly power works.  Earthly power is borne out of the desire to control our own fear.  Torture and Crucifixion—and so many other uses of force both great and small— are examples of this worldly power.  The desire to control others.  To control circumstances. To bend the will of a person to our own use. Its use is borne out of fear.  This power is used when the lie of control we continually tell ourselves fails.

The span of history reminds us that even with the work of salvation done-and-yet-ongoing, human nature is still warped in a way that no one, not even the Church, can fix without God.  Unfortunately, the drums of war and the banging of gavels are sometimes loud enough to drown the still, small voice calling us to forgo the calculations that keep us estranged from everyone around us and grasping for control.

This is the horror of the cross and the necessity of remembering its purpose.  God chose to conquer the cross as the judgment on our capacity for cruelty.  The crosses we wear, and that we use to decorate our churches and homes ought to confront us with that judgment of God against us.  And that makes us witnesses not only to Christ’s salvation, but to the crucifixions and deaths we witness daily as the world tries to justify them.

These justifications and rationalizations are the lies of control and necessity that Jesus exposes by not bending to Pilate’s threat.  Pilate, provincial governor, easily scared by the crowd, dismissed by this odd man in front of him who calls out how inconsequential he is. 

Pilate, on behalf of the world, then did what it does when its exercise of power it questioned.  Pilate exercised that power.  Pilate eliminated the threat.

There is hope.  But that is for tomorrow and the Resurrection.  Just for today, the world has won.  At least, the world thinks it has won.  The King of the Jews is humiliated, crucified.  Our Savior is dead.

---

[1] Reflections on the Cross by the Rev. Jim Flowers.  See more at: http://allsaintsmobile.net/blog/2010/03/of-the-shameful-cross/#sthash.Np8zIJ9y.dpuf

[2] 1 Cor 1:23.

Life after Miscarriage: Decisions and Reflections

In the past few days, I've written about the experience of miscarriage after having experienced it as a father.  In part one, I made public that our first pregnancy ended in miscarriage in June 15, 2012. My reason for making it public is that Holy Week and other parts of the Church's life enhance the memory of the loss.  And more generally, loss due to miscarriage is something many experience in silence.  In part two, I reflect on where God was, in an amazing way, for me after the miscarriage.  The experience became a touchstone which has since served as a powerful reminder that God is present even if the pain and grief do not immediately fall away.

In this third part, I'll give some reflections on how things have changed since the miscarriage and how we made some decisions.  I think this might illuminate some of my rationale for my behavior for people who were around me at the time.  I think people who have experienced loss will read about some familiar experiences.  This will end this week's "series" of posts on miscarriage, but I am certain it will come up again in my writing.

Who we told--and did not tell--and why

Laura and I grieve in different ways.  I tend toward more public expressions of grief, and of talking about grief more openly than she seems to do.  This became much clearer with the miscarriage in that I felt like I needed to tell people much more than she felt like she needed to.  So, we had to come up with some sorts of rules for who we told, and check with each other before we took that step.

At the time of the miscarriage, I was in Divinity School training to be a pastor.  This seems like it would have been one of the best places for one to be open about loss.  However, one rule above all others that Laura and I agreed upon was not to make the miscarriage public to the school.  The last thing we wanted was to become the target of the (well-intentioned) pastoral attention of possibly dozens of people.  Laura did not want to chance the possibility of constant reminders of the miscarriage.

Still, as I was in divinity school in which the community was somewhat close-knit and collaborative and I felt some need for pastoral care, I needed some criteria for who I told.  (Not in chronological order) So, I did tell the people at the divinity  who were responsible for the pastoral care of students--that seemed like a no-brainer and they were fantastic in caring for me.  I told some others who I knew had experienced miscarriage and/or fatherhood, who were a wonderful support network.  While I was somewhat cognizant that changes in my behavior and demeanor might have been noticeable to people very close to me, I decided not to tell them unless their success in class or in ministry was somehow dependent on my ability to hold up a sustained effort on a project.

The aftereffects of the miscarriage hung over me for the entirety of my third and final year of seminary.  Some very close friends did not hear about the miscarriage until the weeks after graduation, and these times were moments when I was asked "what happened to you at the beginning of the semester?" or when I felt like I had to explain a particular bit of flakiness a friend had witnessed in the fall.

I knew I wanted to write about the miscarriage soon after--and so make the loss public--but Laura and I decided not to do so until Colin was born.

How prayer changed, and options for remembrance

Many of the folks who knew about the miscarriage offered to help put together a service for me.  I'm likewise willing to do that for anyone who asks.

The Episcopal Church has a wonderful resource for prayer known as Enriching Our Worship 5: 
Liturgies and Prayers Related to Childbearing, Childbirth, and Loss (available in PDF for free!)  I learned about this resource when I was a chaplain intern at a hospital, and assigned to Women's Services and delivery.  There are options for prayer services to memorialize, remember, and lament the loss.

For months after the miscarriage, I would include litanies and prayers from EOW5  in my private devotions, and I found them to be so incredibly meaningful in giving language to emotions too deep to find my own words to express.

[Occasionally, deeply emotional experiences become the linchpins of opinions that do not seem to be related to loss.  This reminds me of one of those cases.  There is some 'controversy' over the EOW series of resources for prayer.  The series represent exactly what their titles suggest:  they expand the range of options for prayers that can be used in our denomination in ways that include gender neutral language, and modernized language.  In the case of EOW2 and EOW5, the resources address medical and care issues that were not covered in the Book of Common Prayer.  I say there is some controversy because it is not uncommon to hear folks who prefer more traditional language refer to EOW as "Impoverishing our Worship" or accuse the series of sneaking heretical notions into our liturgy.  I once sat through a class presentation in which the fellow student began lecturing on how EOW was clearly inferior in terms of critiquing the beauty in EOW's use of the English language.  When these comments come up, I have had a hard time biting my tongue.  In my loss, EOW went to places in prayer that the Book of Common Prayer could not go, and I consider myself indebted to the work of the committees that offered these resources.  I wish those who argue against EOW on purely aesthetic grounds would consider the fact that these prayers have "worked" in profound ways.]

Preaching

One of the most difficult things that I experienced after the miscarriage was All Soul’s Day, about five months after the miscarriage. The grieving really came to the surface.  The  setting aside of a day for recognizing loss and those departed moved me deeply.

The worst part was that I was scheduled to preach at Berkeley Morning Prayer on the morning of All Soul’s Day; which created within me a sense of panic and a moment of resentment. Was I in the midst of some cosmic cruel joke? There was no way I was going to make it through the sermon, on a day set aside to recognize loss without tears.  And I didn't want to have to explain to everyone why I was sobbing on the floor during my sermon, since the miscarriage was not being made public.  A moment of inspiration the afternoon before gave me a sermon, and I was able to preach through my grief refracted through a memorial of my great, great aunt who died in 2009. After the sermon, preached through threatening tears and a choked throat, I left Berkeley—skipping coffee hour— and went to the Annand Room for some time to myself in my grief. By 9am, I was through with All Soul’s Day.

Some observations

Dates.  I find myself situating the miscarriage in reference to other events in my life, which is natural.  Two seem important.  The miscarriage happened the day after my bishop called me to offer me the position I currently hold as campus chaplain to ASU Polytechnic.  The miscarriage also shares another important anniversary in my life: my ordination to the Priesthood.

For months after the miscarriage, I noticed that my learned-extroversion took a substantial hit.  Debate/ argument held absolutely no appeal for me. I've become much more of a listener in the past few years, but I know I was quieter than I normally was. For months I felt like I had lost some of my ability to put together any argument or thoughts with cohesion.

Along those lines, mental tasks were incredibly difficult.  Many people have told me I am intelligent, and I guess two master's degrees probably evidence that to some degree.  So, the semester after the miscarriage, I was going to take Greek, which was strongly suggested by my bishop.  I was almost treading water in the course for two weeks, but one day--after four hours of studying--I went into a quiz and completely bombed it.  Simple recall of new information was impossible.  I dropped the course.

A contributing factor to the above was that I began to notice I was experiencing lost time.  It was different from procrastinating, or just staring at a screen in distraction.  I'd come out of it realizing that I hadn't seemed to have moved--or thought--for anywhere from three to fifteen minutes.  This made school work considerably harder.

After the miscarriage, I was really happy that my mother and sister were sensitive to some possible reactions.   I was even happier that their sensitivity was not tested.   My sister got pregnant shortly after the miscarriage, and there was some trepidation on her part in terms of telling me and Laura.  I can see where that might be a possible reaction, but Laura and I were able to celebrate with those who were happy about their own children and pregnancies.  I never experienced any resentment.

Relatedly, a few weeks after the miscarriage I found myself in Mobile, AL for a funeral, and I was in the presence of a dear friend who has a son who is almost exactly a year older than our miscarried child would have been.  While in town, I occasionally held the child (nicknamed 'Bonkers').  I was fine holding Bonkers--I actually really wanted to--and I think in those moments I came to peace with fatherhood. My grief may have been showing me that I was more ready than I thought I was to have a child (as though one is ever really prepared). I think my peace with it all was a surprise to my mother and sister, who witnessed me holding Bonkers and asked afterwards how I was feeling, and probably relieved that I was not resentful or sad.

I noticed that the Church's worship impacted me more strongly during Advent following the miscarriage.  I'm finding that Advent as a season and the Holy Triduum hold for me incredibly strong emotions of loss and identification with Mary in the loss of a child.  That said, I wonder what Maundy Thursday will hold for me, as we begin to recall the last events of Christ's life before the Resurrection.

I do not have a clean, concise note to end upon.  My grieving does not feel complete yet, though I think the emotional wounds is scarring over.  I am grateful to God for the goodness and love I have experienced after the miscarriage.  I'm grateful to the people who have held this secret for years and have cared for me and Laura.  I'm grateful to Laura for her support of me--as one who grieves so differently from her.  I hope these reflections may be helpful for someone going through the same, and I hope someone who would like to speak of their own experience would feel safe contacting me.

Where was God?

TW: miscarriage, callous treatment

Yesterday, in my last blog post, I wrote about the first three days following Laura's miscarriage.  This post picks up some days later.  The miscarriage happened on a Friday, the reflection from the last blog post was written on the following Sunday, and I'll now write about what happened the next Monday and Tuesday.  The main points of my grieving process after Monday and Tuesday are relatively episodic, and I think they will amount to one more blog post of short reflections. I think that might amount to this week's flood of writing.  The miscarriage might be something I return to in writing and reflection, but the posts this week will cover the bulk of my reflection and experiences since then.

This post deals head-on with the question of where I thought God was through the week after the miscarriage.  I will not lay out an argument of theodicy here, and I want to reiterate my second disclaimer from yesterday:

I will make claims about where I felt God’s presence in the midst of suffering.  In doing so, I am not suggesting that my experience should be normative for everyone who experiences a miscarriage.   I certainly do not wish to imply anything that could be construed as “if you suffer more than I did, your faith is/was not sufficient.”  If something of my experience of God in the midst of suffering is helpful, I will be happy.  If someone has experienced miscarriage or another loss as a time of God’s absence—or if someone makes no reference to God at all in her or his experience—I do not wish to imply that the person has a lesser belief or that he or she have somehow failed in grieving. 

Finally, my experience was my own, and I make no claim that decisions I made would function as a guaranteed universal prescription for others who would seek to lessen their pain.

The Monday after the miscarriage rolled around, and the question on my mind was whether Laura would go back to work or take another day off.  She decided to go back to work, deciding that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were enough days to recover.  For a few months before the pregnancy Laura was a rather active member on Babycenter.com, which is an online support community for folks trying to get  pregnant, or they are pregnant, or they have children.  It's a place where parents support one another.  The website runs many smaller forums, which can sometimes get specific, but one example of the specificity are the groups one can join of women who are planning to deliver in the same month you may also be delivering.  That way, you have an online support network, information and research source, and cheer-leading squad.  By the time folks moved from the "trying to get pregnant" to the "pregnant" areas of the community, the more-specific groups meant names were recognized and absences were noticed.  Sometimes women left the "expected delivery in Jan 2013" group quietly.  Laura did so as well at some point that weekend.  Babycenter.com also has forums for those who experienced loss, and Laura joined some of those forums.  At least one woman from the previous forum noticed and reached out to Laura.

Monday morning, Laura showed me one of the posts from the miscarriage forum.  A woman had written a little about her own experience, but the bulk of her post was a question:  "Why is it that God will allow folks who will be good parents to miscarry, while children are being born to terrible/abusive/unloving/neglectful parents?"

I don't have an answer to that question, and I didn't attempt to provide her with one as I felt like I was "too close" to the topic to effectively engage it in an online forum.  Still, I was quite happy to see that many of the responses were of a helpful kind, and a few affirmed that yes, you can be angry with God.  At the very least, to admit anger to God (or with God ) is a place of honesty, which is much more helpful than a dishonest front the cuts off the healthy expression of grief.

But the post stayed with me for the rest of the day.  I took the post and looked at it from a variety of perspectives.  Was the question a way for the woman to distance herself from the loss she experienced? ...To couch the matter in a theo/philosophical way to hide her own pain?  What were the implicit theologies she lives with?

But the questions I was asking about her post were symptomatic of something I'm less proud of.

I was coming to a point at which I could say that I had survived the experience, and was now becoming reflective of it.  In other words, For the past few days I had prayed for God's presence, but was not really in a place to notice if God had shown up.   On Monday I began thinking about whether or not God was present, or what my relationship to God was through that time.

[But I do think God was present in the care Laura and I showed for each other.  While we both cared for each other, I bore the brunt on Friday and Saturday, while she cared for me on Sunday.]

Now I was beginning to think about it, and the one thing I knew was that I was not angry with God.  I did not think God owed me a child.  I certainly didn't think God had killed my child.  My theology allows that death is a natural process that God does not necessarily interfere with, but God's role in such tragedy is the task of transforming the circumstances--of seeking and working toward the Good (once again, my task here is not to write a systematic theodicy).

But, oddly enough, theology can often be a point of pride, and it can be so very easy to critique the theology of others to deflect thinking about oneself.  By Tuesday it dawned on me that I might be doing just that. I was comparing this woman's implicit theologies to mine, and finding her's wanting.  Why did she think she deserves a baby?  God is not a cosmic vending machine into which we put prayer and get things we want.  I was  over-analyzing this one woman's post about her own miscarriage in ways that struck me as being rather callous toward her--even though I would never speak to her and appreciated that others were genuinely helping her.  And it became clear to me that what I was doing was finding a way to compare pains in order to lessen my own.

"This hurts, but at least I don't have to untangle bad theology along the way," I thought.  It is common after loss for people to hear others imply that their suffering is their own fault.  The most common form is something like, "Can't you just get over it?  You're making yourself depressed."  My own reaction to this woman's post was a variety of that dismissive sentiment:  if you just changed your theology, you would hurt less.

But that is not how loss works in the immediate.  And the comparison wasn't making me feel better, either.  In retrospect, I'm glad I realized as early as I did how I was reacting to her story, and that I had enough sense not to attempt to speak with with this woman in online forums.  I probably saved us both some additional pain.

The full realization of what I was doing with this woman's story hit me on Tuesday morning, and I was disgusted with myself.  I suspect that many people experience loss as a time when their sense of compassion--or capacity to sit with another in suffering--is compromised, constricted, and lessened.  At least that is how I was experiencing myself in those days.  When the full import hit me I stopped what I was doing and I prayed/confessed:

"God, please do not let my pain create within me a callousness toward others who suffer, especially those who are experiencing the same loss.  Continue to show me how to be a conduit of your love for others."

I have occasionally gone through what I would call mystical experiences (defined as times of awareness of God's presence within, or direct union). For me, those moments the direct experience of God—the description of which varies for many people--most resembled a dark buoyancy.  It felt safe and calm. Before the miscarriage I called it, and continue to call it, "the womb of God."  It is a place where one attempts to drop all walls, all self-deceptions, all excuses, and lay bare one's self before God.

Immediately after my prayer, I felt the familiarity of God's loving direct presence that I knew from earlier experiences.  I'm not sure how long it lasted--seconds or minutes.  But I left the experience with a profound sense of comfort.  The experience was not a promise that pain would go away, only that God was there in the midst of it all and had not abandoned me.  And I think God was pleased that my desire was to turn back to my neighbors in love.

The experience has continued to shape me.  It serves as an example of mountaintop mysticism, an experience like the one Peter, James, and John experienced when they joined Jesus on the mount of transfiguration.  The experience of God directly is so amazing and different from the daily notions we get, seeing through the mirror darkly ( 1Cor 13:12) that there is a desire to try to remain in that experience as long as possible--to hold on to the experience with everything we have.  But I think the practicality of mysticism--a mountaintop experience--is precisely that it prepares one for the 'valleys' of our lives.  The months following the miscarriage were extremely difficult, but this experience became a touchstone to me.

And there were many times that I needed the touchstone.

When loss amplifies everything: Holy Week and Miscarriage.

TW:  Miscarriage

1.       Some preliminaries.

2.       Why now? ...And reflections on being in the Church after the miscarriage.

3.       The miscarriage / “Requiem at Seven Weeks.”

________________

Some Preliminaries

In what follows I will be recounting the experience of miscarriage that Laura and I suffered a few years ago.  This might lead to a few further reflections being written, so I want to start out with some preliminary disclaimers.

1.       Everyone experiences loss differently.  Nothing I write should be construed as a claim about what “normal” should look like.

2.       In the course of my writing, I will make claims about where I felt God’s presence in the midst of suffering.  In doing so, I am not suggesting that my experience should be normative for everyone who experiences a miscarriage.   I certainly do not wish to imply anything that could be construed as “if you suffer more than I did, your faith is/was not sufficient.”  If something of my experience of God in the midst of suffering is helpful, I will be happy.  If someone has experienced miscarriage or another loss as a time of God’s absence—or if someone makes no reference to God at all in her or his experience—I do not wish to imply that the person has a lesser belief or that he or she have somehow failed in grieving.

3.       Nothing I write should be construed as pointing to an opinion on elective abortion or claims about the personhood of a fetus.

Also, I strongly suggest a request for your consideration:  after reading this, please do not respond with anything along the lines of:

·         “The fetus was only seven weeks old.”

·         “Y’all now have your son” (which is like “You can always try again.”)

·         “God wanted another angel.”

·         “I’m sure God had His reasons.”

These responses are not particularly helpful things to say to grieving parents, and they will not be received well.   I'm now in a place where I can handle these responses and answer them, but let us both not expend that emotional effort.  

________________

Why am I writing this now?

Well, one reason is that I have meant to write about my experience of the miscarriage since the event.  There is not very much out there for fathers who experience miscarriage.  Additionally, anywhere from 10-25% of clinically recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage.  That is to say, they are incredibly common, and the silence around the loss is unhealthy for those who suffer the loss in a pseudo-imposed silence.  As the above warning also suggested, the loss invites people to comment in ways that attempt to minimize the discomfort of the one who hears about the loss at the expense of the one experiencing the loss. We are told we should not feel the loss as deeply as we do, either because it is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, or there is something divinely inspired/fatalistic about the loss.  The emotional work that has to be done in times of loss and grief is difficult; many of us stay silent to avoid the additional emotional work of sifting through others’ opinions about whether we deserve to feel our own emotions.

So, I’m writing to share the journey of going through grief.  The miscarriage still has effects on me, and some of those effects lead me to write about the miscarriage in this moment.  This first blog post will tell the story of the weekend the miscarriage occurred.  Other posts may take up talking about residual effects. 

_______________

Maybe it’s the remnants of the masculine ideal of “boys/men don’t cry” that still occasionally haunt me, but I am uncomfortable with crying in church.  I should be clear, though, that I’m fine with anyone crying in church.  Anyone else—including men—could cry and it would not bother me at all.  The Church should be a safe space for emotion to be expressed, particularly when these emotions point to realities other aspects of our dominant culture deny or suppress.  I’m fine with people crying in Church—everyone except me.

Like I said, some of it may have to do with residual patriarchal notions of what a man is supposed to be like; but in my case, as an Episcopal priest, I also find myself in leadership within the church.  Nowhere is this more evident or visible than in worship.  I see my role as being one of moving worship along, of maintaining the space for people to pray—to safely admit emotion and express themselves(!).  But in performing this role, I have to give up a little bit of my own ability to fully enter prayer so that I may hold the space open for everyone else.  I do not think I am suggesting anything too terribly controversial by admitting that worship leaders must strike a balance between being in worship as a participant and distancing ourselves to make worship happen for others.  

There are moments in the life of the Church and the Church’s worship that evoke great emotion.  One example is Holy Week, which we are now starting.  This is the week that we enter and live into the drama associated with Jesus’ last days before the Resurrection.  From Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem to his death on the cross.  The emotions vary widely:  excitement, turmoil, betrayal, confusion, abandonment, apathy, deceit, injustice, rage, cruelty, corruption, loss, grief.

And Easter—Hope.

Before loss, there is the surface-level sort of admission that the death of Jesus was the death of a man who had familial connections.  It’s a matter of historical (or at least scriptural) record.  Jesus had parents and siblings.  However, the emotion now runs so much deeper.  I feel the loss of Jesus, like Mary, as the loss of a child.

And in the Church’s worship both Lent (including Holy Week) and Advent bring these emotions and resonances to my mind.  Lent, the death of the savior, but now more so the death of a son.  Advent, the preparing for the birth of Christ and the knowledge that Christ would die.  Any hymn that mentions both Christ’s birth and death hold the possibility to reduce me to tears (“A Stable Lamp is Lighted,” “Lord of the Dance,” etc.).  I’m still discovering other things that trigger emotions that may not have anything to do with miscarriage on the surface, but something within me connects the whatever it is that I am doing and the memory.  The stripping of the altar on Maundy Thursday can be triggering.   Blessing children at the Communion rail can choke me up (I love doing this, but the emotion is there).

It should be no surprise that pastors have baggage, like everyone else in the world.  The difficult thing is for that baggage to show up while trying to hold open the space for other people to be present to their own emotions and to God’s work in their life.  I have occasionally wept in Church, but I do not like to do it.  I do not want to be a distraction.

So, I’m writing this because I want to give a reflection about loss from a father’s point of view.  I want to be an example of honestly expressing and admitting that loss occurs and has an impact, even years after the fact.  Sometimes, we are fighting to hold ourselves together because we think other people need us to do so.

I suppose the irony is that I am so hesitant to give that same permission to myself.  At points, writing this blog post felt like a way of saying “if I break down in sobbing during services this Holy Week, here’s why.”  I am writing an explanation I would require of no one else who would sob in church, but I feel like I need to explain it for myself. 

At least I do not feel like I’m making an apology.

Maybe that’s progress enough.

_____________________

The Miscarriage / “Requiem at Seven Weeks.” 

The following was written two days after the miscarriage.

I remember the joy I felt and the tears that I stealthily choked back when the ultrasound technician maneuvered the probe to show us our child at 6 weeks old.  Holding the tears back was harder when the technician turned up the speakers— a strong heartbeat at 119 beats per minute.  The technician printed out a few pictures for us.

That was Friday, June 8^th, 2012.  We left the OB/GYN office happy.  Celebratory.  Laura was worried about some spotting, which did not seem to be a big deal by the end of the visit; some of our fear was put to rest.  We talked about the future and how it was difficult to wait to tell everyone about it.  We hadn’t even told anyone we were trying to have a child.  We decided to wait until July 4^th to tell everyone.

Laura came home from work the next Wednesday and wanted to tell our families.  We bent our rules a little.  We called our parents and siblings, and then swore them to secrecy until after our reveal on July 4^th.  Such wonderful phone calls to make!

Laura woke up that next Friday, June 15^th, sensing that something was wrong.  Murphy, our cocker spaniel, seemed to know something too.  Thursday night, wide awake, he howled at Laura.  Friday morning, he barked at her.  He never barks at her.  By 9am, while teaching, she felt a rush of blood.  She called me.

“I think I’m having a miscarriage.”

I told her not to come home—to call the doctor’s office, follow their directions, and let me know where to go.  Calling her back five minutes later, I found out she was headed to the doctor’s office. I called a cab, and beat her there by a few minutes.  In my rush to find her, I immediately went to the receptionist; Laura had not checked in.  Going to meet her, since she would be arriving soon, I must have been on the elevator going down while she was in the other heading to the 5^th floor.  At the first floor I saw her car, but not her. 

Getting back on the elevator I rode it to the fifth floor.  The door jammed.  I was stuck in this elevator.  After trying a few floors—at which the door did not open—I pushed the call button only to discover that I could hear the person who answered the call, but they could not hear me.  After futile attempts to talk to the person who answered my call, I took the elevator back to the fifth floor and forced the door open.  Walking into the OB/GYN office, I told the receptionist to inform maintenance of the elevator.

Laura was sitting close to the door.  When I saw her, the first thing I noticed was her eyes, red and puffy.  She would later tell me that she had gotten the worst of the crying out of the way at the gas station at which she had to stop if she wanted to have enough fuel to make it from Milford to New Haven.  I sat down and took her hand.  We were called about five minutes later.

We were immediately directed to the ultrasound room.  The same room from a week earlier.  The technician was quiet as she worked, and as we watched the screen the large gestational sac we saw last week was nowhere to be found.  She looked everywhere, and I wonder if she was trying to find some hope for us—to intentionally prolong the search.  Minutes passed.

“There is a lot of debris here,” she finally said.

She honed in on a small blob that looked a lot like the embryo we saw in the gestational sac seven days earlier.  The sac was gone.  Turning up the speakers, there was only silence.

I didn’t cry.  I focused on Laura, giving her my hand and passing her tissue. 

“I’m so sorry,” the technician said.  The technician left the room so that Laura could get dressed, and I passed Laura the clean underwear she asked me to bring.

In my training as a pastor, I’ve worked as a hospital chaplain.  Chaplains are used to shocks like these drowning everything else out.  We know that sometimes we need to ask questions of doctors for the family, to ask doctors to repeat things to which the family may uncomprehendingly shake their head in false understanding.  I reverted back to some of that training, and tamped down my emotions as far as I could, except for the sadness that wouldn’t drown and the empathy which would benefit Laura. 

We were moved into an examination room, and a nurse who probably had not read the chart came in to take Laura’s vitals. 

“So you are having some bleeding?” She asked in a voice that would seem too chipper to our ears on that day.  Laura just shook her heard yes and tried to smile. 

When the nurse left, Laura said, “I lost a pound from last week.”

In the next five minute wait, Laura commented that she felt very cold.  I offered her my over-shirt.

“No, it wouldn’t help.”

The next two midwives/doctors to come in were consummate professionals—quick to reassure, and willing to sit in the room for as long as was needed.  We were told that this miscarriage would not mean that we would have an increased risk of another.  Laura was to rest this weekend.  Call if the bleeding was too bad.  Be prepared to pass the lining of the uterus.  We could try again once Laura returned to a normal cycle—when the hormones common to pregnancy had passed.  Laura would need a shot, which was to make sure that her body would not develop antibodies that would attack another embryo.

In the waits between the doctors’ visits to the room, Laura said that she wanted to go.

“I want to eat something terrible for me.”

I agreed to take her somewhere with very fattening food.  I also told her that I’d handle talking to family later in the day.  On the way out, we stopped at a downstairs lab for a blood test, and left.  We stopped at the nearest Arby’s before we went home.

Friday and Saturday were quiet.  I cancelled my involvement hosting a workshop that weekend.  We continued the struggle of navigating Laura’s grief, and my own.  Since we had not told anyone except immediate family, only needing to inform them was easier.  In fact, that’s why we were waiting to tell people.  We did not want to tell everyone in the world Laura was pregnant only to have a miscarriage happen and people months later ask her when the baby was due.  I made calls to family members. 

The difficulty I was running into was that the people I would lean on in this situation didn’t even know we were trying to conceive.  Laura and I were keeping that quiet, too.  But the absence of any type of support system nearby was eating at me.  It didn’t help that on Saturday morning, I ran into a number of people from the divinity school on Orange Street, and had to front like nothing was going on.  I’m fairly certain one woman I talked to—a friend—immediately suspected miscarriage.

Laura was uncomfortable with this development, and that I had told the person I would have helped run the workshop.  I felt justified because I could tell my classmate exactly why I was leaving her to run a workshop by herself, and I also knew that she had once miscarried at seven weeks.  She would know exactly what was going on.

After taking Saturday off, I felt like I needed to go to my parish on Sunday.  I’m a deacon, and I had a role in the liturgy.  On top of being involved in the life of the community, as Friday and Saturday had gone on in terms of other matters and work I was involved in, I needed to go make a change to all of the service leaflets.  I got up, got dressed, put my collar on, and went to Church.

I arrived in time to change all of the service bulletins with time to spare.  I deflected the people asking me how I was. 

Smiling as best I could, I said “I’m fine.”  Fine.  It stands for “Fucked Internally, Normal Externally.”

But, twenty minutes before the service, I remembered that as a deacon my job in the service was to lead the prayers for the deceased.  I knew of one woman in the parish who died this week, but I didn’t know if I could name my child aloud.  We never named it.  Then I knew I wouldn’t be able to pray without breaking into tears in the middle of church, collapsing to the stone floor.  I immediately began to cry, and walked out into a deserted garden.   I called Laura.  I told her I was coming home.  I told her I had to tell my priest why.  Laura said she was okay with it.

And I realized what had happened to me.  For the past two days I had spoken about this as “we,” “us,” “you.”  I had never left chaplain-land (even though I was in husband-land too).  This was the first time I said “I.”  As in, I can’t do this.  My child died.  Yes, it was our child, but within that, it was my child too.  And I cannot stand in church, read the names of the dead, on Father’s Day, in the week of my wedding anniversary, and just then be willing to call the deceased child mine.  And I certainly couldn’t expect to not collapse in tears.  The very thought left me breathless.

I found my supervising priest, and told him I couldn’t stay today.  When he asked why, I broke down again, there in the parking lot.  He was incredibly gentle with me even as he seemed a bit surprised that I was at church with what had happened to Laura and me over the past two days.  He asked me what I needed.  I recovered enough to say that I needed to go home.

On the way home, I thought about what I had been learning about myself.  It turns out that I can keep other people’s secrets and pain all the day long.  My pain needs to be public.  Laura is a very private person and has her support network in place, but there are people I needed to tell.  People I trusted—who I cannot keep telling I am fine without it being a lie, and a lie that I cannot even pull off convincingly. 

When I got home I set down my bags, my papers, and my collar, and collapsed into Laura’s arms.  Wailing.  I have never made that noise before.  She guided me to the bedroom and I wept in her arms as I told her what had been seeking expression over the past two days.

“I have a support network,” she said, “and now I see that you don’t have the one that you need.  Tell who you need to.”  There is a proviso.  Laura wants no condolences coming from others outside of her own support circle.  She did (and does) not want the entire divinity school and church constantly reminding her of the loss. 

After a rest, I got up and came to the computer.  Writing is how I internalize things.  I can’t start grieving, really, until I write.

As I sit down to type this, my eye catches the first ultrasound’s printout, face down.  As I turn it over I see that Laura had added a caption.

“We’ll miss you.”

I add the date.

“D. 6/15/2012”

O God, who gathered Rachel’s tears over her lost children:  Hear now our sorrow and distress for the death of the child we longed for; in the darkness of loss, stretch out to us the strength of your arm and renewed assurance of your love; through your own suffering and risen Child Jesus.  Amen.