Faith and grief. They make strange bedfellows. And yet they are more akin than one would think. Both are lifelong journeys. Both are intrinsic to the human experience. Both can feel like they blind you and open your eyes in one swift motion. Both are at times mother, father, tutor, taskmaster, and tyrant.
“It’s not a religion! It’s a relationship!” As an evangelical in America, I heard this a lot growing up. In this season of grief, I’ve found that my relationship with God did not always help. But my religion did.
Let me explain what I mean.
My rapport with God during the last few years has felt a bit like a tumultuous high school dating relationship. If Jesus was my “boyfriend”—as so many mantras of the purity movement told me—He didn’t always seem like a very good one. He’d disappointed me, upended my life, made promises He didn’t seem to keep, and at times felt absent. We were not emotionally connecting. I realize this was simply my perception of Him as I worked through my losses. Still, it wasn’t the heartwarming, fulfilling, ardent relationship I’d come to expect from the lover God.
At some point, I stopped relying on the warm and fuzzy emotional support of a one-on-one relationship with God, and instead turned to religion. By this I mean that I turned to communal liturgy. I turned to scripted confessions of the faith. I repeated affirmations of historic doctrine. Much like my sister, I clung to the rituals and ancient traditions of the church. I committed to a faith that was more of a shared endeavor than an individual feeling. I observed noteworthy days on the church calendar. I had ash smeared on my forehead for Lent. I feasted on Easter. I lit candles for Advent and ate king cake for Epiphany. I read the daily offices and folded my hands for prayer at meals. Every day, I took another step. I didn’t always expect God to “show up.” But I made a commitment that I would show up for the liturgy of life with God.
I did the same with grief. I didn’t know what to say, what to think, or what to feel. My mind was all over the place; my heart was shattered. So I set my body in motion.
I put on black clothing. I ate casseroles that people delivered. I tore open sealed envelopes and read pastel-colored sympathy cards, taking in every word. I’d go sit in my car and scream. I wandered through cemeteries. I looked through old photographs. I decorated graves with plastic flowers.
What I found in rooting myself in a long history of bodily and spiritual movements around grief was that ritual creates a placeholder for emotion. I did not have to perform or make things up as I went along. A path had been carved for me by millions of saints and mourners in the past. I could walk in their footsteps until I found my own footing. I was handed a script, a communal habit that mourners and condolers alike have shared as they walked together. No one knows how to act or what to say when faced with the atrocity of death. Rituals tell us what to say. They tell us how to act. They give us another step.
Psychologists note that some form of avoidance is natural and even healthy in the immediate aftermath of loss. Evasion helps us regulate the disabling and chaotic emotional experience of fresh grief. The bereaved tend to oscillate between two responses: the inclination to repress the pain, and the inclination to expose oneself to the death and the agony of the loss.1 This oscillation is normal and to some degree may even help us survive.
My experience is that rituals introduce a healthy rhythm of exposure to the grief. They allow us to let off emotional steam at specific moments. With a ritual, you willingly confront your losses head-on a few times a day or a few times a week, so that you don’t have to be beholden to them all the time. Rituals name and order the chaos of our emotions.
Rituals invite the community into our space of sorrow. They provide actions, services, and words for use by others who want to help but might not know how. They alleviate awkwardness, naming and embracing the elephant in the room. Rituals create communal choreography and synchronize our sorrow.
A sturdy, time-honored ritual is pliant and adaptable. I made some rituals my own, repurposed them to fit the moment. These secondhand sacraments grow in beauty as they are handed down again and again. We each add our stitches to the holes, add brushes of color to what has faded.
The truth is, grief requires presence so much more than it requires perfection or performance. The same is true of faith. All I had to do was show up for the ritual and then grief began to transform me all on its own in important and beautiful ways. That’s often how faith works too. By showing up for liturgy and tradition, I found that God had been there all along. The habits themselves were healing. My heart and my body just needed to catch up with the truth. Even when I didn’t feel it, God was with me. He was fortifying me. He was giving me wisdom and grace for the challenges. Together, we shared the labor of grief. And we shared the labor of faith.
A few weeks before Lois was born, I was talking with my friend Sarah about my aches and pains and how ready I was to go into labor and birth this child. As she always does, Sarah spoke peace over me: “Be patient, lass. Her last threads are being woven.” (Sarah is Scottish, so her words always have a sage, melodic quality to them.)
She then said something I’ll never forget. She explained that in her mind, the birth of my daughter was the first step in a long journey of releasing this soul that was knit in me—that was truly a part of me—into the world. It’s a de-possessing of her. It’s an acceptance that we are not one, that she is wholly other than me, and that her path will take her incrementally further and further away from me. Birthing is the labor of letting go and accepting the possibility that she may come to a point someday where she is no more.
I guess love always creates a liminal space, between discovering and losing, between joy and sadness, between embracing and releasing. Birth is always the beginning of death. From the moment my daughter comes wailing from my womb, she will begin the process of dying. The question is, am I willing to learn to love her in this new way, in a way that names the potential of loss, of undoing—the unraveling of all those threads? Am I willing to entrust her to the One who conceived of her from the beginning?
The One who gives and takes away. The One who takes away and gives. The One whose name is blessed and whose name I bless with every kiss, every embrace, every moment of laughter, every second of savoring.
I suppose someday I may regret writing a book about bereavement only two to three years after my most significant losses. I have not yet matured into my grief, have probably not arrived at the redeeming vantage point I pray is in the future. Time does not heal all wounds. But it does bring wisdom. It illuminates lessons.
The advantage, perhaps, of writing this book now, though, is that I only have the vocabulary for fresh sorrow. Confounding pain is still the language I know best and maybe, if you’ve picked up this book, that is the only language you can comprehend right now, too. And so, we understand one another. At least, I hope we do.
I am not a historian. I am not an anthropologist. I am not a psychologist. And I’m not a theologian. I am just a person who has experienced loss. I have felt grief deeply. I was unprepared. Also, I survived.
I’ve learned a lot about history, anthropology, psychology, and theology by reading about grief rituals. I’ve also learned a lot about myself. I wouldn’t think so highly of myself to offer a comprehensive analysis of where we are as a society when it comes to our grief. Any recommendations I make would only be partially informed and certainly subjective.
In the writing of this book, I’ve realized how easy it is to feel nostalgic about the past. The strict structures of the Victorian period warn us against being overly sentimental. There was no one era that got things exactly right, no generation that was completely adept at managing our mortality. So there is no reason to think that this current generation is incapable of instituting healthy communal rituals. We have much to learn from our past, imperfect though it may be. And we have much to learn from other cultures around the world that still maintain a robust array of historic rituals, traditions I didn’t attempt to fully explore in this book for fear of misrepresenting or unfairly appropriating.
I am afraid as a Western, American culture that we are not moving in the right direction. I am concerned about the impact COVID-19 has had on our grief rituals. As we have seen, large-scale catastrophic events sometimes create irreversible shifts in the way we grieve. The Black Plague of the 1300s weakened the regularity and uniformity of death rituals across Europe. Outbreaks of smallpox and yellow fever turned public opinion against the practice of tolling the bell. The Civil War instigated the outsourcing of bodily burial preparations. World War I put a stop to the wearing of mourning clothes out of fear the public would be demoralized.
My friend Sargon tells me that in the Iraqi village where he grew up, it was customary for the community to forgo Christmas or Easter celebrations if someone from the village had recently passed away. This was their way of honoring the dead and the family who was in grief. Sargon says that when he was a young man and the war started, the village went for years without celebrating the holidays because so many people were dying. Death was constant. They were losing one sacred ritual in the name of another. Sargon tells me after five or six years, people gave up and began celebrating the holidays again in spite of the losses because it just wasn’t practical to carry on the tradition.
Some rituals shift for good reasons. But some are lost without any thought toward tending to the emotional need that was beneath the practice. What rituals will this pandemic steal from us? The prohibition of large funeral gatherings for the sake of public health won’t last forever. When we are once again allowed to gather to mourn together, will we? Or will we see it as unnecessary, an outdated custom? Will we see it as an inconvenience, a demoralizing detour from our toxically positive paths of self-actualization?
Rituals have much to offer us. Keening affirms our anguish. Covering mirrors gives us grace for the change. Telling the bees invites peace and courage into the precarity. Shivah intrudes upon our loneliness with presence. Casseroles bring us back into our bodies. Photographs help us remember rightly. Sympathy cards give us words to express our love. Wearing black allows us to be honest about what we are feeling on the inside. Tolling the bell summons us to accept the everlasting burden of grief. Funeral games make space for joy. Death rooms remind us of our mortality. Decoration Day honors our loved ones and our own stories.
It is my personal belief that rituals are most powerful when practiced in community. We all have our own daily habits, personal practices that soothe or strengthen us. As I’ve studied historic traditions of grief, I’ve done my best to begin implementing rituals that spoke to me, that made sense for my day-to-day. But for the most part, I have practiced these alone.
How do you convince an entire society to return to or reinvent a long-forgotten tradition? How do we pull people away from the idol of individualism, the enticing efficiency of technology, and the palliative comfort of entertainment long enough to convince them that the slow, intentional presence of a communal ritual is good and healthy for us all?
One thing I can’t decide is this: Is the church a preserver of rituals or a destroyer of rituals? I’ve seen many instances where a theological discrepancy or power struggle has led to the church snuffing out a grief tradition with no obvious attempt to replace it. And yet, the church is also the keeper of many rituals of lament, repentance, and remembrance. Ours is the church of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Ours is the church of Ash Wednesday and Communion. The church ritualizes the longing of Advent and holds space for the loss of the holy innocents even amid the Christmas season. The church embraces the sorrow of the cross! And the church is still the place many of us chose to go to marry, to bury, and to baptize. A pastor or priest is still often the person we want presiding over these ceremonies.
As much as I’ve criticized the church’s historic wariness of some of these rituals, I actually believe that the church is uniquely positioned to lead society to this end. The church is one of the few remaining communal institutions that is still intact. And the holy Scriptures of the church, the Word of God, is full of raw and relatable truth about the experience of grief and sorrow, so much more than I ever anticipated. Most powerful of all, the God we worship is a God who chose to descend into the depths of our grief so He could rescue us from sin and pain forever. His empathy, His identification as a mourner, and His surrender to death was His glory. His triumph. And we share in that glory, that triumph.
What if the church invited society back into grief? Back to traditions, back to rituals, back to communal ceremonies of sorrow. What if our church buildings were places where the whole spectrum of human emotions was not only recognized but indulged, tended to, shepherded, surrounded by community, and supported with holy habits?
At the very least, I would ask that we not be lazy, that we not lose our remaining rituals due to neglect or distraction. Let’s not move quickly along as we do with so many of our hurts and discomforts these days. Could we creatively engage and discern together new ways to move our bodies into the motions of grief? Could we be fully present in our bodies? Could we write new scripts for sharing condolence and offering one another comfort? Could we rediscover rituals for our own time, our own place? Could we try it together?
It is Ash Wednesday, 2021. The pandemic is not over. But my parents have just been vaccinated. And I am just two weeks away from giving birth to little Lois.
Many churches have not begun meeting regularly for services yet, and some that had relaunched Sunday gatherings over the summer decided to scale back again during the surge of cases over the holidays. We are in the dark days of this crisis, with the daily death rate reaching the thousands in our country alone.
But I am determined to observe Ash Wednesday in honor of my sister and in honor of the griefs I’ve borne in the last few years. I feel the nearness of labor in my aching hips. I am scared. I am excited. I am uncertain. I need to remind myself that I am mortal and that’s okay. I need to wear the humbling smear of ashes on my face. I need to be told I am dust and to dust I will return.
This year, I pull into the parking lot of St. Luke’s on time. But just barely. I couldn’t find a clear answer on the church’s website about whether or not they’d be holding a service in person. I brought my mask and was prepared to socially distance in the sanctuary.
Once again, I have trouble finding the entrance. I’m not sure what it is about the design of this building, but I just can’t seem to ever find my way inside. The weather is warm considering it is February in Boone, so I walk the perimeter of the church a couple of times looking for an unlocked door. Actually, I’m waddling. And cursing myself for wearing wedge shoes when I am nine months pregnant.
The rector must have seen me passing by the window a few times. She comes to the side door, puts on her mask, and greets me. I ask her if they are having the noon service and she says no, but that if I email the church secretary, I can get a Zoom link for future services. I assure her that I understand and thank her. She blesses me and sends me on my way.
Rather than going back to my car, I wander around for a bit on the grounds of the church. There is a small prayer chapel that is also locked. And there is a prayer labyrinth, a circular maze of flat stones leading to a Celtic cross at the center. As the sun warms my sore back, I decide to walk the maze slowly, and pray. COVID has once again upended a treasured ritual. So I have to get creative.
Many of the stones have been inscribed and are dedicated to the memory of lost loved ones. I read their names carefully as I pass, sometimes praying for their families, wondering what their lives had been like. I move slowly in the circle of the maze, each orbit getting smaller and smaller, moving me closer and closer to the cross. It reminds me of a poem from one of my sister’s favorite poets, Rainer Maria Rilke:
I live my life in widening circles
That reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.2
Around and around. Ashes to ashes. I feel myself coming uncoiled with every step. Dust to dust. “Stay on the path, Amanda.” I begin to cry.
The poem continues:
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?3
Sometimes I feel like I am always circling grief—a dark, endless hole that threatens to pull me into its void. What keeps me from falling in? Fear? Courage? Hope? God Himself?
But today, on Ash Wednesday, I am circling the cross, that fierce instrument of death that bought me life. The tears I am crying today are not just tears of sadness. They are tears of joy too. “Thank You, God.” My baby kicks my ribs. Another step. “Thank You, God.” My only sister is gone. “Why, Lord? I will never understand.” Another step. I remember that I am dust, and to dust I will return. “Won’t you spare me over ’til another year?” The sun shines on my face. Another step. “Thank You, God.” Another step. “Help my baby to live.” Another step. “Make me glad for as many days as I’ve seen trouble.”
These are my prayers this Ash Wednesday. To the God who gives. And takes away. And gives. Another step.