Confronting trauma not with explanations but with love

Every human being at some point experiences pain, grief, catastrophe, loss. In fact, I wrote about a few examples in my own life in my most recent blog post here.

The ultimate question is how we respond to disasters so they don't irrevocably break us. Institutional religion and psychology have several possible answers to that question, but no one has a single answer that works for everyone in every situation.

A compelling new book (its publication date is Jan. 30 but can be ordered now) offers generative ways to live through catastrophe and become whole again. It's Telling Stories in the Dark: Finding Healing and Hope in Sharing Our Sadness, Grief, Trauma and Pain, by Jeffrey Munroe. And it's one of the best in this category I've ever read.

Munroe, a pastor in the Reformed Church in America, says the goal of his book is "to transform pain and discover resilient resources that can heal us all."

That makes it an enormously helpful book that, for the most part, avoids drifting into the deep theological snowbanks of the old theodicy question, which asks why, if God is good and loving and powerful, there is evil and suffering in the world.

There is, in the end, no exhaustive answer to that prickly question that satisfies everyone. Munroe is smart enough to know that, so instead of exploring that tired old territory in depth, he describes in several engaging stories how various people found their way through grief to something like healing.

In fact, the author acknowledges that several times in his life he has "been stuck on the theodicy questions when I would have been better off entering deeply into lament. Lament is a beginning step to transforming pain. Telling our story can be the next step."

So the book tells nine stories of catastrophe and grief, beginning with the author's own account of the massive stroke his fiancée suffered shortly before they were to be married (they were, but the stroke meant life wasn't what they imagined it would be).

There are stories of suicide, accidental death, fatal medical error and other disasters that for the most part are told by the people who suffered through all of that. Then Munroe finds a pastor or counselor of some kind to explore how the people handled the catastrophe and what the rest of us might learn from that.

At one point, quoting a therapist, Munroe introduces the concept of "the stewardship of pain," meaning, the therapist explains, that "it's not that you get over trauma or pretend it isn't there but instead the idea is to learn to become a good steward of it. You let it instruct you. You let it make you more sensitive and empathic with other people."

The idea is that ignoring pain never works. The pain will always be present in some form and, if not acknowledged and processed, will simply cause more pain.

In response to another story of pain, Munroe quotes a man who teaches pastoral care and counseling at a seminary. "As we engage and truthfully tell our stories," the man says, "we become more integrated and pull away the layers so we may become a whole person, able to hold pain and joy together, able to hold complexity and embrace oneness. That's resilience. . ."

What Munroe ultimately concludes about suffering, grief and resilience is that "there is so much bad theology out there about why traumatic events happen and what God is supposedly accomplishing through these events that I believe we've reached a tipping point where we just need to keep our mouths shut and simply love people instead of offering explanations for the unexplainable. . .Real people need compassion and empathy, not our explanations."

Compassion and empathy are what this fine book is all about.

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WHEN FAITH AND POLITICS INTERSECT

I'm glad to see some people of faith starting to organize meetings and conferences to talk about threats to American democracy and how that relates to religious practice and belief. This Good Faith Network story describes such an event held recently in Charlotte, N.C.

The chairman of the group sponsoring the event said, "This conversation is intended to deal with a whole corpus of ideas to help us reckon with in a responsible way how we treat each other, how we practice our faith, how we live together, and how we elect those that govern us.”

Let me know (I'm at [email protected]) if you're aware of similar gatherings in the Kansas City area.

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P.S.: The Community of Christ, formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has just announced that a woman has been called to the highest church office prophet-president. It's the first time a woman has ever held that position. She's Stassi Cramm, who will be prophet-president designate until 2025 World Conference delegates vote on her call. Here's what the church, which has its headquarters in Independence, Mo., announced about her:

"Cramm, of Independence, Missouri, and Boston, is the first woman in the history of the church. . .to be called to the office. Women were ushered into the priesthood and leadership almost 40 years ago with the adoption of Doctrine & Covenants Section 156. Cramm currently is a member of the First Presidency. She previously was presiding bishop, an office that directs church finances. Before full-time employment with the church, Cramm was an engineer."

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ANOTHER P.S.: With the recent resurgence of antisemitism, we're seeing a fairly wide display of swastikas. Alvin H. Rosenfeld, the director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University, has been paying attention to this despicable phenomenon and has some thoughts about it in this Tablet Magazine article.

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A THIRD P.S.: Recently I wrote an endorsement for an upcoming book, Lord: Do You Mean Me?: A Father-Catechist!, by Francis Etheredge. That book now is in print and available via Amazon. Just click on the link on the book's name. Here's what I wrote about it:

This intriguing book is the result of a gift, the gift of faith. As Francis Etheredge explains, he was given that gift after some years of being just intellectually curious about the Catholic Church in which he grew up. He writes that because of that gift, “I understood my life in the light of a call to conversion which God alone made possible.” The book is his effort to share that gift with others, especially his children. Readers, no matter their own faith commitment or lack of it, will understand more fully how faith can shape life in generative and generous ways.