it's the Writing
A news report termed St Stephen's Thursday evening potluck supper a "boomers" gathering, where the shooter murdered three people. It was their "boomers supper" for people in that generation to be with each other. We have events like that, social gatherings for people with various things in common; gathering for fellowship, community, to be with friends, to get to know each other a bit. It may be Bible study, a class such as EfM. Sunday school. EfM graduates gathering later, as a group of us did monthly for some years - - it was my social highlight of every month, and I was sad when covid brought it to an end, although IDK maybe it was Time. Wednesday evening Holy Communion and Supper is popular at our church during the school year, and it's mostly when we see the young people, who come because their age group will be there. Supper Club gatherings in homes. Youth Group, when we were teens, we had our youth group meeting every Sunday evening at St Andrew's Episcopal Church, and, along with being in the Bay High Band, that was the social highlight of my teen years. Covered Dish Supper on Wednesday evenings during Lent when I was a boy. At Holy Nativity, soup suppers on Wednesday evenings in Advent and Lent. Sometimes a program, or programs like EfM classes and Youth Group. Wonderful ways to do something social and enjoy each other. Linda and I don't go anymore, because they last into the evening, and at this age we strictly avoid driving after dark; the last Time we did that was sunset and dusk into dark, and it was terrible, a frightening and dangerous experience.
At their Bible study at the church in Charleston, a young man came and shot innocent people to death, kind, hospitable people who had welcomed him and included him, and then he stood, drew a gun, and shot them to death. Thursday, a man at St Stephen's in Birmingham, three folks at the Boomers Supper murdered by a man who brought a gun. Why?
Why is easy: because this has become normal in America, usual, expected, an accepted and acceptable part of our new normal: when and where next? Not whether; but when and where, and who innocent will be shot to death because America has been changed into a scary place by people who are satanic, evil personified, moral reprehensibles who care only about themselves, their rights, their wealth, and are certain they're Saved and going to heaven. That less the lobbyists and contemptible politicians than the ordinary people who vote for them for whatever reasons of greed, rights, prejudice, fear. Fear: hatred and fear. Racism, prejudice, hatred, fear. Over against common decency that would move heaven and earth to keep children and other innocent people from harm; declining as a society, America is beyond minding human decency as part of our national character. We are for self, our rights. For shame.
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Boomers, the baby boomer generation that was born after World War Two, now into their sixties and seventies, religion is declining among the younger generations and at many churches these days, the Boomers are the largest and most elderly group. It got me to wondering what my generation is called, or whether we even have a designation, so I - - what? - - Googled it. Which took me to a decent Wikipedia article that lists several generations by the names they're commonly referred to. Mine is the Silent Generation. Because we tried to fit in and keep our mouths shut. Don't rock the boat. Don't so or say anything that might offend.
The Silent Generation. We were the children of the Great Depression and World War Two. With blue stars on the front windows of nearly every home, and more and more gold stars replacing the blue stars, we were raised in and trustingly totally vulnerable to wartime propaganda against Germans and Japs - - that created within us enmities and hatreds that I have fought within myself all my adult lifetime, and still cannot extinguish. Hatreds, prejudices that are as deep in me as the racist certainties about Segregation were in my parents and grandparents. I did not and cannot understand them, the two racist generations before me; and the Boomers and later cannot understand me.
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This week's Book Review in The Atlantic is presented by a newsletter essay (copy and pasted below, scroll down) that caught me in a way. The commonality of the Books is the topic therapy. Typically, ordained ministers are called on for counseling, which can become therapy sessions; a dangerous direction for ministers to let their counseling take. For one, seminary curricula are so tight and full that there is no more room or Time, and we are not trained or qualified to be counselors and therapists. But it happens, too often without boundaries being set and observed, and ministers serving unqualified as counselors and therapists are as human as the folks who come with problems.
But I'm wandering: it's my natural bent.
What caught my attention was at the end of the essay, the mention of writing in connection with therapy, and the suggestion that writing can be another way of “reducing the pains of living." Me, I've often wondered why I felt the need to get by myself, sit down, and write. Sometimes to just start writing even without a preconception of my topic or direction. Just loose the fingers to tippy-type, and later read it and see where I went. Sometimes it's the letter that one writes then wads up and throws away. Sometimes I press Publish. Sometimes after pressing Publish I go another step and put a link to it on my Facebook page. FB: it's my only social media outlet, I'm not a member of WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn, or Twitter. And I never scroll Facebook, I just make an almost daily post and log off. Sometimes I'm content with whatever I posted. Sometimes I turn up ashamed, or have embarrassed myself. Sometimes I go back later and either Revert to Draft or Delete a post.
But it's the writing itself, the exercise of sitting down and writing, that's therapeutic, healing.
When Lori Gottlieb, the author of The Atlantic’s “Dear Therapist” column, started her first therapy session, her client started crying almost immediately. The experience was “simultaneously awkward and intimate,” Gottlieb wrotein her book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone—and a reminder of the ultimate humanity of the therapeutic relationship. Although Gottlieb entered the room concerned about “how to apply the numerous abstract psychological theories I’d studied over the past several years to the hundreds of possible scenarios that any one therapy patient might present,” she left with a more basic imperative—to be authentic and to sit with the patient in their suffering.
At its core, therapy is about the healing power of hearing and being heard, even though such acts require vulnerability between patient and practitioner. Barbara Taylor, for example, describes the intense emotions she developed for her analyst in the memoir The Last Asylum. From the other side of the chair, Stephen Grosz captured the burden of bearing witness to such painful confessions in The Examined Life. More recently, reality shows such as Couples Therapy have promised viewers an unfiltered glimpseinto these typically confidential conversations. Though watching shows like those is no substitute for actually going to therapy, they can help viewers to see their problems in a new light or simply remind them that they are not alone. In fact, some tragedies, especially those that impact whole communities, actually demand communal healing, Resmaa Menakem argues in My Grandmother’s Hands.
If watching and reading can help you heal by letting you see yourself in others, then it follows that writing might let others see themselves in you. Perhaps it is for this reason that writing can be another way of “reducing the pains of living,” as Melissa Febos puts it in her book Body Work, “or if not, at least making them useful to myself and to others.”
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Generation