is by gathering

Most anyone who preaches learns over the years how to draw out a Bible story or other text and transform its situs im leben to the present and lives and situations of one’s audience, usually a congregation seated for the sermon. Further, anyone who has participated in and somewhat developed an art called Theological Reflection acquires a habit that becomes almost a sensing instinct, to perceive one’s own situation in whatever one reads. Just so this morning, reading in The New Yorker online magazine, an interview with Esther Perel about her psychotherapist experience with human relationships, I found my own self in a particular question and answer paragraph about an effect of “cataclysmic events.” 

EP's situs was Holocaust survivor, but (with apology for reducing the most horrific event in human history to a four hour storm and its comparatively insignificant aftermath) I see it from the inside looking out as a hurricane survivor. My experience throughout life has been, and continues, that every event, every experience I have, good or bad, lifting up or tearing down, exuberant, exciting, boring or grievous, in some way or other has helped me both to go on living my own life sanely and also to function more effectively, knowingly, understandingly, as a priest and pastor, counselor, mentor, friend. From a much longer and other focus article, here’s the paragraph.

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Q to EP: You grew up in Belgium, as the daughter of Holocaust survivors.

EP response: All Belgian Jews were deported, sixty thousand of them. A few thousand kids got saved by being hidden. After the war, the entire Jewish community of Belgium—which at this point amounts to about forty thousand people out of eleven million Belgians—were people who came from the camps, from the woods, from hiding places. The entire community was a community of survivors. That’s all we knew. And the community of survivors, worldwide, without any input from psychiatrists or psychologists, had gatherings—gatherings for the survivors of camp such-and-such, gatherings for the survivors of village such-and-such, parties, planting of forests, creating life, having children.

And that coming together, why is it interesting? Because it’s the first time people understood that there was such a thing as an adult trauma. Before then, Freudian thinking said it’s all between zero and five. So now we had a notion that you could have been perfectly fine before, but a cataclysmic event like this can destroy you, and the only way you can remember a sense of continuity, a sense of purpose, a sense of connection is by gathering with others. And that’s what I watched.

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What does it do for me? Speaking just for where I am this morning, I see, am reminded, realize, that my ongoing experience of the Hurricane Michael aftermath is expectable, predictable, can be analyzed and worked through. Is not shameful, not weakness. Just and only human. That this cataclysmic event can destroy me, and indeed I have felt a sense of that from the moment of coming back to after Wednesday, October 10, 2018 and driving through Panama City from bridge to bridge, and not once, but over and over again and again and again, every time, and still.

That smiley face assurances and stiff upper lip optimism do not help me in the least, in fact can feel outrageous, stir up the anger, deepen the depression into which I feel myself, destroyed, sinking. Every time returning, I want, need, to run, escape, get away, how could life do this to me. After two months, neighborhoods still piled high with storm refuse. Block after block of once tall majestic fragrant pine trees broken down, entire forests, in the same direction, mostly fallen south signaling horrific wind from the north, the downside of the storm, my god, holy christ, what can it possibly be like on the other, east, side of the eye wall, the worst of it.

This must be how someone feels whose loved one was struck and killed by an anonymous hit and run driver: rage, devastating grief, whom to hate, whom to want to kill, and knowing the feeling will never go away because no one and nothing comes back from death to life as it was. The anger and frustration are nearly unbearable. If for every loss there’s a gain, where’s the upside? 

As a matter of fact, I lived the gain yesterday morning, walking into and through Holy Nativity Episcopal Church filled with children. Teachers waving, "Hi, Father Tom!" Children in every inch of space, having school, here sitting on the floor, smiling, happy, innocent and loved beyond imagining as they listen to their teacher; there standing for the pledge of allegiance and singing the patriotic song; 

coming into the room and slowly making way through our staff meeting to the bathroom. It was for the moment like being with Julie Andrews walking on the mountaintop singing “The Hills Are Alive” with the sound of music. 

Just for the moment, and then back out into the war zone of piled debris, ruined homes, devastated neighborhoods, miles and miles and miles of snapped off trees. Living in and into cataclysm. Thinking in Esther Perel’s terms, will this destroy me before I can regain my balance … Finding myself in a story or article. I don’t know. But Perel is right, life is found in gathering with others in community. For me, at this one and only church.

T

pic: HNES class of children, out of the hurricane-damaged Bill Lloyd Building of Cove School, standing for the pledge and singing the song, in Battin Hall of HNEC, the room that once was the church sanctuary, where I was married and where my children were baptized