Probability

The probability that any one of us will live for ever: P(liveforever)=0.

The probability the each one of us going to die: P(die)=1

So I'm taking statistics in a five week gulp two evenings a week at Providence College. Much to my surprise, having expected to hate it and struggle with every problem, I am finding it fascinating and accessible. The work we did last week in probability - how to calculate probability, and how to interpret probability data - was especially interesting, because somehow it dovetailed with my particular vexation du jour, which is the constant stream of health pundits (yeah, I'm talking about you, Dr. Oz ) and articles suggesting we can indeed live forever, if we just drink enough wheatgrass, or do enough sit ups, or subscribe to whatever nutritional/fitness fad is current.

All probabilities lie between 0 and 1 - things that will never happen are 0 and things that are absolutely sure to happen are 1. Everything else fits in between. So even things with very low probability are possible (yes, even winning the lottery or being struck by lightning). Where it gets interesting is when you start looking at multiple probabilities.

We did a problem about the 1987 Challenger disaster - when the space shuttle exploded as it lifted away from the launch pad, killing the crew and the first ever civilian passenger, a school teacher from New Hampshire. The problem: The space shuttle had 748 separate critical "events" that each had a .0001 chance of going wrong. That sounds minute, inconsequential. But then you do the math - there's a .9999 chance of everything going right (and raise that number to 748) and you get .9279. Every flight had a 93% chance of being successful, and a 7% chance of disaster. That is very different from .0001.

Probability was on my mind when I read the heartbreaking article in the New York Times about a 12 year old's death from sepsis. Maureen Dowd followed that up with an even more poignant column on Sunday. Reading the comments on both pieces reveals many people who are certain they can point to exactly what went wrong and that Rory's death was "preventable". It's a tragic story, and there may very well have been medical negligence or malpractice, and perhaps it's just human nature to try and quickly bring a horrifying event under control by saying if just this one thing had been different, then it would never have happened.

Buried deep down in the comment thread are just a few remarks from physicians who say that this kind of sepsis creates such a cascade of organ and tissue failure that, especially in children, even when caught early, just can't be stopped. It is possible that even had the physicians who first saw Rory diagnosed him correctly, he would still have died. Again - I'm not suggesting that something did not go terribly wrong in his treatment, only commenting that it is false to assert that an event like this is ever truly "preventable."

I suppose this resonates with me because I am still wondering - if I had done something differently, would Gerry still be alive? What if we had never left Blacksburg? What if I had nagged him more to get the lump in his neck checked? What if the sarcoidosis in his lung had been recognized as the red herring it was? Was his death in some way preventable, and was I the agent who could have prevented it?

I'll wonder all the rest of my life.

Complex systems - like churches, hospitals and the human body - are unpredictable. Every tiny possible outcome sits on that 0-1 probability scale and with millions of possible outcomes, who knows what tips any one event into being inevitable? Right now, there's lots of commentary about our recent General Convention. From both sides of the theological and political spectrum, folks are sure they understand what happened, why it happened and what the consequences are going to be.

Well, I'm wondering about all that, too. I'm not so sure we can draw big conclusions. I'm never sure that I have the absolute answers. I find human behavior the most complex and mysterious phenomenon of all. I am daily surprised in personal interactions and in groups. Systems don't work by linear cause and effect. It may be years before we can really understand what was happening in the church here at the beginning of the 21st century. And maybe there are some things we'll never know.

I am oddly comforted by all this uncertainty. Perhaps it allows me to be content with being human and finite and limited. It teaches me humility and acceptance. It encourages me to focus my energies on things that are within my power to change (which has a .9999 probability of being my own self). It reminds me that I am mortal after all.

The Biology of Grief

"When you are lonely, your whole body is lonely."

That's from this article in the current issue of The Atlantic - about the effect Facebook and other social media have on the phenomenon of increasing isolation and loneliness. It's about 2/3 of the way through the article, in a paragraph that cites research correlating loneliness with higher levels of epinephrine - one of the hormones the body releases in response to stress. There's also evidence that the effects of loneliness go right down deep into the cell's nucleus, changing how DNA is copied and genes are expressed.

When you are lonely, your whole body is lonely.

As I come up on the second anniversary of Gerry's death, that sentence expresses with crystalline precision how profoundly I feel grief has affected me - it has gotten right down into my DNA, changing things at a cellular level. And I think that's one of the reasons why it becomes so hard for people who have not experienced this kind of bereavement to understand that this is something you experience at a bone-deep level that goes far beyond "feeling sad."

Over this second year, I've had my share of criticism, some subtle, some not so subtle, from people who think my grieving has gone on too long or been too intense. I have been chided for expressing my grief to others. I certainly understand that being close to deep grief is unsettling for people, that I'm not always a lot of fun to be around. I understand that all of us experience a certain amount of "compassion fatigue." I get that there are folks out there who think I should just "get over it."

A few weeks ago, I was sitting on the T, heading in to Harvard Square, when I looked up at one of the ads looking for subjects to participate in a medical study on "complicated grief." Has it been more than six months since you lost a loved one? Do you still experience great sadness? Do you have feelings of yearning or longing for your loved one? Do you have problems carrying out daily activities? Well - yes, yes, yes and no.

So - do I have "complicated grief?" When did grieving become a mental disorder? I certainly still experience great sadness. I still have strong feelings of yearning and longing - I sometimes ache with the longing to hold him, smell him, snuggle him...But I've been perfectly functional and capable all through this two year journey - the bills get paid, the animals get cared for, my work gets done, I'm not eating/sleeping/drinking too much, I'm exercising and hanging out with friends and keeping in touch with family. Is my grief "complicated?"

Bob Cohen, my terrific half-therapist half-management coach, told me emphatically that no - there's nothing disordered or abnormal or anything else about what I've been experiencing. He said that grief stays with us forever (I'm telling you, it changes your DNA) - it recedes in intensity, but you can never, ever go back to who you were before. Something more is lost than just your beloved - in a very real, and I think biological way, your own self is changed.

People who have been through this told me that the second year would be harder than the first. They are absolutely right. The first year was a year of shock and a constant bracing against waves of grief that sometimes felt like they would annihilate me. But the second year brings deep, deep loneliness and the awareness that it really is final. And my whole body feels it.

I told Bob a couple of weeks ago that I was starting to feel like the Yukon when the spring thaw starts to break up the ice. How I experience my grief is changing - shifting way down deep, the way the river's current affects the movement of ice on the surface.Some things that used to give me pleasure are returning: cooking, planning travel, and I'm very grateful for that. But the current is driving me on toward something new; I'm never going to be able to go back upstream. I never again will be the woman I was.

Sermon for Easter Day

The Rev. Clare Fischer-Davies

St. Martin’s Church

April 8, 2012

Easter Day

There’s a phoenix on the front of your bulletin.

I think I need to say that right away, because when we were discussing possible bulletin cover art in staff meeting a few weeks ago – there was some concern that no one would be able to figure out what this figure is. “It looks like a dinosaur,” one person said. And yes – I can see its dinosaur-like characteristics. But it’s a phoenix – a mythological bird that the ancient world believed died in a burst of fire and was reborn out of its own ashes. Early, early in the Christian tradition, preachers of the resurrection used the phoenix as a metaphor, an example of what happened to Jesus in the tomb.

We looked at more conventional Easter images, too – lilies, and flowering crosses and things like that. But I kept being drawn back to the phoenix – because it’s unusual and because it’s powerful. This Easter, I’m not very interested in pictures of downy chicks, pastel flowers and fluffy bunnies – I want an image that speaks to me of the power of the resurrection to bring life out of death and dust and ashes. I want to be amazed.

This year, we hear the Easter story from the Gospel of Mark – a strange eight verse account that feels like its proper ending has been chopped off. The women come to the tomb early in the morning, worried that they aren’t strong enough to roll the sealing stone away, but find that someone has already opened up the tomb. When they look inside, they see a strange young man who tells them that Jesus has been raised. The strange young man commissions the women to go and tell the other disciples that Jesus has gone ahead and is waiting for them in Galilee. The women run away from the tomb – and the last verse says cryptically, “They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”

It’s a strange and perplexing Easter message, isn’t it? It generates way more questions than it answers. It makes us wonder what happens next – what the next chapter in the story will be.

Of course, we know that the women must have told someone. Otherwise, we all wouldn’t be gathered together here this morning. The woman must have told someone – because twenty years before the Gospel of Mark was written, and only 20 years or so after Jesus was crucified, Paul tells the Christians in Corinth exactly how the story of Jesus’ resurrection came down to him. However frightened the women were that morning as they ran away from the tomb, their fear was not the end of the story.

I want to be amazed this Easter.

“Amaze” isn’t a word that I use very often – it isn’t a central word in my vocabulary. But it’s a very important word to Mark. He uses a particular Greek word ekthambeos – which (please excuse my really poor Greek scholarship) means sort of “super-amazed” and Mark is the only place in the whole bible that ekthambeos shows up. He uses it four times – and two out of those four are in these eight verses at the end of his Gospel.

The translation of the bible that we use translates ekthambeos as “alarmed” – you can see it about halfway through the passage, “as they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. ⁶But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.”

I like amazed much better than alarmed – because I think it’s a bigger word – there’s more room in it. Alarmed sounds like what I feel when I see a spider – it’s a small word. But ekthambeos means much more than startled, or nervous or even frightened. Mark uses ekthambeos to express an encounter with an alternative reality – the experience of seeing something completely unexpected, something that is terrifying because it is so strange and inexplicable.

So the women find the stone rolled away from the mouth of the tomb, and when they look inside, they don’t find the corpse they expect to see, but a strange young man who I don’t think looks like any young man they’ve ever seen before. And they say, “Whoa.” They are ekthambeosed. Cue the Twilight Zone music. And the first thing this strange young man says to them is, “Don’t be ekthambeosed.”

He’s not saying, “don’t be afraid,” as if they think he’s going to harm them. I think he’s saying, “Yes – your world has shifted. This is your new reality.”

It is a very uncomfortable thing to be ekthambeosed – to feel that the earth has shifted under your feet and that you’re no longer standing on solid ground. That’s one reason I like the phoenix as a symbol of the resurrection – it’s something far outside our ordinary experience – it’s bizarre, uncanny, peculiar.  We know that every spring, the trees will bud and flowers will bloom and baby animals will frolic. That may be sweet and reassuring and a lovely sign that life renews itself every season, but buds and flowers and baby animals don’t make us feel ekthambeosed. They don’t knock us sideways with weirdness.

I think it’s terribly important to realize that the women at the tomb, and the first disciples and everyone else who first heard this resurrection news were just like us. I think that the women would have been perfectly happy to come to the tomb,  take care of Jesus’ body the way they had planned and then go home again to enact the rituals of mourning and to honor their beloved rabbi and friend with all the appropriate rites and ceremonies. Well – perfectly happy isn’t the right word – of course they were broken hearted and distraught with grief. But they knew what was expected of them, and it was comforting and healing to be able to fulfill those expectations.

But the encounter with the young man messed all that up. Instead of ritual grief and familial ceremonies, there is ekthambeos – the world tilts on its axis and the most basic thing you thought you understood – the dead stay dead – isn’t true anymore.

It’s very tempting to dismiss these people as ignorant, simple-minded peasants who could be dazed and dazzled – who believed in things like angelic messengers and miracles. It’s very tempting to think that “well, THEY might be ekthambeosed – but we know better. We know that the dead stay dead.”

If we know that the dead stay dead, then we can talk about Easter as a celebration of how Jesus lived on in his disciples’ hearts. If we know that the dead stay dead, then then we can enjoy the beautiful music and the amazing flowers this morning and have a perfectly lovely Easter Day. If we know the dead stay dead, there is still great joy to be had here this morning – and for many people in churches this morning around the world, “Christ is risen,” the music and the flowers and the crowds will be enough.

But maybe, it’s not quite enough for you. Maybe deep down inside, you would like to ekthambeosed – to be struck sideways with weirdness and to encounter something so powerful, so far beyond your understanding and your control that you know you are indeed in the presence of God. Maybe, deep down inside – you would like to be ekthambeosed and have your life change forever.

The Easter proclamation is so much more than pastel baby animals and spring flowers. It’s so much more than wish fulfillment – the disciples were so sad about losing Jesus that they told stories about how he was still alive for them. The Easter proclamation is so much more.

It is about the power of God – power that we do not understand and power that lies beyond our control – it is about the power of God to give life wherever God chooses to give life, even to give life to what is dead, and dried up and hopeless.

The phoenix dies in a burst of flame and then rises again from its own ashes, and then it dies and rises again, in a cycle of death and rebirth. The Easter proclamation tells me that God can resurrect what is dead and dried up and hopeless in me, not just once but as many times as it takes. 

It is a fearful thing to be ekthambeosed – to encounter something that passes human understanding – to experience something that can never be explored on a dissection table or demonstrated in a laboratory. It is a fearful thing – to be confronted with the power that makes the blind see, the lame walk and brings the dead to life.

But look closely today at all the words we are singing and praying and using in our worship. Look closely – because we aren’t singing about baby animals and tender new flowers at all – we are singing and praying and giving thanks that Jesus Christ is risen today – that by his death he has destroyed death – he has closed the gates of hell and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers – our song of triumph has begun.

Be ekthambeosed. Be amazed. All of us who have been buried with Christ in his death, now share with him in his resurrection. Death is swallowed up in victory. And we are invited to a banquet that has been prepared for us since before the world began. Alleluia. Christ is risen indeed.

                                                                                

Sermon for Good Friday

Passover begins tonight.

All around us in this neighborhood,  Jewish households are filled with family and friends gathered for the Passover Seder – a ritual feast of very specific foods that are woven through the Passover Haggadah – the telling of the story of Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. Moses had told Pharaoh again and again: “Let my people go,” and again and again, in spite of plagues of frogs, and blood and hail and pestilence – Pharaoh refused.

Finally – God prepares one final terrible plague, the death of every first born male in Egypt, from the beasts in the field right up to Pharaoh’s own son. Moses tells the Israelites that they must mark the doors of their homes with lamb’s blood – and that sign will protect them. The Angel of Death will pass over their homes and spare them from destruction.

So every Passover Seder recalls how God’s mighty act that sets Israel free from bondage, is accomplished through the death and suffering of others.

Good Friday and Passover have a long, complicated and sometimes tragic history.

By the time of Jesus, Passover had become a pilgrimage Festival. Faithful Jews were expected to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and sacrifice their Passover lamb in the Temple. Biblical scholars disagree about whether or not Jesus’ last supper with his disciples was a Seder, but there is no doubt that the events we remember tonight unfold in the context of the bloody sacrifices of thousands of Passover lambs. And the Jewish and Christian observances continue to be closely connected.

There was a full moon at dawn this morning when I left the chapel. It’s the first full moon after the spring equinox. Easter is always the first Sunday after that first full moon, and Passover begins on the night of that first spring full moon. So we are astronomically bound up with our Jewish brothers and sisters tonight – as they celebrate their deliverance from bondage in Egypt and we contemplate our deliverance from the bondage of sin and death.

The connections between Passover and Good Friday have been complicated and sometimes tragic. There is a long, sad history of Jews being blamed for Jesus’ death and for Christians using the Gospel stories as excuses for harassment and persecution. In Eastern Europe, as late as the first decades of the 20^th century, Good Friday observances included destructive rampages in Jewish settlements.

So I speak of the connections between Passover and Good Friday with fear and trembling. But there is no doubt that when John the Baptist, at the very beginning of the Gospel of John, points to Jesus and says, “Behold the lamb of God,” he’s not identifying Jesus as an adorable, sproingy baby animal. John the Baptist is saying, “Behold, the Passover lamb of God.” Jesus is marked for sacrifice, and like the blood of the Passover lambs in Exodus, the blood of Jesus is blood that saves.

Now, I grew up in the Protestant South – where we, even in my staid Presbyterian church, talked about the blood of Jesus a lot. But even Episcopalians sing, in the beloved hymn “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,” that  “There is plentiful redemption in the blood that has been shed,” and “There is healing in his blood.” Still – speaking about the blood of Jesus’ suffering and death as Passover blood, as blood that saves – is a challenge.

I think most of us experience a visceral recoil from the cross. We understand that it is a horrifying instrument of torture, used by a brutal, oppressive regime – not just to execute troublemakers, but to humiliate them. We cannot worship a God who is so wrathful and violent that he crucifies his only Son. We reject a God who punishes Jesus instead of us.

And it’s that recoil, that rejection that keeps so many people from being in church tonight, keeps them from sitting through these hard and sad passages of scripture.

During the meet and greet sessions in Alabama last April, I was asked about my theology of the cross. And maybe because I didn’t have time to think or worry about my answer, I blurted out that the cross isn’t about what God does to Jesus, but about what Jesus does for us. On Palm Sunday, we heard the great passage from Philippians where St. Paul says that Jesus lays aside all his divine prerogatives, shares our human flesh and blood and willingly goes to his death on the cross. And I believe that Jesus does that, not to placate his angry Father, but to bring his divinity into the harshest, most bitter, most lonely experience any human being can have.

There is a song that will be sung around the Seder tables tonight called Dayenu – “It would have been enough.”  If God had brought us out of Egypt, and not led us through the sea on dry land, Dayenu. If God had led us through the sea on dry land and not given us manna in the wilderness, Dayenu. If God had given us manna in the wilderness and not given us the Torah, Dayenu. The song goes on for fifteen verses; every time it seems that God has done enough, has poured out enough love and grace and salvation, has gone to the very limits of divine action, God does more. Dayenu – it would have been enough – but God does more.

If Jesus had preached good news to the poor, and not healed the sick, Dayenu. If Jesus had healed the sick and not eaten with tax collectors and prostitutes, Dayenu. If Jesus had eaten with tax collectors and prostitutes and not washed his disciples feet, Dayenu.

But God does more. If the last enemy to be destroyed is death, then God in Christ says, “I will defeat this enemy with my own blood. I will experience the pain, the loneliness, the fear – and with my death, I will break the power of death forever.”

So tonight, Passover begins for us, too. Our Israelite ancestors waited one night within doors that had been splashed with blood, waiting for the angel of death to pass over them. Tomorrow night at the Easter Vigil the whole world will wait for the new light of the resurrection to be kindled, and for the proclamation of the resurrection, as we pass over with Jesus from death into life.

But tonight, we wait here – beneath the cross – beneath the blood of Christ, our Passover who has been sacrificed for us.

By his wounds he reconciled us. By his blood we are healed.

We're the Young Generation

Davy Jones is dead. He was one of my first crushes - one of those very first experiments with longing and desire peculiar to young adolescent girls. I remember record albums, and that silly TV show, his winsome smile, twinkling eyes, and yes - how nice his behind looked in jeans. I still remember most of the lyrics to most of the songs and all day the Monkees' theme song has been yammering in my head - especially the last line "We're the young generation, and we've got something to say..."

I really, really remember being 12 (which is probably the equivalent of being 8 these days). I remember Yardley cosmetics (and putting on makeup at school so my Mom wouldn't see), incense sticks, a really cool pair of velvet bell bottoms I got for my birthday, more fights with my Mom, and the Monkees. I just got in on the very tail end of the 1960s, but I loved being swept up in that conviction that we - the young generation - had something to say, and the incredible, positive force of all that we had to say was going to change the world.

But you know, you don't stay the young generation for long.

This was brought home to me a few years ago at a conference on change in the church (yes, there actually is such a thing), when a woman (who honestly, I didn't think looked much younger than I am) got up and gave an impassioned rant about how everything was baby boomers' fault. We had stood in her way all her life; we were the reason she hadn't achieved her life goals and we were the reason the church was doomed.

"What!?" I thought. "Me?!" But - I'm the young generation! Just look at my incense sticks and fabulous velvet bell-bottoms! Forty years had flashed past so quickly, I hardly saw them come and go. One minute Davy Jones is a delicious young man, and the next - he's dead of a heart attack at 66.

The desire among many of my younger colleagues for priests of my vintage to be gone is palpable. I suppose, when I was the baby priest in the diocese of New Hampshire, my peers and I made just as many snarky comments about our elders, but we lacked social media to share that snark with the world. We just stood around at diocesan events, glaring darkly at those (men in those days) twenty and thirty years older, and muttering to each other about how quickly we would be able to bring about change once all those old fogeys had retired.

Now the snark spreads quickly.

We thought - back in the 1980s - that things would be radically different by now. We were gobbling up everything we could find about family systems, and conflict management, and organizational development - all of a sudden there was the explosion of new tools to use in churches, and new ways to think about congregational dynamics, and new emphasis on baptism and worship and Christian formation.

And it hasn't been enough. And now - my younger colleagues are just as vexed and impatient as I was then, just as convinced that if we would just hand them the reins and get out of the way, they could save the day. They are gobbling up new tools and new ways of thinking about congregational life and putting a new emphasis on baptism and worship and Christian formation.

And before they can blink - they will be standing where I am now. And another generation will be impatiently shoving them out of the way.

"We're the young generation - and we've got something to say."

Ashes to Go

I try to listen to my heart more these days, and back at the end of last week it told me to join a couple of colleagues who were planning to offer Ash Wednesday prayers and ashes at the train and bus stations in downtown Providence. I decided - continuing with the let the heart speak theme - to not over think it; my colleague Dante and I just agreed he'd pick me up at 6:45 and we'd take along 100 copies of Lent prayer cards we'd already produced for my congregation. So early this morning, I wriggled into my cassock and surplice, put some ashes into one of my Granny's Blue Onion demitasse cups and headed down to Kennedy Plaza.

The Plaza abuts a little city park, and is the major transportation hub for Rhode Island. So we knew we'd find plenty of people. As soon as we parked the car, Dante and I just started walking up to people and asking them "Would you like ashes and prayers today?" It was slow at first, and we kept strolling from stop to stop, relaxed and unselfconscious until someone said "yes,". And we were off and running. From that moment until 8, we had very few lulls - and often had periods where people were standing in line patiently waiting for their turn for ashes. People began crossing the street to get to us and one man even stopped his car and leaped out to come stand with us for prayers and ashes. 

There was a profound sweetness to these little encounters that surprised me. I have always been moved by the Imposition of Ashes - this moment when we strip away all pretense and present our foreheads so that we can be reminded that we are going to die. I have always been moved by the intimate contact with another's skin - wrinkled foreheads, blemished foreheads, scarred foreheads, baby-smooth foreheads - all bearing the ashy cross that signifies we are going down into the dust.

We touched many foreheads this morning: young men in do-rags and baggy jeans, a man in an elegant overcoat and a Burberry scarf, a fragile man in a wheelchair who said "Thank God" when I said "and to dust you shall return". A woman saw us from high up in her office building overlooking the Plaza, and ran down to get her ashes. A couple of US Marshals came over to us. Many told us how grateful they were for us because they wouldn't get a chance otherwise. A couple of folks talked about church closings and how that made it harder for them. A woman asked us to pray with her for healing from cancer. A man asked us to pray for his two young sons. A man rebuked us for not mentioning "Jesus" in the prayer (I think he had a point). I wish I'd been able to pray in Spanish. 

We took 100 prayer cards with us, and came home with 6. We could have kept going - but our fingers were numb.

It's a great thing to take the Gospel out into the street, and get out of church buildings and all that stuff. But for me, there is much deeper significance and meaning in the dozens of tiny personal encounters we had this morning. There was so much yearning - for connection (with us and with God), for prayer, for conversation. People were hungry out there - hungry to know and be known, hungry for blessing, hungry for grace.

I'm hungry for the same things, which is perhaps why I found my hour in the Plaza so precious. It was beautiful to find holiness in that least expected place. 

Losing My Voice

I've lost my voice.

There was a time when words seemed to pour out of me in torrents. The tighter grief held me in its grip, the more fluently I could talk about. Howl about it, really - hurling my rage and my despair at the page and not really ever thinking about whether or not anyone would ever read it.

But since coming back from Africa in August, I haven't found much to say. The really terrible and terrifying grief has subsided, as everyone told me it would, and in its place seems to be a kind of weary apathy, and a deep, deep loneliness. I said to my mother recently that it's like I've gone from Oz back into Kansas - everything has gone from color back to black and white, and sometimes I don't think I'll ever see in color again.

When I write this, it sounds more dramatic and awful than it is. It just is. The landscape in black and white is lovely in its own way, but there's no mistaking it for a landscape in color. And color was where I lived for a long time; it's what I got used to, so now I have to explore the Kansas landscape and accustom myself to what it looks like.

Part of the weariness and the apathy comes from realizing that there isn't anything very special about me and what I've experienced. Grief and loss are the hallmarks of being human; we are stamped with those twin signs of our mortality. I find that I devour first person accounts of grief - stories far more harrowing than my own - people widowed young, parents burying their children, all those narratives putting my own ordinary story into some kind of perspective.

I keep trying to connect myself to the world - tiny link by tiny link - having to get up and reforge those links every morning. Yoga has helped a lot - so has saying morning prayer every day (something that now, if I miss it, feels like I haven't brushed my teeth) - working with a new therapist who is part spiritual director, part leadership coach and part grief counselor (a 70 year old Jewish agnostic - who seems to be able to embrace those contradictory roles quite comfortably). Taking silly old George for long walks. Doing physiology homework. Work. There's an awful lot of just putting one foot in front of the other; getting through each day trying to enjoy the good and shake off the bad. I've lost my ability to look too far into the future. I've lost that pleasurable anticipation that so often pulled me forward. I think that's part of being in Kansas.

I'm not shaking my fist at God anymore. Now it's sort of "whatever." But sometimes - when I'm feeling particularly low, maybe I sense someone sitting next to me - not doing or saying anything, just sitting there the way an old friend can just sit there being comfortable and present. Author Sara Miles ("Take This Bread" and "Jesus Freak" calls that presence "the Boyfriend." That's too active a word for what I experience. But I think - I think - it's Jesus sitting there, just sitting with me when I feel sad and lonely and discouraged, and that sitting with me seems to be enough.