Dying differently.

Ok so the title is inaccurate, this post is actually about how different the saying goodbye is, but didn't want to waste a good alliterative heading.

Today is Saturday and I have come home from the funeral of a church member who died of heart failure on Tuesday afternoon - yes I do mean this Tuesday, just 4 days ago.  That is the first difference, how quickly funerals go ahead.  A glance at the obituary page of the Asheville Citizen Times shows the short timescale as normal here. I presume it is linked to the pre-refrigeration era and the hot climate - but it does feel very rushed for the family.  Our slower pace allows for the fact of death to begin to sink in before the funeral.

Visitation - this took place yesterday at the funeral home chapel, a whole new concept to me.  As well as the funeral service, the obituaries announce when visitation will be.  This is a designated couple of hours when the family are available and anyone can call by and offer their thoughts and condolences. I think there is a good side to this - having an agreed time and space for such greetings may lessen the onslaught of supportive visits at home that could be overwhelming if family need space.

In practice though I am less sure, imagine the family line at a formal wedding do - where you queue to pass and greet everyone in line. Place that family line next to the coffin - an open casket - and ask them to stand there for several hours, only a few days from the loved one's death, and smile politely at all comers. It is an intense expectation.

And so to the funeral itself - there is lots I could reflect on the service, but I understand that this is very dependent on the minister leading it - in this case more Biblical quotes than references to the deceased and the life lived, and some self indulgent focus from the retired pastor.  So off to the cemetery, a full procession of everyone - cars having been parked up in formation before the service ready to be led out, with the full right of the road, through red lights, whatever, up to the graveside.

A web image 

And there the casket is set on a strange contraption above the excavated grave, last post and the flag for a former soldier and the minister's prayer - time to lower the casket? No, apparently it is the family's choice but very rarely do they stay to see the coffin lowered these days.  But surely that is the point of the graveside prayers, and the final committal - ashes to ashes, dust to dust?  I can see my liturgy tutor in full flow on the need to mark 'liminal moments' such as the final farewell.

And I missed seeing the contraption in action - designed to lower the casket into the lined vault (required for all burials in NC) and then to move the heavy lid into place to seal it before backfilling the grave.  It seems that there is a desire to avoid the inevitable decomposition - shutting out the earth, the world etc, alongside maintaining the surface neat and level for the groundskeepers.  

An advertising introduction to burial vaults

It all seems a long way from our wooden coffins and the occasional funeral where the rainwater needs pumping out of he gravesite, But then we avoid any sight of the deceased.  How much do we all dodge the reality of death in this day and age.  We can celebrate reduced mortality rates in our communities at least, but one effect has been to distance ourselves from the one certainty in life.

Riding the buses

Tuesday I had to be at Sardis church for breakfast and planned to get the only bus that comes out this part of town, and stops near the church, to head into 'downtown' Asheville.  In the end someone drove me in via an errand at the bank (we went in but they have drive thru banking facilities here!)

I pottered around the downtown, it felt abandoned by day to day shoppers - great for arty types and quirky restaurants but lacking the things that would draw locals in regularly, so understand when my lift giver had said she hadn't been in the town centre for several years.

I found my way to the bus station and with my bus so long to wait for another plan emerged, and that led to several bus changes and riding the bus the long way out in the opposite direction (rather than a long wait out in the sun) before actually reaching the place where the locals shop at a retail park.

Buses are levellers - we wait together at the stop and we have to share the same space on the journey - no  hiding away in our own tin cans.  The services here are very limited but do serve some of the more vulnerable communities, as I rode the buses around a full lap the pattern of ethnicity of those riding with me changed. As did the view of the housing, the areas we travelled through.

There is something important in being able to explore a community with eyes open to the world around us, something that concentrating on driving I wouldn't have been able to take in. What do we need to take time to notice in our own communities, but familiarity or busyness distract us from? It might not need a bus ride, but maybe we need to take eyes off the road we are travelling and onto the people we travel amongst.

Oh and though Asheville routes are few enough and infrequent, their buses do have a cyclists dream - a fold down frame on the front that can hold up to 3 bikes...

'It's church Jim but not as you know it....'

So its Monday evening, and my first week here in North Carolina is drawing to a close. Yesterday was church - 9.30 at Reeves Chapel, and Sardis at 11am  before a shared lunch back with the folk at Reeves.

People are the same interesting mix of characters where ever you are, but the experience of church can feel like another planet. The service patterns here may not be typical of all American Methodists, but it was certainly different to church as I know it back in our British Methodism.

There was opening music by the choir, and a set piece in the midst of worship, but only 2 congregational hymns in one church and 3 in the other. Other aspects of the service would be familiar to the liturgical traditions and the UMC does have its roots in the Wesleyan higher church patterns so that might be expected.

It is the lack of hymns and the poor singing of those that were there that really seemed strange to me as one who was brought up with the concept of Methodism being 'born in song'. Apart from the Quakers, I have been used to the concept of church services and singing together being natural partners, even our more liturgical friends get 4 hymns a week.

My efforts were well received at both places, but need to be wary of my jokes - a comment about not taking to the local food 'grits' let to a special pot being conjured up in time for my return to Reeves Chapel for  lunch!

Culture Gaps

The famous quote (debatable tough who said it according to various websites) that Britain  and USA are 'two nations divided by a common language'.  How very true, but there are culture gaps way beyond what words we use.

I arrived at my temporary home in Asheville, North Carolina almost midnight on July 1st, the 2nd was unpacking, a walk about the area (shocking the natives and discovering that sidewalks are considered optional on the edge of the city) then collected, taken for lunch and to visit the churches.

So Thursday it was time to get deeper into the culture - a trip to the local Bi-Lo supermarket that I had located in my wanderings the day before.  I am not home alone as my exchange partner's family are still here, and the grown daughters will be most of my stay, though they are busy with work.  So I am not shopping for full food, so for the needed exercise, and leaving the car adapting for a day with company, I set out with my back pack for the less than a mile hike along the verges.

I looked closely up and down all the aisles - found that here Jif is something to eat not a cleaning brand and 'dirty rice' is a good thing - and lots of differences as well as similarities. One thing I was hunting for was the equivalent to squash - the drink not the vegetable.  At lunch the previous day it came up in chat after I said I didn't drink tea etc. I thought that knowing it was called cordial in Australia (and they had Americanisms there) this 'bilingualism' would be the key. But still no comprehension.

Have you ever tried to explain something so basic and day to day to someone with absolutely no concept of what you are talking about, and you have no tangible example to offer?  It is incredibly hard, and it strikes me that this is what we encounter as we speak of our faith experiences - even to other Christians half the time, let alone the rest of people.

It is also the same with health experiences that you are living with and others can only look on - they may think they understand the words you are using but the concept is beyond them, not out of their failure to try, but just beyond their reach.  For example in mental health issues we use words that others recognise as sadness, bad days, low times - but mean something so much deeper, longer and tougher.

It seems to me that we don't need to cross the pond to find ourselves 'divided by a common language'.
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PS - in case you were wondered, the shop search showed nothing like our squash,  the nearest thing, tucked in a corner of an aisle, being a powder to add to water, but means making up a full 2 quart batch at a time.  Otherwise you drag home big bottles of ready to drink stuff.

Being heard

Forgive me, it is far to long since my last confession, sorry I mean blog!

Whistle stop tour - Easter, horrible lows, week off on leave, 4 weeks off on sick, June back in action and lots of catch up, in just a few days go to states on minister exchange, with minister from North Carolina coming here in my place. The exchange is for 6 weeks - July and half of August. 

Meanwhile ten days ago I had a return visit to the psychiatry dept. I didn't have great expectations after my last appt at the start of April. Then the junior psychiatrist I was assigned just dismissed aspects of my mood diary that I considered important, and only upped the dose of an antidepressant that I didn't think then, or now, has any impact on me.  She had told me that she would be moving onto another role in her specialist training and that the next time I would see another junior.  

And so I did, but this one was somebody who considered me as a person who knows something about my own experiences and moods. He listened fully, asked the relevant questions, and then came up with a plan.  I have formally been given a tentative diagnosis of Bipolar 2, and a plan for introducing a mod stabiliser. The plan is not to treat the lows or even the highs when they arrive, but to treat the swing between the two and so in time to avoid both.

So how do I feel - relieved, grateful to have been listened to, positive about a new treatment regime that offers something different to what is clearly not working.  Validated that my insight when reading about this last Oct and recognising myself in it is acknowledged by someone whose view is recognised.

The path ahead is not any more certain, but at least someone has a map showing a variety of routes to try and willing to help me work out one that finds a balance between the easiest to travel and the on with the best views of life.  But that is all to come...

Suicide and the church

Today was sent the link to  this blog which asks for prayer for pastors/ministers/ revs etc reminding us and others of our own humanity and frailty.  I decided to google for the story that had prompted it.  A story of a North Carolina pastor's suicide - some of the links were plain news reports whilst others like this one have a comments thread that both saddens and appals me.

This was a big church setup with multiple pastors, the dead man being the senior. It came as a shock to everyone but a scan through the comments remind why it would have been hard for him within a certain theological culture to admit to struggles.  I am sure a diagnosis of cancer would have had sympathy and others covering his work whilst off sick - but despair that can reach suicidal levels is not as 'safe' to admit to.

I am grateful to be in the place I am, with those who care and recognise my problems as illness not a sign of faithlessness or that I am hellbound. But reminded how important it is for the churches to talk about mental health, to deal with it as an issue.

I will be spending the summer in North Carolina - maybe I will have something to give to debate there, or I maybe with those who already get it, American church life is varied not always fitting the images we sometimes get.

An Easter journey - no sudden joy

It's Good Friday, well so my diary tells me. I have felt nothing in the Holy Week journey, well nothing holy and religious anyway. I have felt low, hiding away from the world, yet needing to not be totally alone - so busy on forums of people who understand.

What I do feel is like the old joke of someone being woken up to go to school and saying they don't want to - only to be told the have to, they are the teacher!  Yes I am the one who is supposed to stand up the front and lead others but have no sense of caring or meaning.

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Well now it is the day after the empty tomb, and I preached on the confusion of the disciples and the loss of their hopes with the crucifixion, and deliberately chose the original ending of Mark's gospel which stopped with the women, finding the tomb empty and an angel telling them 'he is risen',  flee telling no-one. A realistic first response I think, even if later they did say something, we humans don't like ending a story like that though and a new ending to the gospel added early on, with Jesus appearing and telling them to go make disciples etc.

It was not a straightforward Sunday's here and he's alive, so that's ok then - all the trauma and stress of the previous week is forgotten and all is wonderful.  Don't get me wrong, it is full of hope and new life, but it took the people around Jesus time to get their heads around, so its ok not to feel joyful on Easter Day itself - we are all on journeys.

Thanks Simon M for pointing me to this from a vicar not far away -

'But Easter is NOT a 'happy ending'. Jesus still has the scars of crucifixion, still remembers the betrayal and denial, the torture and the agonising death. Everything has changed, even when it appears to be the same. He is back with his friends and they still love each other, but there is a space in their loving that will forever be a scar; a beautiful scar that speaks of love, but a scar nonetheless. Even though Mary has her Jesus back after the agony of losing him, she can't hold onto him forever. Even though Peter is given the chance to put things right after denying him, he will spend the rest of his life making sure he never lets him down again.

It's no more of a happy ending than any story of a marriage begun again after infidelity, or the painful new life after bereavement.  But in this story that has come to be called The Easter Story, is a great truth; that it is only when we become lost that we can be found, when we know real fear that we are truly brave and when our hearts have been broken, that we can really love.

When the story of Easter meets our own stories, nothing is ever the same again, but we carry on living; wounded but whole, lost but found, broken-hearted but lovers.'