OPENING
Story of Mom—Funeral was 6 years ago today
She lived years. Some people live one year times.
Not my mom.
In her fifties she learned to drive
In her sixties she learned to swim
In her seventies she became a water aerobics instructor
In the week before her stroke she taught a class in water aerobics
She lived years.
Some people live adventurous lives…others, not so much.
Some people get stuck in the same old, same old.
Groundhog Day
Description: Phil Conners, a weatherman for a local Pittsburgh television station,
but who has aspirations of a network position, on despised
assignment of covering the festivities of Groundhogs Day in
Puxatawney, PA. He hates everything about it.
Gets stuck, not only in Puxatawney, but in Groundhog’s Day.
Wakes up to Sonny and Cher at same time every morning…
Meets same people who do and say the same thing, every day
because every day is Groundhog Day.
One scene in conversation with some locals at the bowling alley:
“What if you were stuck in one place and nothing you did
mattered?”
“What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t today!”
Good ole boy says, “That pretty much sums it up for me.”
Think with Phil, “What if there is no tomorrow—there wasn’t today.”
Is the Good Ole Boy speaking for you—does that pretty much sum it up for you?
How do we recognize it when we are stuck?
How did we get there?
How do we escape—Go forward?
Self-awareness is a difficult task.
Easier to see in someone else’s context.
Easiest to see our true reflection in the Poetry of Animation. (My favorite sermon
fodder)
Good folks at Disney and Pixar Up
The first animated movie to win
In my book—a classic on Grief Work
See if you recognize anyone you know, maybe reflection of yourself.
VIDEO
Continuing summary of plot:
Carl attempts to move beyond being stuck
Attempt is to escape
Return to his and Ellie’s adventure (Lift Off)
Meet Russell
Wilderness Explorer working on last badge: Assisting the Elderly
Unexpected Traveling Partner
By way of unfortunate Snipe Hunting Incident—ends up
accompanying Carl on his great adventure
Are you also a traveling partner of Carl?
Are you stuck where Carl was stuck?
Are you ready to seek an adventure of your own?
Preparing for adventure
First: Word of Warning!
Getting Stuck is a Potential Pitfall
Path of Grief holds many potential snags Tasks of Grief
Similar tasks by most thanatologists
(Not clear linear progression/keys of musical scale/cyclical)
1. Worden
1. To accept the reality of the Loss: this means knowing that the deceased person is no longer alive and won’t be part of our everyday
lives.
2. To experience the pain of Grief: this means that we may experience a variety of intense feelings and begin to work through them as
part of the grieving process (eg: we can’t avoid these feelings forever- at some point we need to face our grief).
3. To adjust to the new environment where the deceased person is missing: this is the part where we struggle with all of the changes
that happen as a result of the person being gone- including all of the practical parts of daily living (eg: more responsibilities at home if
it is a parent who died) and all of the effects their loss has upon our sense of who we are and how we see the world
(eg: suddenly feeling like “Life is not fair” or being frustrated with friends who “don’t understand us anymore”).
4. To reinvest energy in life, loosen ties to the deceased and forge a new type of relationship with them based on memory, spirit and
love: This means that we begin to acknowledge the value of the relationship we had with the person who died and everything we
may have learned or loved or respected or disagreed with about them. We
recognize that we don’t need to ‘forget’ them and that
it is okay to care and connect with other people and continue to live our lives
even though we miss them.
“Difficult to adequately define the incompletion of Task IV…the best description would
perhaps be not loving—hindered by holding on to the past attachment rather than going
on forming new connections.” Worden, p. 17
2. Rando
1. recognize the loss;
2. react to separation
3. recollect the person and the relationships
4. relinquish old attachments (“let go”);
5. readjust in order to move on without forgetting the person
6. Reinvest
Rando’s definition of complicated grieving is “getting stuck” on a task of grief.
“Get stuck at this point in their grieving and later realize that their life in some way stopped at the point the loss occurred.” Worden, p. 18
Simply stated: Someone died. Who stopped living? Maybe it was you.
Word of Advice: Don’t give death more than you have to!
Word of Hope: The Book of Changes: gives an excellent image about obstruction: When water encounters obstruction, it steadily and quietly build up behind the wall until it eventually overflows, washing the barrier away. Be like the water: build up your strength and force quietly, without undue anxiety or worry, knowing that you will eventually overflow and bypass the obstruction.
Transition: If you don’t embrace change, every day will be like this.
Is that good news?
Is change Inviting? Do you want to go there?
Resistance Often meet a reluctance to move and resistance.
Why?
1. Sense of familiarity
Bad is better than uncertainty
2. Sense of control
Phil in Groundhog Day
Children re-watching same movie: know what to expect, somehow think they
control what is happening
3. Sense of betrayal or forgetting the loved one
Farthest from suggestion today—
Moving forward does require “relinquishing” (Rando)
This does not mean to betray. In fact, we will seek a way: honor memory of loved ones and forge a new type of relationship with them based on memory, spirit and love—(Worden)
Make clear what we are relinquishing—letting go
Release: Why? Victim Role and “Story”
A. Release your need to know why and begin to ask “What Now”
Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and being comfortable with not knowing.
Was it God—no, but God is bigger than loss. Nothing too bent, painful but that God can use it to construct a beautiful masterpiece.
B. Release view that sees events as arbitrary, antagonistic or as part of the plan
This would depict you as helpless, victim
May set Divine Destiny (God) against you
Realize nothing is so bent or broken but what it can become part of a masterpiece
- Release the story your mind is creating that says…, Life has treated me harshly and unfairly. I don’t deserve this. Can you accept the “isness” of this moment and not confuse it with a story the mind has created around it?
Word of Warning: By definition, resistance is self-sabotage.
Word of Advice: Let Resistance guide you.
“We can navigate by resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others. Rule of thumb: the more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution the more resistance we feel toward pursuing it.” –Steve Pressfield, The War of Art
Word of Hope: When it comes to change, getting stuck or going forward, the choice is yours!
Not at the mercy of some kind of Groundhog’s Day Alarm Clock!
The Choice is yours! You Can…
- Transcend the physical plane
- Rise above what is happening and see it in context of your entire life
- Continue the narrative of your life script that answers the question: What now?
“Can’t eraser our past…but free to draw our future.” (Guatemala)
4. Explore and pursue countless opportunities for transformation.
5. Realize nothing is so bent or broken but what it can become part of a masterpiece
Another Word of Hope: there is something new to be imagined and built
BREAK
MY FOCUS: RECONSTRUCTION: Putting the Pieces Back Together After Loss
Similar Concepts
To reinvest energy in life, loosen ties to the deceased and forge a new type of relationship with them based on memory, spirit and love (Worden)
Readjust in order to move on without forgetting the person
Reinvest (Rando)
I like the term RECONSTRUCTION: Putting the Pieces Back Together After Loss
A. Supported by Psychological Theory
Falling Upward by Richard Rohr
Rohr's framework leans heavily on Carl Jung
The spiritual life has two stages
In the first half of life, you are devoted to establishing yourself; you focus on making a career and on finding friends and a partner; you are crafting your identity.
Spiritually, people in the first half of life are often drawn to order and routine.
We are developing habits and letting ourselves be shaped by the norms and practices of our family and community.
Then—a crisis. "Some kind of falling," Rohr says, is necessary for continued spiritual development.
"Normally a job, fortune, or reputation has to be lost," writes Rohr.
"A death has to be suffered, a house has to be flooded, or a disease has to be endured." The crisis can be devastating.
The crisis undoes you.
The flood doesn't just flood your house—it washes out your own soul.
What you thought you knew about living your life no longer suffices for the life you are living. (Shattered “Assumptive World”)
(Rohr—growth doesn’t necessarily happen. You can stay STUCK if you wish.)
B. Identifiable Images from Up
Construction
Deconstruction
“Shattered Assumptive World”
Reconstruction
C. Key factor in RECONSTRUCTION:
· A re-building, putting the pieces back together, in a way that
embraces and honors what has been broken
and also honors what is and what is come.
· The past is not forgotten, certainly not forsaken,
kept around, new place, new configuration, new purpose.
· Adds to possibilities and beauty.
· Carries and conveys spirit.
D. Images of Reconstruction
1. 9/11
2. Tower Grove
E. Tasks of Reconstruction
1. Inspect the pieces: Determine what you have to work with
Your authentic self
The enduring stones of relationship
2. Draw a Blueprint: Determine what you will construct
3. Begin to Build: Doing It
I. Inspecting the Pieces
A. Authentic Self
- Rediscovering of meaning and purpose: Antiques, lie buried—American Pickers
“Maybe our job isn’t to try to make ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but simply to discover or uncover who we were born to be…find out who we already are and become it.”—Steve Pressfield, The War of Art
Authentic Self--Def: Genuine, literally self authored or endorsed
At the heart of the Authentic Self is the concept of being who you have always been. Rather than going through life pursuing the person you think you should be or are supposed to be. It helps you stop-breath-and connect with true self within.
ACTIVITY (Move to groups)
The self that emerges through play is the core authentic self—Stuart Brown
Imagine If Game: A Car/Clothes/Plant
Play/Dream/Neighbors—
My own: Coffee shops/ fish funerals/ dr. /walking/ cowboys=outside of
Establishment
Audrey: Wanted to be a stewardess, became a pastor: Type, serve/direct on
journey to which both trust the Pilot
- Redefine who you are
You cannot be reduced to just one thing—job, relationship, role or goal
You are not a “before and after”
Old Testament story of Joseph: I am more than hurts and loss.
May have thought the prupose in life was to do something special, when something special was taken felt like purpose in life was gone.
Purpose was supposed to be not do
Most peoples’ lives are run by desire and fear. Desire is the need to add something in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something and thereby becoming diminished and being less. These two movements obscure the fact that Being cannot be given or taken away. Being in its fullness is already with you, Now.—Tolle
Epic and Root Events: Epic, horrific and influencing yet not change root—who you are
You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are
At the deepest level.—Tolle
- Re-remembering
Dr Phil—What thought you have about yourself
Is it a true fact
Does holding on to the thought serve your best interest
Does it get more of what you want or need or keep circumstances you don’t want
Paul Ricœur (2004). Memory, History, Forgetting. Why do we remember certain things and forget others, just as significant?
Is it possible to conceive of forgetting not as the ugly twin of remembering but as its necessary companion?
Björn Krondorfer (2008). Is Forgetting Reprehensible? Holocaust Remembrance and the Task of Oblivion. Journal of Religious Ethics 36 (2):233-267.
Summary: Every person is an unfinished story…we dare to explore the unfinished story, we continue to create until we draw our last breath. Our stories are not finished…the portrait of our lives remains unfinished until we breath for the last time.
B. Enduring Stones of Former Relationships
1. Rediscover
“Who Died” Steven Levine-- good title but also good question—What Died? What is lost, What remains?
Each “contractual relationship carries a fragment of your spirit” (Myss)
Imagine If…animal to represent
2. Re-remember
How met, why liked, connected, lessons taught, challenges brought, how were you alike/different
(When remembering is painful)
In healing of memories, I must make a choice. Will I let past hurts control me and keep me acting in self-centered ways, or will I let peace and love control my future?—Dennis and Matthew Linn
Is it possible to conceive of forgetting not as the ugly twin of remembering but as its necessary companion? Björn Krondorfer
3. Redefine
“task is not to give up relationship but to find an appropriate place for the dead in your emotional life—a place that will enable you to go on living effectively in the world.” Worden
Not forgotten, kept around, new place, new configuration, new purpose, adds to possibilities and beauty, conveys spirit
You see the form only and are unaware of the life within the form—the sacred mystery. (Of nature, but also true of all life—applicable to relationships.)
“Who Died” good question—better question may be What Died? What is lost, What remains?
Summary: Our (shared) stories do not end, they are at a new beginning; our (shared) stories continue as long as we breathe…and beyond.
Still present, serving as the building blocks for the unfolding masterpiece of your future. Honor by picking up the pieces and continuing to build your life.
II. Drawing a Blue Print Deciding What to Build
What will you build? Walls or Bridges?
Stuck on island of grief, discovered provision of precious lumber--
Will you build a shelter or a raft?
1. Pattern for resistance –
Holding on or Held Back?
2. Pattern for reproduction of the original
Carl and Russell having parted ways due to Carl’s “building plans”
Refuses to help out of commitment to Ellie and house—linking object
Picture Mementoes
3. Pattern for true Reconstruction Pause with sash in hand
Carl’s Reinvestment: Looking at empty chair—looking at Russell’s sash
Deciding on an Adventure of his own
Authentic Reconstruction: True to self and relationship
Honors past but also present and future
III. Beginning to Build: Ground Breaking Ceremony
Everybody Constructs. Everybody Deconstructs Not Everybody Reconstructs.
The choice is yours.
Will you sit among the rubble of your shattered assumptive world or
Will you rebuild while honoring what was, what is, and what will be?
Blessing
Celebrate the Beauty of Enduring Stones
Behold the strength, character, spirit
A. You are Beautiful
--Beyond any imagination
“You, yourself, as much as anybody else in the entire universe,
deserve your love and affection.” Buddah
Hear Mr. Rogers’ song, “It’s You I Like”
B.Your Relationship is a Beautiful and Enduring Stone
Greatest blessing of life are not the sweet moments and experiences but others with whom we have shared those moments and experiences.
Celebrate and give thanks for these relationships!
Commission:
Up also ends with a ceremony.
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