Widows

Please Do, and Please Don't

Suggestions for encouraging widows.

Miriam Neff Christianity Today 1/18/2008

Apart from the outreach of the church, there are many ways individuals can encourage widows on their journey. But it's often hard to know what to say, for fear of making things worse. So let me offer some "Please do" as well as some "Please do not" suggestions.

1. Please do stay connected. Do not assume we need "space" to grieve. There is already a huge hole in our universe.

2. Please do say you are sorry for our loss. Do not tell us you understand, unless you do from personally experiencing the loss of a spouse. We would rather you tell us you do not know what to say than tell us the story of losing your friend or even close relative. We may be able to listen to your story later, but not now.

3. Please call and ask specific questions, such as "Can we go for a walk together? May I run errands for you? Meet you for coffee?" Do not say, "Call me if you need anything."

4. Please refer to our husband's acts and words, both serious and humorous. We are so comforted by knowing our husband has not been forgotten.

5. Please invite us to anything. We may decline but will appreciate being asked. Do not assume we no longer want to participate in couples events.

6. Please accept that we are where we are. Marriages are brief, long, healthy, dysfunctional, intense, remote. Death comes suddenly or in tiny increments over years. Again, our experiences are so different, as are we. So are our journeys through grief. Do not assume we go through the grief process "by the book."

7. Do say, "I've been thinking of you" rather than make a conversation-only offer, such as "We'll call you, and we'll go out to dinner"—unless you can follow up. We'd love that, too.

Between odd and imersion

The primary key for holding the two poles of this dialectic [being out of the world & relating to culture, holding tradition whilst reforming] is education - teaching the gifts of the faith tradition to those who do not yet know and understand them and teaching those who love the heritage some new forms in which it can be presented to others.

Dawn, p59.

Tradition breakdown

"Tradition is the process whereby one generation inducts its successor into its accumulated wisdom, lore and values. the family once served as the chief conduit for this transmission, but the family is now collapsing, not merely because of divorce but as a result of affluence and the innovations of the technological age....Film and television now provide the sorts of values that were once provided by the family. And public education...has also contracted out of this business, pleading that it has an obligation to be value-neutral. So it is that in the new civilisation that is emerging, children are lifted away from the older values like anchorless boats on a rising tide."
(David Wells)
In its desire to hold on to the traditions of its faith and to pass them on carefully, the church is, to some extent, alien to this new civilisation.

Dawn, p58-59.

Dawn: Subversive worship

If the Church's worship is faithful, it will eventually be subversive of the culture surrounding it, for God's truth transforms the lives of those nurtured by it.

Dawn, p.57

Dawn: Don't dumb down

When we allow our society to force us to "dumb down" the Church, we kill theological training, inhibit the forming of character, prevent appreciation for the rich gifts of the Church's past. Most of all, we miss the infinitely faceted grandeur of God and destroy the awe and wonder that characterized worship before God became only a "buddy" ill-conceived and only subjectively experienced.

Dawn, p55.

Celebrity

Celebrities are not heroes; they foster instead narcissistic idealisation, spectacle, and passivity.

Christopher Lasch, quoted in Dawn, p.51

Marva Dawn at the Zoo

Recently Myron and I spent my birthday at the Portland zoo, which among other wonders, features an extraordinary glass house of African birds. In my wheelchair I sat astounded by the birds of many shapes and colours and habits. Because of my visual handicaps, Myron pointed out to me various things that I couldn't see and helped me locate what I couldn't find. We tried to share with others our interests in what we were seeing and hearing, but all sorts of people walked into the building, spent two minutes and hurried out. They missed everything that could be caught with a little silence,some reflective waiting, and the sharing of community. but they had "done" the zoo - efficiently.

This is a commentary in itself, but the next paragraph starts with the disturbing words:

We can observe the same patterns and habits in some congregations...

Marva Dawn, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down, p.49