Saying Thank You

     As I finish my almost last semester of my Master of Social Work study’s (MSW), I thanked a professor who in his class had been immensely helpful personally and professionally He being who he is, was very flattered and thanked me for the response. The class about solutions, something I think we all need more of less problems more solutions. But more on that latter. I learned after and subconsciously in my M. Div. work, that it is advisable to say, thank you as soon as you can when you feel completed to do so.

One of my most helpful M.Div. professors and helpful people in my life thus far, last Fall  met at the reunion and I profusely thanked her for her support in believing in me when I could not believe in myself and willing to take a chance and lead me and my classmates on a journey a Pilgrimage to all of us really, a lot of miles away and across an ocean. At least that’s how I perceived it I’m not really sure how she saw it but regardless my perception was that she saw nothing wrong with the depression experience I was undergoing that had landed me in some unfortunate circumstances.

         

   I three years later told her, thank you because it was the first time I was really able to process what she and others had done then I had several others my academic advisor, my fantastic roommate, and my texting buddies who were willing to listen to me and fight. As I told my academic advisor “You being sic on the X really worked! It was the next day and she made a decision within 12 hours!”

            
 I started to tear as I explained where I was in the past year and why I was zonked out at the prior year reunion and she told me so gently ‘I know’ and I told her again and again what that trip meant to me then and what it continues to mean to me.

        

    She hugged me as I started to bawl and snot on her shoulder (thankfully she is always gracefull) and she whispered in my ear “Betty (and my full name) I love you and you are doing wonderful things, don’t forget it’. It was a true moment of the Holy Spirit truly being present for me, and, the first for a good long time.

            Telling this semesters professor “well I’ve learned you had better say thank you when you can and as often as warranted because you never know.” One never knows what impact it might have on the other person you thank, the good Karma of the universe. Thank you at endings comes to my mind as I terminated my internship at a homeless shelter and well I did not say thank you verbally to my clients. I am thankful that they trusted me with their stories, their struggles, the realities they face. Creating that holding space to be as they are. As I enter into the world with almost an M.Div and a big bad MSW,  this is sacred work. My clients thanked me for what I did, and I guess like my professor I believed in them when they could not yet believe in themselves. Reminding them of their own awesomeness, or how I explained my job as a social work intern to them.

Anger with the Almighty

            One of the subjects and trains of thought I have been following for a long time is that of Anger with, and/or at God. When I first got really sick, as in I admitted it. God had not talked with me for a long time. I even sat in more silence then before to try and hear the voice of the creator to know that I was loved, especially when I could not love myself.  But still the profound silence remained. And not knowing what to do with that fact I became even more depressed crying “my God, my God why have you left me?”

            Well I know that I’m not alone in that anger and frustration with God. Heck even God in the person of Jesus prayed for the cup to pass to someone else. The prophets crying out with Gods displeasure often where going on gut and on strings of faith. I ‘caught’ somewhere along the line that it was not acceptable to be angry with God, I have no clue where though. But in a bible study the pastor who was acting as facilitator said ‘look to the psalms, lots of anger there. But likewise lots of hope, dreaming and praying’. Or as I like to think, nothing comes out of or exists in a vacuumed. As sweet is to sour the universe must hold a balance with itself.  So if there is love there need to be the balance, I often wonder if God is sometimes frustrated with us in our humanness.  Likewise as I was speaking to a colleague of mine at work today, if we are created to be in relationship with God in the image of human relationship, anger is normal.

            However I think the anger is more often a convenient mask for disappointment and frustration. I in my work within the community work with a young women and her family. She finally said yes to a residential treatment, where she could get the best help and go on trips to Dorney Park if she earned it. The facility was clean and bright, with trees all around. More like a retreat center then a residential program for youths with serious mental health issues. We got onto the property and 20 feet from the door she stopped. We played this game for three hours. Eventually I left with the mother after having the young women signed over to the facility.  As we where leaving she still had not entered.

As I found out latter that afternoon, as I celebrated the young women getting to the property, I found that in her refusal the child welfare branch that was involved took her to a shelter because they felt that residential needed to 100% voluntary.  I ran through a gambit of feelings, anger, frustration, disgust, but ultimately ended up on disappointed. I think the most extreme type of anger. The knowledge that the services are there but can not be accessed because of systems, money and personal choice. Freewill gives us this last one and I think that is where God often becomes sad, that we never fully experience all that is offered to us to succeed.

            For me disappointment and anger, also lead to distrust. But in the course of my own recovery and Systematic Theology (yes of all places) I figured out and accepted “our no to God, can NEVER overwhelm God’s yes to us”. So the anger and related feelings, might just be our rebellion to the extreme emotional feelings of what that complete yes from God is.

CUT IT OFF!

      In a Mass during CPE the Gospel Lesson was Mathew 18:6-9. It’s a harsh parable to be sure. Doing CPE in a psych hospital changes a lot of what might otherwise be ok in terms of chaplaincy. The Priest did state quite clearly about not cutting off your foot literally, because in this environment the power of suggestion can be very powerful. But what I was lead to think of in this environment when your brain causes you to sin what do you do? If you cut it out you will die, it is like telling someone to cut out there soul in my view.

          

  As a person with a mood disorder in the six ring circus of the state Psych hospital I was lead to think about the ‘sins’ I know I did in my deep dark hole of depression. Such as cursing out God, not loving my neighbors, not telling or showing the good news to anyone, missing the mark and one might even say my thoughts of suicide where sinful. At the time I felt them to be that way.

 But to me this entire passage is interpreted in light of how you view sin. I see sin as “missing the mark” and breaking a relationship. But can sin truly and willfully be committed when someone’s biological chemistry is causing him or her to do so? When in there true heart they want to do every thing else but sin and hurt the people around them.  So the solution for some might be to cut off the offending part. But this countered with Paul saying each part of the body is important. I am siting with Paul here and not Jesus. 

Well the brain may be messed up and it might sound like the easy route to just cut off the offending part. This is where lobotomy’s had there base. Looking to ancient Greek medicine it was viewed as people’s humors or the four body fluids where off.  The term melancholia is derived from the greek words for ‘bile’ and ‘black’. It was and sadly is still not uncommon for people to view depression as demonic possession and the ‘anger of the gods’. Certainly the person is sinning to have   I think at this moment in time, that some sins in breaking relationships are truly from the person themselves. But more often I am sure that it comes from illness. 

gotten a demonic possession. But again I ask are they liable for the sins they inflict if they are not themselves? If they are possessed or if God is punishing them. I am mixed on this question even as I ask it. It for me goes to the idem ‘love the sinner hate the sin’.

I think of one patient who is a fanatic fundamentalist Christian that is convinced Harry Potter ruined her childhood (she is in her 60’s BTW). She has a nasty temperament and has burned through many chaplains. Part of her burning relationships I know comes from her chemistry, but what I think most of it comes from is that she is lonely and hurting. She does not know how to forgive herself she just wants to cut the offending part, or parts off in her veiws. 

What happens if the offending part just needs stitches, wound care, or antibiotics to cure the oozing, festering, infected wound?  Paul’s route is much harder, learning to love each part, to accept it, to not declare one better then the other. All parts are not always even or 100% but together we are all 100% and with the Grace of God we are 110%