How we ought to act at the moment of someone takeing there own life

           I’ve been rolling around in thought about Robin Williams’s suicide. A tragic course of events for sure. Well for us the public he always bought his A game, from the serious role in Dead Poets Society to playing Genie in Aladdin, but we only now see the role that he had outside of the public; the role of living with depression, anxiety, mental illness.  As I posted on Facebook last night this was a loss was not one that needed or ought to have happened.

            Having been in the place where I was just two steps from actually committing the act of suicide something stopped me. I think now several years latter that it was an inner longing of the hope I knew remained. I still cared some how. But to often it comes to the point where the thoughts, the plan, the letters the notes come about and hope and desire to live ends. I wish I could have been in the place of his death with Robin to talk to him to listen to his pain or as I say in pastor counseling/listening; sit in the shit with the person, dwell.

            In working in peer mental health I see the spark of hope persistently poking through as one client states of his depression ‘the frozen lake’. Some how kindling that spark that fire even in the frozen of a deep Alaskan winter.  But I know as a peer, a professional and as a family member, that at a certain time after you as a helper can not do more then hold hands with the person and call them to remember who they are from the soul. But it then is in the persons hands, giving it over to their soul their spirit to defend and concur the pain inside their brains.To kick ass and get the golden perhaps platinum metal of valor, honor and strength.

It pains me that only when the death of celebrity do we discuss the power that mental illness has to scare, to cause stigma, to be sad and scared. But we never discuss it when it is manageable and treatable when it’s the persistent sadness, lack of interest, the over sleeping the odd eating patterns the crying jags. When there are a many options for treatment and management. 

Likewise as a person of faith who is a peer, it is our God given duty, to love. Especially when people cannot love themselves. Not to heal but to love to simply love. To act as the way Jesus acted reaching out to less then desirable of society. To celebrate them as fellow children of God.

The Mess of Ashes

      I am well known for my idea as ministry as mud and mess, its part of my pastoral identity and I think this becomes most realized on Ash Wednesday. The person putting ashes on the other gets the ashes in their skin, under there nails, and no one told me ashes itch growing up. The few times I’ve imposited it has taken me a while to get the ashes out of my finger. It’s a little yucky. 

            But this year I noticed on social media the comments about the style of ashes that people received one person typed ‘I got a good one this year’ along with a photo. I was tempted to comment back and say ‘it does not matter what matters is that you are prepping to wear the ashes, and grow closer to God for the next 40 days!’ I refrained but it made me think of how often the rituals we observe and celebrate as Jesus followers/The Way have become fashion accessories, or the popular culture.  Cross jewelry is no longer about remembering your faith exclusively; it’s a fashion statement far to often. Ashes apparently for some have become a reason to gloat a bit I’m a little fed up. 

            But what really gets me is that we never follow the basic rituals that Jesus TOLD us to do and God for century’s before Jesus on the screen. Feed the poor, care for the widows, tend the blind and lame, look out for the venerable, love one another. But going to get ashes on your head is 20 minuets, the above take a long time to enact and the results take just as long to show in a big way.  Thinking about the volunteer work I have done, I know that one sandwege to a homeless person in NYC is not going to save him long term. But perhaps for today it will not only physically keep him going, but remind him that someone here on earth is routing for him to survive and to eventually thrive. Same with my work at the Psych Hospital, I often went home going ‘I did not do enough I need to do more!’

But I learned that an act of wearing my ashes in siting with an office of women who watched a terrible code blue that ended in death, after the guy being worked on for almost an hour, prepared them to face the reality. At the time I wanted to be in the action, preparing the man for burial and comforting patients what a chaplain at the hospital does.  But in a difficult act of humility, patience, and hope I sat with the women for hours thinking I did nothing more then sit there and listen (not to discount this).

            I had to take some time off from volunteering for a while and when I came back the women I spent the most time with told me how much she valued the time I spent with her. This was almost two years latter and I was amazed that I had done enough for the situation that day. I had provided a bridge between God and earth. Wearing my ashes to say ‘we are messed up people and messed up things happen’.

            Ashes are messy, dirt is messy, and following Jesus is messy. Being in ministry means going into trenches filled with mud, human fluids, rats and other things like that. It means getting the mud and ashes under your nails that you can’t ever get out. It means opening yourself to the possibility’s of seeing that we are reluctant to get in the mud in the first place prefer our sanitized, disinfected ways.