Beyond Grief by Maurice Lamm
Shiva is a sanctuary for grieving. It follows the course of suffering; it confronts rather than evades the pain of separation. It provides a profound though indirect healing regimen that leads us out of the entanglements of grief to a full acceptance of our loss and takes us even further, empowering us to growth and self-realization.
Time and space both seem infinite. To function in our world we need finite boundaries [for which] there is no innate grid. When we apply these ideas to mourning, we discover that shiva is not simply carved from the calendar to sharpen our focus on what we have lost. It enables us as mourners to locate ourselves and orient ourselves in an environment distorted by the disappearance of a signpost.
Judaism is keenly sensitive even to our unarticulated needs.
Time and space both seem infinite. To function in our world we need finite boundaries [for which] there is no innate grid. When we apply these ideas to mourning, we discover that shiva is not simply carved from the calendar to sharpen our focus on what we have lost. It enables us as mourners to locate ourselves and orient ourselves in an environment distorted by the disappearance of a signpost.
Judaism is keenly sensitive even to our unarticulated needs.
Shiva anchors us firmly in a nucleus of stability, calm and caring. There is yet another way of appreciating the many-sided brilliance of shiva. It is illuminated by our understanding of people, such as mourners, in transition. …[T]he mourner is… literally on the threshold between one phase of life and the next. …[W]e must keep our balance as we cross troubled waters. While we need to hold our heads high, experience teaches that to restore our equilibrium and get through tumultuous days, we need to tilt and adjust, tilt and adjust, until we get to firm ground.
Until the grave is covered and interment is completed, every aspect, including the eulogy, must be directed to the deceased, the center of concern. But after interment, everything undertaken must be supportive of the living. The comforters become the comforted; the active turn passive; ones who gave find themselves given to; those who fed the sick now find themselves being fed…we go in a split second from ‘concern for the dead” to “concern for the living. Death is the cost of life; suffering the death of close friends and relatives is the cost of having them. We cannot, and should not, combat the strange surges of our emotions, nor do we gain much by trying to explain ourselves to others or to ourselves. Let grief run its course, as it must.
Limitations keep us on a straight path, guide us and require of us no effort. As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, society’s taboos are the guardrails on the bridge that spans the dangerous seas and prevent our drowning in our own excess. So the mourners, limited to the confines of walls, family and friends, and constricted from the broad spaces of work and trave--the playing fields of society--are held firm, convalescing in familiar arms. We go from the undisciplined savagery of death to the highly disciplined laws of mourning, and that is how we orient ourselves and return to family and society.
We tend to view mourning as a single unwieldy burden, a heavy load that we struggle under and are sure will finally wear us down. But grief is likely to be triggered more by small details than by a solitary emotional upheaval. The natural antidote to suffering piecemeal is healing piecemeal. The strategy of healing during shiva in not to reduce the severity of sadness but to confront the source of sadness: the death. Bumping into the odds and ends of memory is not an annoyance, not an aggravation of an already painful situation, but a necessary step in reorientation. Facing our grief acknowledges the value of certain practices, not directly taught by Jewish law but implicit in its style. Shiva is a habitat in which we mourners confront those pieces of the past. We bump into the remnants of life; we set aside seven days to contemplate the past …[W]e take unconscious inventory of the life of the deceased and tally the result. The healing of our angst is facilitated not by allusion to abstract principles and sage advice or by pills and needles, but by small specific actions--the piecemeal disengaging from each association. This is the powerful and beneficial aspect of mourning in Habitat shiva.
No two people mourn in the same way. As complex as we are in our physical makeup, we are equally complex in our psychological beings. That is why there can be no single answer to the problems of grief that so frequently stump us and not single medication to stimulate our souls immune system. Grief is an accumulation of energy in a person, and a major purpose of mourning is to successfully release that energy. The sukkah was a temporary dwelling or hut built by Israelites and used by them during their wanderings in the desert before they reached Canaan. Similarly, Habitat Shiva is a temporary shelter that stands for seven days, affording us limited protection until our strength begins to return. .In the day of our bitterness, we take refuge in this spiritual sukkah of healing, shielding us for a short trek until, by ourselves, we can reach the promised land.
Reprinted from Consolation © 2004, Jewish Publication Society with permission from the publisher.
Until the grave is covered and interment is completed, every aspect, including the eulogy, must be directed to the deceased, the center of concern. But after interment, everything undertaken must be supportive of the living. The comforters become the comforted; the active turn passive; ones who gave find themselves given to; those who fed the sick now find themselves being fed…we go in a split second from ‘concern for the dead” to “concern for the living. Death is the cost of life; suffering the death of close friends and relatives is the cost of having them. We cannot, and should not, combat the strange surges of our emotions, nor do we gain much by trying to explain ourselves to others or to ourselves. Let grief run its course, as it must.
Limitations keep us on a straight path, guide us and require of us no effort. As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, society’s taboos are the guardrails on the bridge that spans the dangerous seas and prevent our drowning in our own excess. So the mourners, limited to the confines of walls, family and friends, and constricted from the broad spaces of work and trave--the playing fields of society--are held firm, convalescing in familiar arms. We go from the undisciplined savagery of death to the highly disciplined laws of mourning, and that is how we orient ourselves and return to family and society.
We tend to view mourning as a single unwieldy burden, a heavy load that we struggle under and are sure will finally wear us down. But grief is likely to be triggered more by small details than by a solitary emotional upheaval. The natural antidote to suffering piecemeal is healing piecemeal. The strategy of healing during shiva in not to reduce the severity of sadness but to confront the source of sadness: the death. Bumping into the odds and ends of memory is not an annoyance, not an aggravation of an already painful situation, but a necessary step in reorientation. Facing our grief acknowledges the value of certain practices, not directly taught by Jewish law but implicit in its style. Shiva is a habitat in which we mourners confront those pieces of the past. We bump into the remnants of life; we set aside seven days to contemplate the past …[W]e take unconscious inventory of the life of the deceased and tally the result. The healing of our angst is facilitated not by allusion to abstract principles and sage advice or by pills and needles, but by small specific actions--the piecemeal disengaging from each association. This is the powerful and beneficial aspect of mourning in Habitat shiva.
No two people mourn in the same way. As complex as we are in our physical makeup, we are equally complex in our psychological beings. That is why there can be no single answer to the problems of grief that so frequently stump us and not single medication to stimulate our souls immune system. Grief is an accumulation of energy in a person, and a major purpose of mourning is to successfully release that energy. The sukkah was a temporary dwelling or hut built by Israelites and used by them during their wanderings in the desert before they reached Canaan. Similarly, Habitat Shiva is a temporary shelter that stands for seven days, affording us limited protection until our strength begins to return. .In the day of our bitterness, we take refuge in this spiritual sukkah of healing, shielding us for a short trek until, by ourselves, we can reach the promised land.
Reprinted from Consolation © 2004, Jewish Publication Society with permission from the publisher.
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