Sunday September 4, 2022
Grief. I thought I knew all about it. I even wrote a book about it., many years ago. A professional family counsellor praised it as, “the only book on grief written from a father’s point of view. All the rest have been written by mothers.”
But the events of the last week in Saskatchewan and in Balmoral have made me realize I was writing about MY private grief. Not about the kind of collective grief that people around the world, and in James Smith Cree Nation and the village of Weldon particularly, are currently living through.
I made the mistake of treating grief as an individual experience. Indeed, in many ways, it is. You feel alone. Indeed, it seems to force you in on yourself.
I tried to universalize my private experience of grief. As if delineating my own pattern of grief would assist everyone else in handling theirs.
In a sense, I bought into the North American cult of individualism.
Collective grief
I was wrong. Because grief is also a communal experience.
Princess Diana’s death did not push people apart into isolation. Queen Elizabeth’s death is being felt far more widely than just within the royal family.
And the murders in James Smith Cree Nation, and in the village of Weldon, affect the whole community.
The first thing the Cree people did after Myles and Damien Sanderson went on a stabbing spree was to close their borders to outsiders. Especially the mass media. So that they could begin to heal their tragedies. Together.
In most of Asia and the Middle East, grieving is a collective ritual.
To us – the offspring of the Age of Enlightenment – all that weeping and moaning and ululating may seem artificial. Like a performance. Maybe it is; maybe it isn’t.
When my wife died, I had no choice – Covid lockdown the very next day precluded any sharing of grief. I HAD to grieve alone. In retrospect, what I wanted, what I needed, was an old-fashioned Irish wake, with people laughing and crying and telling stories…
For the James Smith Cree Nation, barring outsiders may have been wiser than we normally recognize.
They needed to be together. For as long as it takes.
Talking about it
We need to remember that they’re not grieving just one death, one loss. Including the two killers, they lost 11 members of their community -- six Burns, three Heads, three Sandersons. Plus 18 wounded. All related to each other.
When my son died, he was not killed by a member of his own community. My own life was not endangered. I did not live in a community where history and circumstance fostered drug and alcohol dependencies that repeatedly erupt into violence.
My experience of grief cannot be extrapolated into a dramatically different situation.
I probably over-valued the benefits of “talking about it.” My book contended that talking about one’s loss helps transform the loss into the memory of a loss. Every time you tell the story, you remember both the experience, and the other times you’ve told it.
Each telling inserts a layer of insulation between you and the original pain.
By talking about your experience, you start to integrate it with the rest of your life.
Ritual and ceremony
If the government of Saskatchewan sends counsellors to the James Smith Cree Nation, I’m sure they’ll encourage people to talk. Because that’s what counsellors do.
They work with words. What else do they have to work with?
The same week as the news of the stabbing rampage, a TV channel featured a good news story, about a young Indigenous man who overcame drug and alcohol addiction by learning the traditional/ceremonial dances of his people.
Which don’t require any words at all.
A counsellor can’t prescribe a ceremony.
But for devout Catholics, attending the comforting familiarity of a Mass may be more therapeutic than blubbering on someone’s shoulder. Traditional Japanese may find healing in the ritual of bathing the deceased’s body. For Hindus, in the preparation of the funeral pyre.
Doing it matters. Whatever “it” is.
What would the Cree do? Uncomfortably, I realize that I have nothing but stereotypes to work with. Smouldering sweetgrass? Sitting in a circle? The numbing rhythm of drums? I don’t know.
Besides, that’s up to them, not to me.
No two individuals will grieve the same way. No two communities will grieve the same way.
` I once prided myself on being some kind of expert on grief. The James Smith Cree Nation is living with far greater trauma than anything I have experienced.
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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn
Brace yourselves – lots of reading in the responses to last week’s column. Mostly, it would see, you share my views, but there are some alternate views worth paying attention to.
Tom Watson confirmed my memories of abusive mail: “I chaired the national Division of Ministry Personnel and Education from 1987 to 1994. Along with the Chair of the Division of Mission in Canada, I was responsible for carrying the motion stating that "all members regardless of sexual orientation had a right to be considered as candidates for ministry in the United Church."
“When I came home from the General Council in 1988, there were over 300 angry letters waiting for me (but not one positive letter). There were no death threats but there was lots of anger. One letter suggested that if Howie Mills (then Secretary to the General Council) and I were kicked out of the church, then the church might be able to heal itself.
“I answered every one of those letters, trying as I might to keep lines of communications open.”
Steve Roney identified my own bias: “Your claim that the primary threat to our society comes from the right, and not the left, is based solely, you seem to say in this column, on the experience of the United Church leadership. But it goes without saying that, if your own agenda is left-leaning and non-traditionalist, your opposition will come from those who disagree with you, not your supporters. To get a sense of where the social discord is coming from, and who is responsible for it, you need to compare the United Church experience with that of a traditionalist denomination. Say, the Catholic Church.
“Try churches being burned to the ground. Try priests stabbed at the altar. Try bishops being imprisoned. Try church property being seized.
“You object to some random individual calling Chrystia Freeland a “b-tch” and a “traitor.” That was indeed rude. Yet since you call him a “redneck” and a “reactionary,” you can’t object. Objectively, “redneck” is a worse insult than “b-tch,” since it is both racist and classist. But you proudly used it in your title.”
Sue Moshier writes from the U.S.: “Thank you for your wonderful column this morning. As everyone is aware, our former President presided over what I consider to be the most tumultuous four years in modern history. Precisely, because he ‘gave permission’ to all these reactionaries to voice their PERCEIVED grievances. He whipped them into a frenzy via his coarse language, bold pronouncements, and grandiose policy-making. Sadly, Americans are still experiencing the effects of this extremism. There needs to be a counterbalance to this type of behavior. Maybe your next column could address this!”
Isabel Gibson: I don't doubt the bad experiences you've had with right-wing reactionaries. I do take issue with the notion that it's just the right wing who are culpable.
“When I consider the evils perpetrated by loonies of all stripes who believed they had history on their side -- think Hitler and Idi Amin, sure, but also Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, and Mao -- I believe the driving factor is not where they are on the political spectrum but, rather, where they are on the certainty spectrum.”
JT: I’m afraid I was being reactionary myself in that column. I was thinking only within the North American context of anti-left paranoia. I was not thinking worldwide.
Vera Gottlieb: “I don’t think the Right will ever stop blaming the Left for whatever, wherever and vice-versa. But I do blame the advent of the smart phone (or whatever it is called these days) which enables anyone to send out all kinds of insults, hurtful messages, incitements, etc. to whomever they wish and remain anonymous. This has, in my view, opened a Pandora’s Box of hatred spewed in all directions, to anyone, anywhere…with total impunity. Cowards who have no place in a civil and civilized society.”
Lois Hollstedt also linked incivility to the new Internet: “Our civil society has become more and more uncivil. Why is that? Could it be that the birth of the internet 31 years ago enabled a torrent of new communication systems that were not based in civil society protocols of good manners and respect because they could be done anonymously?
“Political rhetoric and consensus building processes have been reduced to name calling and reputation shredding, and enabled the floor to be lowered in what society considers OK in public. An unrestricted social media has amplified the negative voices making it harder to hear the positive voices. Is this how civilizations begin to collapse? Is it possible to rebuild a civil internet or social media community? Or is it too late to put that genie back in the bottle? I hope not.”
Cliff Boldt: “Your column on reactionaries was on target. Here in Victoria, city council has initiated a policy to help the ‘missing middle’. This policy would remove the single house per lot of current zoning. Its goal it to increase the availability of real estate for rental and purchase. On a single lot, an owner will be able to build a duplex, three plex or a carriage house.
“Unfortunately, my generation is causing the most heat in opposition, reacting very strongly, often with misinformation. Keep the old ways. And they do get vicious. And loud and unreasonable.”
Oli Cosgrove: “I couldn't agree with you more about right and left. Right wingers of any degree, I find, are righteous, even the law-abiding ones. They brook no opinion but their own; have no compassion for those who need help if taxpayers pay for it. Most COVID non-vaxxers are right wingers whose ‘rights’ take precedence over others’ safety, and they miss no opportunity to lambaste the Left. I think they have a lot of hate inside.
“Do they hate the left so much they forego National Health Insurance and Old Age Security, which we have thanks to the Left? Well, no…”
Bob Rollwagen: “You have captured the image, and my reality, of being exposed to right-leaning, self-declared, entitled, and should-know-better people. Fortunately, they are a very small group – which forces them and their friends to be intimidating in an abusive way.”
Helen Arnott writes as an Albertan: “The behaviour of this guy was surely hateful. Are these rednecks the barbarians who are knocking at the gate in our time? Why? What are they missing? Do they feel powerless?
“I have just finished reading the 2016 Massey Lecture by Jennifer Welsh, “The Return of History: Conflict, Migration, and Geopolitics” which has given me much food for thought about Russia and Ukraine.
“There is something going on in our world which we have not yet grasped…”
Terry Carscadden: “This one hits the nail on the head.”
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns