Coffee is a staple in my house–a necessary part of getting the day started right. It has become my ritual to empty the coffee pot each night, clean it, fill it and set the timer to go off early the next morning. Our programmable coffee pot is my morning alarm. I woke up one morning to the aromatic smell of freshly brewed coffee and the sound of the dinging bell indicating that the coffee was done brewing. As I wandered into the kitchen and grabbed one of my favorite coffee mugs, I paused to notice that the coffee pot was full. A full coffee pot in the morning is not unusual, but this morning I stared at it and realized that I had made a mistake. My husband, who usually also drinks a good bit of coffee, was out of town. I had failed to remember this, to take note of it, to adjust to it when I was going through the ritual of preparing the coffee pot.

In counseling grieving people through the years, and having been through a few seasons of grief myself, I have learned that loss, absence and change interrupts (sometimes painfully so) life as we have known it. The things we used to do, don’t make sense. The daily rituals lose their meaning. The ways in which we view and navigate the world don’t exactly work. In my case, my husband’s absence was temporary,  the daily routine interrupted for only a brief time. Some losses are more permanent and their painful disruption sometimes spans generations.

A season of shared grief

Anyone alive in America on 9/11/01 remembers that day. We remember probably exactly where we were, what we were doing, how we felt, when the news of that unspeakable tragedy came to us. This year the anniversary fell during a time when the world seems roiled by escalating violence and conflict. No matter how you get your news, you undoubtedly have heard of ISIS. As I listen to my parishioners talk, I hear a growing sense of collective anxiety over this particular group whose acts of barbarism in the beheadings of two journalists, James Foley and Steven Soltoff, seem to hit us in the gut much the way the attacks of September 11th did.

What we experience through the news of such horrific acts is a collective sense loss and grief. We collectively experience the loss of feeling secure and safe. We collectively experience the loss of humanitarianism when we see people ruthlessly take lives. And while we may not personally be related to anyone lost in the September 11th attacks and most of us probably did not personally know James Foley or Steven Soltoff, we experience grief over their deaths nonetheless because they were one of us. They were all Americans and as such we grieve their loss and we feel the trauma and effects of the violence.

I have sensed through recent several weeks that we are a people who have been collectively wounded by these events. We are a people moving through the season of grief. Life has been interrupted by forces beyond our control and how we choose to live through this season will determine whether we are a people who finds healing or whether we are a people who carries and passes on to generations a festering, open wound.

If healing and new life are our desires, we must think about adopting new rituals:

• Denial is a part of the grief process. Sometimes life altering events are simply too hard to accept at first. One step towards healing involves moving beyond denial to recognition and acceptance– recognizing and accepting that there are things that are beyond our control–Death, change, the actions of others.
• Another step toward healing is to feel. With honestly, feel the sadness, the anger, the regret, the disbelief. Share these feeling with those you trust. Write them down. Pray about them. Seek the help and advice of a licensed therapist. Suppression never leads to wholeness, so you must feel what you feel.
• Another important step in dealing with collective loss is to monitor how much you are replaying it. With the advances of technology and the internet, one could spend the entire day looking at videos of the planes flying into the twin towers or even find the beheading videos of James Foley and Steven Soltoff online. To watch these things is to experience that trauma over and over again (which is exactly what extremists want). To watch the 24 hour news cycle and all the political talk shows constantly is to pour salt on an already painful wound. If we want to find healing in grief, we must monitor what we feed our heart and soul through what we see and hear much the way we have to monitor our food intake if we want to be physically  healthy.
• Relying on a Higher Power to help you live into the interruption of grief is also an important step toward healing. This is not to suggest that God can magically take away your hurt and your sorrow, but it is to say that God can be present with you during the worst of it…that God can help you not be consumed by anger and a thirst for vengeance.

As a Christ follower, I find both comfort and challenge in his presence. When the raw emotions of acceptance flood in, the presence of Christ comforts me. Likewise, when the raw anger over injustice and inhumanity leads me to a desire for retaliation and vengeance, the words of Christ challenge me:

 “‘You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:43-48

We do not have power over the changing seasons. The season of loss, absence and change will come to each of us. We do have power over how we live through these seasons. We have power to make choices, to adopt new rituals that lead us to individual and collective healing. Perhaps if we try and we do the hard work,  the festering wound will heal.

We will be changed and scarred. But remember that even the scarred hands of the risen Christ brought new life and new hope. May it be so in your life.