Spirituality and Mental Health: Faith and Narrative

Painting by Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato

Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn
(Luke 2:4-7)

This is a hard Christmas for a number of reasons. We are simultaneously going through an economic recession, a pandemic, climate crisis, and an unstable political season. It is not unusual for us to experience a “Blue Christmas” during normal times, but this one is particularly fraught.

This is one reason why the Christmas narrative provides comfort. It tells the story of a turbulent, messy time: Mary delivers Jesus in a guest room away from home. The family has to flee as refugees and live for a time in exile. Re-telling the whole Christmas story from both Matthew and Luke (and not just the happy bits) reframes our own experience of an unpredictable world.

It’s also worth noting in the story that whenever supernatural beings show up to announce God’s activity, they start by saying, “Don’t be afraid” (Luke 1:13, 1:30, 2:10; Matthew 1:20). The message once again reframes the context: you are not alone. Though the world may be scary, there are divine beings in our corner.

“Reframing” is also a technique used in therapy, helping folks see a situation from a different perspective. I listened to one therapist do it this way: A woman said she had a tendency to date problem men, that she would initially be attracted to them but eventually find that they were emotionally immature or lazy. She wondered what was wrong with her. The therapist said, “It doesn’t sound like you have a problem picking men. It sounds like you are brave, that you know what you want, and that you would rather end a relationship than settle for misery. It sounds to me that you are actually very good at picking a partner. Have you ever thought of yourself as brave?”

Faith narratives help us reframe life problems in a similar way. We see in our own lives the same crises faced by epic heroes. The personal is often political, spiritual, and cosmic: our lives are echoes of the divine drama.

I said above that this reframing provides comfort, but it does more than that: it is a well of spiritual power and healing. This present crisis is revelatory, both personally and politically. It reveals relationships that are important and social problems that need to be fixed. It exposes hidden intentions and systemic failures. When we see our own stories as reflections of the divine story, we connect with a cause that is larger than ourselves. Reframing it this way helps us recognize our own power that we can exercise together. We may not feel brave, but we are making brave choices all the time.

Prayer:
Though we are afraid, Lord, give us courage in the midst of our fear. Reframe our stories in light of the cosmic narrative you are telling.

—Rev. Dr. David Barnhart, Jr. 

“Change is slow, until it isn’t.”

“Change is slow, until it isn’t.”

This has been part of my mantra about social change for years. It’s the kind of wisdom that only comes with several decades of life experience or by listening to elders.

We are in one of those “isn’t” moments that is accelerating many kinds of social change. It’s going to be hard to see more than a few months ahead for awhile. There are certainly forces of oppression seeking advantage, to solidify their power and crystallize inequality for many more generations.

But there are just as many people who are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Don’t, in your cynicism, write them off. They are creative, they have been sharpening their skills, and they are hungry and thirsty for righteousness and justice.

I believe the promise that they will be fed until they are full.

This May Hurt a Bit

CN: Death and dying.

“This may hurt a bit.” I prefer it when health professionals—dentists, doctors, nurses—tell me up front. And that’s what they’ve been telling us for weeks.

I think saying these words is the kind thing to do. It’s one human being letting another know that we are all familiar with pain, that we are together in this even if we are having separate subjective experiences. It’s sympathy in advance. (Is there a word for this? Because there should be.)

The only way I know of to prepare for what is coming is to breathe, and enjoy every breath, knowing that pain is coming, and is already here. To breathe with the full knowledge that some of us will not be able to breathe when we are on a ventilator, and many will die for lack of breath. The only way I know of to prepare is to find joy where I can, and gallows humor where I cannot, because even dark humor is a form of resistance against the powers and principalities who consider some of us expendable.

When I read that Madrid designated an Olympic ice skating rink as a morgue, somehow it makes the amorphous dread concrete. I know what a skating rink is. I know, when this crisis passes, there will be medical professionals who will avoid skating because they will not be able to disassociate the two. But somehow it helps me to have a visual image of what is coming, to give it specific measurements and boundaries. It allows the horror to be contained, even as it expresses it.

The only way I know of to prepare for mass death is to frame it in the context that this isn’t the end, but a beginning. I mean this both in a hopeful and a scary way. Scary in that this is only the first pandemic of the modern age, but not the last, and only one kind of mass death among many in the shadow of climate change. Hopefully in that It isn’t the end but the beginning of humanity learning a new set of skills, of us reframing our own mortality and how we will live together.

Buddhism teaches us to meditate on our mortality. I am from a tradition that preaches and practices resurrection. I read it as God embracing our mortality, but I fear too many Christians do so as a form of death denialism.

I hope we can look at it squarely, not just as individuals, but as a society and a species. Death denialism is what has allowed our economists to act as if eternal growth is a law of nature, to build temples to wealth. By contrast, when confronted with the plague, people in the middle ages built whole churches into ossuaries, decorated with human bones. That was their version of an ice skating rink as morgue.

I don’t know what our response to this first of many mass deaths will be as a culture or as a species. (Especially because so many are walking around in denial still.) My hope is that we build something more hopeful and humane in a post-capitalist society that recognizes we are all in this together, that my neighbor’s health and well-being is tied to my own, that our separate-ness is an illusion. But my fear is that the disaster capitalists who are always working on a 20-50 year plan to increase their power and place more burdens on the rest of us are already organizing to make the most of this crisis, while the rest of us are reacting instead of responding.

But that’s looking years down the road. And most of us aren’t even looking at the next few months.

So I don’t know how to prepare except to breathe, and believe, as Jesus said, that tomorrow’s troubles are enough for tomorrow, that I am more than my body or my thoughts and feelings or my fears, that I am something breathed by God and that I am not somehow separate from the rest of the universe and my neighbor, but part of the same event. I trust that the grassroots power of the Holy Spirit keeps leading from below. And I hope what’s coming leaves us all wiser, kinder, and more determined to live fully.

Peace be with you. Those of you in the medical field, including my sister and many friends, please know that I’m praying for you many times a day.