Out In The Mountains : Health & Wellbeing

On a beautiful summer’s morning, as I previewed a video called The Color of Fear for a race and culture class I will teach at UVM this fall, Martha came downstairs with a message. With pain in her voice, she said: “One of your counseling clients was killed in an car accident yesterday, and the family wants you to conduct the memorial service.”

Martha held me while I sobbed, listening to the message on the machine. The double-barreled effect of the morning – the powerful and uplifting videotape and the reality of sudden tragedy – left me scrambling for some nonexistent, emotional higher ground where I might escape the floodwaters of pain and sorrow slapping wildly at the door of my soul.

However, I’ve been around the proverbial block enough times to know that the only real option is to go with the rushing torrent of feelings, because, as a very wise participant in The Color of Fear said: “The cure for the pain is in the pain.” So, this month, I’ve risked the “pain cure” this wise man prescribed, to write about what I felt in the wake of one morning’s messages, to wade into the waters of grief, giving myself permission to swim with them, rather than against them.

I have conducted many memorial services and funeral services over the years, but this is the first time someone I have been working with on a weekly basis for almost a year has been killed in the prime of life. Even with all the years I have been in the ministry, this is new territory altogether.

I have also never taught a class on race and culture, and the videotape really brought home the pervasive, insidious, and oppressive reality of racism and white privilege in our culture. For all my years of working to promote the end of all the “isms.” I am, again, in new territory altogether. I have a feeling I am going to learn a lot more than I am going to teach, and I need to stay open to this.

I grieve for my client’s family, especially her three children. I grieve for my client, who worked so hard to turn her life around, and who was really on the way for the first time in her life. When we last met, I remember telling her how well and happy she looked compared to our first meeting. To be killed in such a bizarre accident – by a tire hurling from two 18-wheelers when they collided in front of her on the expressway – falls in the “stupid and senseless” category of human experience to me. But if the pointlessness of her death makes no sense, the anguished emptiness I am feeling does. When I had to take my client’s name off my appointment book for next week, I just stared at the white-out where her name used to be and felt sick to my stomach.

That I’ve spent much of the day praying won’t come as a surprise to you. I have needed the strength, courage, and comfort that the Beloved Conscious Creative Source of All Life longs to give us when we ask for it. As a result, I have sensed Her holding me in a very real way that I nonetheless have no words to describe. Martha, too, has been loving and supportive. Every time I have just lost it, she has come over to me, and simply put her arms around me and held me. Perhaps this is part of the reason I have been able to sense The Holy Beloved One’s presence so well. Martha has been willing to wade into the waters of devastation and despair with me. She has not backed away or blinked once in the face of my pain. For this, I am profoundly grateful.

Like all of life, faith and writing are two-way streets. If there were no responsive Beloved Conscious Creative Source of All Life, my faith, not to mention my soul, would wither up and die. That we do have such a Being makes it possible to live through the pain of losing people we love, and the faith to do the work we need to do to end all of the “isms” that stalk our lives. Likewise, if there were no responsive, loving people in my life with whom to share my journey, my heart would wither up and die. I feel doubly blessed to have both of these sources of love and support in my life. Knowing that each month’s Faith Matters installment seems to matter to many OITM readers is what makes writing these installments matter so much to me.

I thank you with all my heart.

Rev. Christine Leslie, cofounder and director of Triangle Ministries, A Center for Lesbian & Gay Spiritual Development, is available for individual and couple counseling, weddings, and retreat/workshop leadership. She can be reached at 860-7106 or revcsl@aol.com .