Author: Joyce Rupp, OSM
Publication details: Claretian Publications, 1989
Joyce Rupp deals with a difficult subject. Praying Our Goodbyes, she says, is about “the spirituality of change,” of encountering and embracing the times and events which signal necessary or drastic seasons of change in our lives. Human beings are, by nature, creatures of habit: environments which are too fluid and dynamic, circumstances which are unstable, are dark spaces in our shored-up experiences. They do not comfort; rather, they threaten to take away our peace and security. As much as nature itself abhors a vacuum, we too abhor change, and prefer the landscape of sameness and familiarity. Part of this dread of loss is explained in the sorrow of separation that afflicts human relationships and human life. Something of ourselves is lost in the emotional and spiritual severing of the physical “leaving behind and moving on” that we all recognize but dislike. Yet these seasons of change which bring an autumnal sense of twilight sadness, of falling hopes and shrivelled dreams, perhaps, are part of the cyclical nature of simply being human and being alive.
Rupp delves into the subject, examining reflectively the anxieties writ large upon our hearts when we struggle with the moments of our “ends”: the end of friendship, the end of a loved one, the end of success, the end of health … She proposes that these times of ache and loss are not only natural to life, but are experiences that suggest our God-made humanity. Our aches, expressed best in our recognition of the basic human “existential ache,” tells us, within the particularities of our personal, specific losses, that no matter how “good the ‘good earth’ is, there is always a part of us that is yearning, longing, quietly crying out for the true homeland ..” The resolution, for there is no human cure for loss and existential “all aloneness,” is to reflect upon the pain in our spirits and to recover a faith that has endured the crucible of suffering. It is through understanding the pain of loss that we will find a “deeper courage to continue the journey that will eventually take us all home.”
Rupp suggests that we can find regenerating strength and healing by using prayer as the healing womb for our hurts and suffering; instead of just saying our goodbyes, she draws in the spiritual dimension of praying our goodbyes. Within the comforting confines of living, reflecting, and patiently embracing the process of pain with God’s loving arms as the unchanging backdrop, our harsh bruising at the hands of life’s difficult farewells finds deep healing, spiritual growth and deepening faith. We come to see that even loss, sorrow and death, are occasions not to detach ourselves from life’s vicissitudes, but rather to emotionally and spiritually invest ourselves in people and events. The way we bear our burdens helps us (and others) to grow into an awareness of our uniqueness and personhood. Pains and losses, in other words, do not necessarily destroy us or make us brittle and bitter, but instead can be sources and experiences that lead to a better and fuller understanding of life: “Praying a goodbye can bring us to the doorway of new beginnings. The seed of resurrection in our souls will grow again.”
By focusing on using prayer as the healing environment for physical and emotional hurts, Rupp’s grounding and perspective remain firmly spiritual and theological. Fundamental to this integrative approach to psychological and emotional healing is the underlying understanding of God’s compassion for our all too human suffering. It is such a God who will enable us to patiently go through hard times, and who will bring about the inner miracle of transformation in our spirits if we endure. The inner places of echoing emptiness and agony in our hearts become, through the compassionate intervention of God’s healing graces, sources of “transformation, inner wisdom, compassion and tenderness” instead. We are not impoverished by our suffering; rather, we are enriched by hard experiences and stormy life, and in turn, we live to enrich others who journey after us.
Using prayer as the safe environment for journeying through difficult passages means that God is central to our business. Rupp considers the life of Jesus as a key example of the man who was emptied of all because he consented to give all away. His abandonment to suffering and death demonstrated how he let go of all defenses, and how he deliberately made himself vulnerable to the “pain of the human condition.” Yet his praying goodbyes long before his Passion and death had deepened and prepared him for the totality of the separation that would come soon. At his end, he faced loss and separation from his family, friends and disciples, and that occasioned pain enough. But finally, he endured separation from his “Abba, Father,” and experienced what it meant for Adam and Eve to have had their eyes “opened” to the appalling truth of the canopy of blackness and blankness that cut off their sight of God.
On this side of the cross, none of us can dare to say that God does not understand how we feel. The greatest hope for us as afflicted humans is this, that Jesus understood because he patiently ‘went through,’ and he was resurrected because he triumphed in his suffering. Whatever else Rupp may bring up as human examples of hope and renewal, there is none as compelling and re-orienting an illustration to us of the need to courageously embrace pain and endure suffering, as the self-giving and emptied life of Jesus, emerging powerfully from the dark emptiness of sheol into the irresistible brightness of the eternal, breath-giving Spirit.
Taking action to engage with suffering rather than to deny it entails the first step of recognition of loss, and a willingness to let go of the past. Freedom comes only with the commitment to move on. It is a kind of surrender and self-emptying too when we finally agree to let our emotional ties be cut from what binds us to our past and consent to look forward and allow “new melodies to break forth from our hearts.” The life of Jesus assures us that this resurrection will happen.
To help heal the hurt and anxieties caused by goodbyes and change, Rupp includes a series of prayers and meditations to help readers take such action. These are reflections based on different prayer experiences and incorporate imaging prayer, using symbols and rituals as means towards healing and renewal. Such a spiritual journey is first necessitated and occasioned by a season of change and goodbye, but the human cycle ensures that spring follows hard after autumn and winter. On our most desolate days, we are reminded that nature and God do not deceive us, that past the paleness and emptiness of the echoing grave is the eternal springtime of our lives that has yet to visit us with its joys and vibrancy:
“Those who went sowing in tears
now sing as they reap.
They who went away, went away weeping,
carrying the seed:
they come back, come back singing,
carrying their sheaves.”
(Psalm 126: 5-6)
This review was first published in a Kairos monograph entitled, Understanding the Modern World Through Christian Eyes: Journeys of Faith, July 2006, pp. 20-21.
