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Thank you so much. President Wardlaw Dean johnson. Distinguished members of the faculty and incoming students who I get to address and welcome more directly, I welcome you on your start to us at Austin Seminary and

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I hope there's many opportunities for the things you've learned outside this place and your seminary formation to come together in beautiful ways. So I'm grateful to be addressing um, you directly and all of you on zoom

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. Hello as well. Um, I hope uh , you will pull up your handy dandy handout and I'm going to go through the outline first and then all. I'll tell you where I'm making the changes

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. So I'll tell you where I'm going from.12.2 and so forth. And then um, you'll also get the direct quote. So you and a bibliography . Um, if you want to take a look

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at it too. So my topic for today is learning to grieve, Witnessing the COVID-19 pandemic as spiritual practice. And I want to take a moment of pastoral privilege right now to say to you that if

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you've lost someone in this pandemic, I have no idea what you must be going through. Um, and I, uh, I pray that you find a way to grieve with us as you begin seminary

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and that's for all of you on zoom as well . So these are the steps that I'm going to go through today. And number one, an exploration of covid related feelings. Number two, a story

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of Covid grief. Number three, a christian rationale for cultivating covid related feelings. Number four, a note from Pauline Anthropology And number five, some examples of pastoral connection during the season of COVID-19. So

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let us begin with number one Yeah. What are the feelings of the COVID-19 pandemic? And what do they mean to our faith during this time? We felt a lot of fear, but that's not very

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precise. We felt uneasiness, dread of contagion, uncertainty in our work, panic for the medical professionals . We know autumn falling out, scared as we think of loved ones in nursing homes. There's an

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image of that on the cover of your hand out of the bulletin for today, we've lived a steady diet of fear in the news and social media feeds . But what has been our relationship to that fear

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? I know our family has been scared to send our youngest to school because she's not vaccinated yet. And the school didn't have a max mandate until just recently. Kind of in the ninth hour as the

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mindfulness coach, Jon Kabat Zinn asks, is our awareness of fear, afraid? Have we been aware of our fear or have we been so afraid of the sensation that we've exiled it from our consciousness?

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What would it mean to honor fear for a moment ? So bring it back into the center of our consciousness for a while to let it stretch its legs during this time? We felt a lot of sadness

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, but that's not very precise. We felt the floating grief. I'm not sure if I exist or my friends still exist? We felt the missed opportunities of college differ or putting a kid in the dorm

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all by themselves? The yuppie sadness of canceling vacations where we would have gotten a chance to see the loving friends because of a resurgence in the virus. And we know we would have mourned differently if we

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could have been together at grave sides and at funeral homes all through this season. Some people have faced so many sad events, one upon another that they've become a wall of pain. Some have lost functional

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independence or work or they've struggled with other kinds of illness that have only been made worse by Covid. What is the sadness of COVID-19 and what's it felt like in our bodies? Has the sadness of Covid

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been sad? What would it mean to honor this feeling and bring it back into our consciousness for a while to allow sadness to stretch its legs. During this time? We felt a lot of anger,

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but that's not precise. We felt the rage boiling up at the what ifs the feeling that we're not getting all the right information. We felt irritated as we look around and see the people doing it wrong

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. We feel anger about those not protecting the vulnerable , the vaccines not being available internationally? There's been prophetic rage over the killing of yet another unarmed black person by law enforcement? Some people feel anger over

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the senselessness of it all and look frantically for who to blame. Has the awareness of our anger been angry? What would it mean to welcome our anger back into our consciousness for a while? To uncouple

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it from blame, to even breathe it in and allow it to stretch its legs. I'm guessing that there might be more emotional relational emotions right now. Um things like survivor's guilt or shame at how we've

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gotten our response wrong, we might have stuffed the guilt and regret away, but has the awareness of guilt felt guilty? What if we honored guilt gave it its space and brought it back into the center

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of consciousness for a while? There's been another feeling that's been threaded through these days, a feeling that we're vulnerable, mortal susceptible to this disease. Until you have to add an existential anxiety to this.

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Has the awareness of our vulnerability been vulnerable. Could we listen to this fear of death for a while ? Let it speak to us here. What it has to say a lot of times we treat emotions

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like warning signs, something that lets us know that something is wrong in the world. And we can kind of go back to business as usual, once we address it and the motions will go away,

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but the problems we're facing aren't going away. So this doesn't work. One response is numbing out and denial, avoiding the difficulties until they go away. Another is immersion? We jump in completely to the

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flow of information and we try to experience it as deeply as possible news all the time. Another response is simply positive thinking and optimism which has its place , but it starts to feel to touch after a

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while, doesn't it? Ill suited to the site of a chronic unfolding disaster? A letter to the editor says quote, panic is exaggerated. Fear and fear is the most deadly word in any language by

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an act of will do not dwell on the influenza don't even discuss it. End, quote. This is a letter to philadelphia editorial 1918 encouraging people by an act of the will not to pay attention to

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the influenza pandemic that was raging men. Nowadays we have a similar approach that says even to consider the pandemic is a sign of cowardice. Um, we might call this a safeguarding against suffering approach. One

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pastor who I know very well. I got an email from a parishioner telling her that to even consider covid 19 was in some sense to give in to fear and this was non christian response. Some have

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turned from this sense of vulnerability and tried to have power over it. Some who doubt the vaccine or think of the virus is a hoax fit into this camp. A scholar who studies how vaccine related rumors

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get started. Heidi Larson asks us to listen to the testimony of these rumors shares and the strong feelings they express, including feelings of frustration from concerned publics that they feel like they have no choice and significant

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aspects of their lives listening to this sense of helplessness behind the safeguarding freedom approach is important. And we can also explore what this response does to our sense of suffering. You know, here's just a thought

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, but I think it might set up a meaning making damn in front of the feelings I've just mentioned , but the meaning making is too abrupt. It jumps over suffering and loss and starts with comprehensive bility

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and purpose. It seems like this may make us feel in control for a while, but it also might shut us off from the deep roots of our faith and the psychological responses to loss. Okay,

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you're still with me that was number one. Covid exploring covid related feelings. Number two, a story of covid grief. Let me share a story. The bautista family from Dallas texas typically celebrates christmas by

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decorating their trailer and going to pawn shops to look for movies you'd never find on netflix. The trailer is full of the smell of gravy and pies throughout the holidays. This past christmas though able bautista faces

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season alone With his parents recently deceased and his two adult Children having died from COVID between July and August of 2020, The youngest of these, his baby Marisol was only 17 when she died on August 3

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, 2020 before anybody could come and say their last goodbyes now according to uh the new york Times magazine where this article where this uh story comes from now able and his siblings must find a way to rely

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on their faith during the holiday season. This past holiday season of 2020. A silence was in that trailer that was much too deep as a former hospice chaplain and current professor of pastoral care. Abel's story

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brought up a range of feelings for me, as well as a bunch of questions, how can anybody face this much loss and not break. In my recent book, I pondered the experience of dying alone

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and I wrote the cumulative suffering of dying alone can be hard to comprehend. I was thinking about those who die alone because they're cut off from their social relationships like john does and jane doe's, you find

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so often in the ice to use. But now in the era of Covid, I read the passage differently with so many dying alone. This has taken on new meanings. This year I'm teaching pastoral care

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and loss grief and dying friday morning. It's not an advertisement letting you know and I'm pretty intimidated. I'm used to teaching that each life deserves to be grieved and we can't put a strict timeline on loss

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. No five steps in my class. Uh no five stages or anything like that. I teach students to have patients and attend to the long trajectory of breathing and prepare them for loss as a season of

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the soul rather than something, you can move through in easy stages. But with so many dead in the U. S. And abroad, You know , 600, more than 600,000. Now, how

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do we begin to grieve these stories? Well, since each story like marisol bautista's deserves the full attention of our faith, some researchers have suggested That each covid bereavement leaves behind a network of approximately nine grievers

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. Yeah, okay, that was number two. And now we're at number three, A christian rationale for cultivating covid related feelings. Today, I want to claim that christian faith does offer a distinctive approach

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to grieving, provides a very specific lens through which to approach the pandemic. That does not need to quickly proclaim victory over death but rather um emphasizes how God accompanies us in our suffering and what I have

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to say. Today, I'm going to bracket a lot of the social concerns that relate to the covid pandemic concerns like environmental devastation, the rise of violence against asian americans, the medical apartheid. That leaves

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so many blacks and Latinos susceptible to illness. Any of these folks, I would be perfectly valid. But today I'd like to suggest that we start with ourselves. I would like to posit that through faith

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when we welcome our range of pandemic feelings into our experience and grieve them together. We will be more prepared to agree for and with others who have lost so many. So what I want to say about

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Covid here dwells on the faith challenging emotions of it , the sense of abandonment by God and crying out to God in protests that are the hallmarks of christian faithfulness. Today, I'm claiming that we should try

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to attend to difficult experience of Covid in the presence of God as a kind of spiritual bracket practice. I grew up with a ticket to the Lord in prayer song. I don't know about any of you

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. I'm thinking of something along these lines and I think we should do that for three reasons. Number one, God desires to have intimacy with us in our experience of grief. Number two, when we

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grieve, we start to feel other feelings that are released like joy and hope. And number three, when we share our profound and mundane losses with God , we allow God to comfort us in ways that

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prepare us for our next encounter with grief. Number one, God desires to have intimacy with us in our Covid related grief. I'll put this in the second person. God cares about what you feel and

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what you experienced during this season. When I feel overwhelmed by the daily news cycle, I can forget this truth. God cares about how overwhelmed you've been . Even if you haven't lost anyone personally, God

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cares about your feelings of vulnerability, feeling susceptible and mortal. This new vulnerability. We all face together and part of the task of faith is to continue to try sharing with God in personal prayer or in

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prayers of the tradition. How alone and afraid we feel. How sad scared angry, guilty. It means allowing ourselves to hold these experiences before God, since God already been there with us as we've been

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going through them. One of my favorite hymns says there's no place where earth's pain is more felt than up in heaven. Second when we allow ourselves to grieve, we start to be able to experience other

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feelings like joy and hope at the same time, grief is an incubator for all kinds of emotions. Indeed, allowing us to go there even shedding tears means that were more available for other kinds of feelings

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and more open to God's consolation if it arrives third , when we share our covid related feelings with God , we have a chance to cultivate, to attend to painful emotions in ways that deepen our faith.

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It's strange to think that we might want to cultivate emotions like sadness, anger, fear, survivor's guilt , vulnerability to ponder them and reflect on them to turn them over in light of our faith. But

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we find that when we deepen our relationship to our feelings, we allow God to comfort us in ways to prepare us even a little bit for our next encounter with grief. This increases our attentiveness to the

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spirits movement in our lives and the lives of others . The emotion and the spirit are deeply connected and just like an athlete might welcome certain kinds of training and discomfort for the sake of a greater gain.

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We to have a chance to befriend the painful aspects of our own lives in the light of our faith in order to strengthen our capacity to face these emotions when they come around again. Okay, that was

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number three, A christian rationale for cultivating covid related feelings. So with me. Okay, number four , a note from Pauline Anthropology, I'm going to share one of my favorite bible passages with you uh

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Second Corinthians four, um and especially verse 10 um the Apostle paul in a memorable passage about persecution, describes how, quote, we have this treasure in clay jars so that it may be made clear that

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this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. He goes on to describe that even though we face calamity and near destruction, we've persevered , always, quote, always carrying around in the

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body the death of jesus, so that the life of jesus may also be made visible in our bodies . End quote, What a strange thought. Mhm . I read this as different from a triumphant attitude

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towards suffering, where people pretend to be invulnerable. Rather, it's an awareness of just how infinitely precious and profound human embodied experiences precisely because we're mortal and it's about that interplay between life and death that occurs

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at the bodily level we're jars of clay, not superheroes, admitting we feel vulnerable and fragile, sharing our stories and asking for help. So even discovering the energy of faith can be hard during this time

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. Poet jenny Shortridge says, all I can do is ask for help from some loving entity, but my amygdala is having none of it and call. So let's turn to number five. Now, some

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examples of connection During this season, Pastoral connection during the season of COVID-19. So this time now is all about connection even in the midst of dreaded fears carrying around the death of jesus as the witness to

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our fragile vulnerability and trying to hold onto each other somehow in the midst of it all. Sometimes when we're still relying on zoom from meetings and masking up , we have to use our words to make these

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connections, some who have lost a spouse during the pandemic, have had no one to touch them. Can we somehow remind them through ministry that God reaches out to touch them this time? Certainly requires seeing

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with the eyes of the heart, which I argue is a kind of vision that involves incorporating our feelings rather than pushing them away. One recent widow, a skilled cook had retreated to her room during the

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pandemic and had stopped cooking altogether. Yet a weekly phone call from her granddaughter seeking cooking tips was enough to have her sharing raspberry vinaigrette recipes and cooking again and some who embraced the crave the who crave the

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embrace of family members, have the courage to call them up and ask for their prayers. Then there are the day to day struggles of families with young Children at home in this constant interruption of life.

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Many mothers specifically have put their careers on hold and push themselves to limit trying to care for data. They need one mother found herself so exhausted that she could no longer tell her child their favorite stories they

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had made up like a special character with their own stories. But her child said to her, I'll give you ideas, finding faiths meaning with these families that we've been sheltering in place with means entering into

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their feelings, their stories and the hard places. I remember when we folded it folded up, april 2019 empty calendar page to use in a craft project , project as a family And how I listened to

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my 10 year old daughter share her grief about how she wasn't going to get to say goodbye to her fifth grade teacher in person. These people we've been with during the pandemic. We've had the grace of

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sharing precious things with them. Whatever is precious to you, including life's purpose might need to be held closely and preserved during this time. I'm also aware that this this season has been a season of discovery

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for some where some people have been able to affirm the gender and sexual orientation that matches the deep call of their spirit and thus have begun to integrate different aspects of their identity and faith because they've had a

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chance to pause and reflect. Some have come to a truer more faithful sense of how to live their lives in response to God's call, let's celebrate this blessing with them. So during this season, Let

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us cultivate our attention to the spiritual significance of the feelings surrounding COVID-19 and it's ongoing aftermath, because I think it's only through these feelings that we will discover ourselves as known and loved by God. The Heidelberg

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catechism says, what is your only comfort in life and death? And we're supposed to answer that I'm not my own but belong, body and soul in life and death to my faithful savior, jesus,

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christ jesus invites us to deepen this experience of belonging through cultivating the complex grief of this time that we might have been carrying around unacknowledged or under acknowledged, at least our faith calls us to grieve for marisol

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bautista and all those who have died from this terrible disease. And christian faith is what makes ongoing grief possible. As we learn to bring the full range of our feelings to God. We will learn that

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God wants to be intimate with us in our grief . God invites that whole range of previously silenced emotion And practicing grief. Is practicing faith again. God blesses the quality of these feelings and wants to travel

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with us on this unfolding journey. Artist Karen Ricchiuti says it this way, I have been to the secret places of the heart and realized that we are not always in control yet. we are not alone