'In Life and In Death We Belong To God' Grief and lament in faithful care By Cheryl Phibbs The Layman Online Thursday, March 15, 2007 DURHAM, N.C. – When discussing grief and lament, Dr. Emilie M. Townes says grief sends us searching for control and order, while lament says we can't handle the grief alone and sends us crying for help. Townes addressed the more than 250 church members, pastors and health-care professionals during "In Life and In Death We Belong To God: The Congregational Continuum of Care in the Presbyterian Church," held March 12-14 in Durham in partnership with the Presbyterian Church and the Duke University Institute on Care at the End of Life. This "first of its kind conference" explored the theological, medical and practical dimensions of end-of-life care and discussed how congregations could put that knowledge into practice in their own parishes. She described grief as an emotional sadness exclusive of reason. "Grief makes us search for control and order but, when we are grieving, we must go to our faith," she said. Townes suggested that lament marks the beginning of the healing process because, as a cry of distress, it says, "I can't do this myself." Drawing on her own personal and professional experiences with loss, Townes, the first Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology at Yale University Divinity School, insisted that lament must be incorporated into our personal and congregational ministries. "Lament is a place for our kinship with God and each other," she said, claiming that, as we join others in their emotional journeys, "It transforms us and the communities which experience it." Lament comes with little warning, yet it is the gateway to the hope that allows us to step out into the new thing that God is doing in our lives, she said. According to Townes, grief gives us the chance to grow in faith as God carries our pain. "It takes great spaces of grief to find our way to lament and healing," she said, describing lament as a spirit God puts in our souls to help us acknowledge the grieving process. "When our intelligence fails us in grief, lament kicks in –encouraging us to know God with a richness that ripens. Lament helps us put words to our suffering and helps us to bear it," she said. Jesus, she said, gave us a model for lament when he cried out, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" As caring communities, Townes said our job is to answer the cries of lament and to make sure we are there during times of grief and pain "as witnesses and disciples, perfect or imperfect, but fully there, as one side of the Jordan touches the other." Cheryl Phibbs is a freelance writer living in Winston-Salem, N.C.

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