A few years ago, I attended a gathering of ministers in which conversation turned to the question of progressive ministry’s role amid climate change. Maybe, suggested a colleague, we all need to be trained as grief chaplains for the world. The idea received only passing consideration; it’s hard to give structural theoreticals their due when facing apocalypse. But the thing is, I don’t think she was wrong. We need help sorting through our options, determining what it might look like to live lives of worth and meaning even as we are born unto this time and place. And we need assistance, at least as much, in learning to allow ourselves to hold the full range of our feelings.
In the absence of this support, we face grief and wish for the exact opposite thing: to feel less. We wish, in fact, that we could care less. And I get it: I am not much for outcome-based prayer, but I confess that I have indeed asked God with all the earnestness in my heart if it might be possible to care less about some things. Ineffectually, I might add. In the bigger picture, thank goodness for refused requests, but I do understand my point. Who wants to feel pain, even on behalf of love?
And even where we do want to feel, we sometimes find that the internal connections are blocked. Certain stressors can cause us to leave the realm of current-moment body awareness; we are still physically present, but not in an integrated way. I will note that a body-habit of “saving feelings for later” is a natural protective orientation for some people, and it’s a trauma response for others. In neither case is it as simple as habit— our responses to stress are shaped by cortisol activation and brain wiring. Dissociation can conserve and redirect vital resources in critical incidents, giving us the tools we need to save our own lives. The same response can also leave us under-resourced where our full conscious awareness would be more helpful than a reptilian-brain survival response.
I, personally, dissociate pretty easily. Put another way, my body is more inclined than some to understand that it’s in a war and to take action accordingly. This can look counterintuitive in both directions— I tend to hold worst-case scenarios as calculated possibilities, and to overweigh those in situations where it would be entirely reasonable to assume that things are fine. And on the other hand, when actual catastrophe strikes, I stay calm, lead well, and pragmatically handle things that would horrify my everyday self (and probably yours, too). I’ve stood in trauma bays with blood spraying the wall opposite me, fished a drowning victim out of a wave pool, directed traffic on an interstate highway bridge after being the first on the scene of an injury accident and have, more than once, talked someone with a gun to their head into setting it down. It appears I have a checkered employment history, and that’s to say nothing of the crazy shit that parents and parish ministers get up to.
I can do these things, and in some ways, my body seems preternaturally configured to do them, but when the emergency passes and the adrenaline fades, I need tools to ground the extra energy, settle into the here and now, and reconnect with the full emotional range that we have evolved as social animals navigating complex community structures. In short, I have some superpowers, but when “survival response” is activated, it can be hard to attend well to everyday life (and as before, how this looks is a bit counterintuitive— I in fact don’t always know when I’m experiencing trauma response, because for me that often manifests as absence of emotional register. I can’t cry, I numb out, and I experience my feelings on tape delay or not at all).
This set of realities is annoying at times, but I have come to understand and respect that it’s simply how my body works. And I’m sharing this here because my recent sojourn through deep grief (overlaid atop one of the most systemically stressful years I’ve ever experienced) reminded me that staying body-grounded can be saving, and we indeed have tools that help, and also because in the past few years I have learned that I’m not alone. By which I mean both that we all struggle sometimes, and that I have come to know that many clergy have a trauma history somewhat like mine, and are thus navigating life wielding the blessings and accepting the burdens of embodiment-between-crises. Discovering this—I’m not alone!—was healing in a way, and it also led me to suppose that there might be something about the journey of making sense of trauma that leads people to progressive ministry. And to consider, also, that many of us can benefit from teachings, support, and reminders about ways to more fully inhabit our bodies as we move through this year and all of the ones that follow.
Perhaps someday we will indeed have progressive clergy as roving grief chaplains to the world. For now, we have somatic practice.
In the post that follows*, I’ll explain five quick options for grounding, things that can work for both daily check ins and to process and integrate some of the heavier things that happen.
And for those wondering (what’s up, economists!) when we’re getting back to medieval and industrial resource allocation structures, that’s happening, too. But my vocation is ministry, and my witness is that bodies matter. Indeed, my broader contention is that the aforementioned structures are designed to deny this reality because ignoring bodies facilitates the ignoring of many other things. Thus, this detour is momentary but important, and guess what: you have a body, too.
In faith,
j
*I’ll save the second half for tomorrow so as not to spam your inboxes, but this was intended to be one post in two sections, and might best be thought of that way. What comes next is simply a list, with descriptions and implementation strategies, of things you can try to live more fully in your body in moments of stress. With this introduction, it exceeded Substack’s length guidelines; we work with the tools we have. :)