Could We Make This Dream Come True?

At noon today local pastor Cindy Carr, EMU counseling professor Cheree Hammond, pastor and jail chaplain Ben Risser, Rockingham Cooperative General Manager Norman Wenger and I met with Community Services Board Director Lacy Whitmore to discuss ways of improving mental health services at the local jail.

Currently the CSB has a contract to provide only 2 1/2 hours of psychiatric services each week for a very crowded inmate population of approximately 340. Due to a lack of staff and other resources suicidally depressed persons may still spend hours confined to either a restraint chair or the padded isolation cell, the latter with the inmate having only a paper gown to wear and with their only amenity being a hole in the floor for a commode.

By way of contrast, Cindy Carr talked about the recent experience of having their adult daughter successfully complete a well staffed five-week drug rehabilitation program, one which has completely revolutionized her life. The cost was considerable of course, but still less than the $26,000 tax payer cost of a year of incarceration that provides for virtually no rehabilitation.

We realize a jail can never be like a rehab center, but the dream that emerged today was whether we could generate the support needed (perhaps in collaboration with the CSB) to hire a full or part time therapist for the jail, one who could also coordinate a program of volunteer professionals to help meet some of the mental health and reentry needs of inmates. Safety and liability issues were raised, but state regulations do allow for outside personnel to visit inmates at the discretion of the sheriff or other jail administrator, as follows:

Code section 53:1-127 "... the sheriff, jail administrator or other person in charge of the facility shall prescribe the time and conditions under which attorneys and other persons may enter the local correctional facility for which he is responsible."

Here are some of the questions I had prepared for Mr. Whitmore prior to our meeting:

Is the current contract with the jail (to provide 2 1/2 hours a week of psychiatric care) adequate for the needs of over 300 inmates?

Answer: No official CSB position on whether this is adequate or inadequate.

What benefits, if any, would there be in some kind of partnership with other concerned professionals in expanding or improving mental health services at the local jail? What form of partnership might be most helpful?

Answer: May be desirable, but difficult to implement.

Does the CSB have any position or recommendation regarding the current use of the restraint chair and/or the isolated padded cell for suicidally depressed inmates? Or the segregated cell, where inmates may be held for weeks at a time with no reading material (except the Bible)?

Lacked sufficient time to discuss this.

Would the CSB welcome having other health care professional, including volunteers and counselor interns, be available for close monitoring of suicidal inmates and/or other counseling services if permission could be granted by the Sheriff?

Answer: Not sure. It’s hard to picture that happening in the current situation.

Does the CSB share the jail administration's fears about liability and safety if there were greater access granted for additional professional mental health services to inmates?

Lacked sufficient time to discuss this.

If you could have your own wishes granted, what would be your dream program for mental health services for inmates at our regional jail?

Spent some time brainstorming time this.

Overall, this was a good session, for which we sincerely thank Mr. Whitmore, and I hope we can keep this conversation going. Maybe the dream of having the jail become more of a place for growth and rehabilitation can still come true. Stay posted.

You may also want to read this recent post.

Better Mental Health Services For Local Inmates?

restraint chair

Daniel Robayo, rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, and I had a productive meeting with Rockingham County Sheriff Bryan Hutcheson and Lieutenant Steven Shortell on Monday to discuss the following:

1) How can our community support an increase in the number of hours and personnel available to provide much needed mental health services to jail inmates, including enlisting professional mental health volunteers if necessary?

2) How could an expanded staff help provide alternatives to the use of the restraint chair and the isolated padded cell when dealing with mentally ill and suicidally depressed persons?

3) How could the jail and/or the Community Services Board better respond to numerous concerns expressed by inmates who reporting problems accessing medications as prescribed?

Uses of Restraint Chair and Isolated Padded Cell (January 1 through June 30, 2012)





Unlike the above photo, our local jail does not strip inmates who are confined to their restraint chair, but when suicidally depressed or incorrigible inmates are placed in the isolated padded cell for similar safety or medical (suicidal) reasons they are stripped of their clothing and given only a paper gown to wear. While there they have no access to reading material, mattress, pillow, blanket, or eating utensils. A hole in the floor serves as a commode.



We can understand the occasional need for such restraint or confinement for incorrigible inmates, but the primary purpose of Monday’s meeting was to discuss more humane ways to treat mentally ill and suicidal detainees.



We had recently asked for, and kindly received, documentation from Sheriff Hutcheson’s office about all uses of the jail’s restraint chair and padded isolation cell from January 1 to June 30, 2012.
 Their report showed there were 19 cases of mentally ill persons (usually suicidal) being confined to the restraint chair during that time, an average of three per month. In restraint, belts and cuffs have the prisoner's legs, arms, and torso immobilized.



In an additional 8 cases inmates were in restraint for things like “were intoxicated,” “wouldn’t listen,” “were bouncing off the walls,” or who were otherwise seen as possibly harming themselves. The average time spent in the chair for these 27 persons (for medical and these other reasons) was four hours, with the shortest time being two hours and the longest ten hours.      



In addition, there were 22 other reported cases of the chair being used for inmates demonstrating violent behavior and who were considered potentially harmful to others. Some of that number may also have been suicidal, but this was difficult to determine because many were under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. The average time spent in the chair in these cases was six hours, with two hours being the shortest time and 24 hours being the longest.
     


As to the isolated padded cell (the “rubber room”), there were 7 cases of it being used for medical reasons (inmates deemed suicidal) during this six-month period. In an additional 13 instances an ordinary segregated cell was used and a guard assigned to regularly check to make sure the prisoner did no harm to him or herself. Here the inmate does have access to a Bible, mattress, blanket and a commode.



Segregation cells are used routinely for disciplinary purposes in jails and prisons, and sometimes for the protection of an inmate who is in danger of being harmed by his or her cell mates. Such sentences to the “hole,” for either the prisoner’s protection or for in-jail violations, may be for weeks at a time.
     


In all fairness, extreme overcrowding at our local jail, along with challenges of limited budget and personnel have Sheriff Hutcheson and his staff stretched to their limit. Our jail, built for 208, is double bunked and typically houses from 325-375 inmates, some having to sleep on the floor. As a result, jail staff feels they have few choices at times but to resort to the use of the restraint chair, segregated cells, and even to the dreaded isolated padded cell. They do report, however, a definite trend toward fewer uses of such measures.



Current Medical and Mental Health Resources

Our local jail has a contract with Southern Health to provide one or more nurses on site around the clock to meet the medical needs of inmates. In addition, a retired MD from Staunton is available on a very part-time basis.

For mental health needs, the jail contracts with our local Community Services Board to provide a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner for 2 1/2 hours once a week and two professional mental health counselors for a part of two days per week and to be on call for emergencies.

Two very part time volunteer chaplains are also available for male inmates and one for female detainees.

Ongoing Challenges

Over the past year a number of concerned citizens in our community have been meeting to explore alternative sentencing options and other ways of reducing jail overcrowding, as well as brainstorming better ways of dealing with mentally ill and suicidally depressed inmates. 

One idea is to assign such persons to regular segregated cells with trained volunteer mental health providers or interns taking turns being next to the cell and relating to that person until he or she is able to be returned to general population. Such volunteers, coordinated by the CSB, could also be useful in the booking area, where persons may be kept for as long as 24 hours (occasionally longer) until they are sober and can be appropriately assigned to regular population.



In this holding area, inmates are normally not allowed a mattress, pillow or blanket for fear they may attempt to harm themselves, and are typically denied their medications during that time, especially if they are intoxicated.



I believe a community like ours can work together to provide more effective and humane treatment of our incarcerated citizens. Monday’s meeting gave us new hope that together we might be able to make that happen, with Sheriff Hutcheson suggesting in his last email that “the CSB is a primary factor in this matter of discussion”. 



Check out the following links for more background information: 



http://harvyoder.blogspot.com/search?q=can+we+make+this+dream+come+true


http://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2012/03/some-reflections-on-tuesdays-forum.html

http://www.nmha.org/go/position-statements/24

P. S. SAVE THIS DATE: A community forum is being planned for the Massanutten Regional Library from 12-1:30 pm Monday, November 19, to discuss the expanded use of GPS bracelet monitoring technology for pre-trial and post-trial non-violent offenders. The program features a panel of speakers that includes the founder of Nexus Programs (a non-profit agency that provides such monitoring), a representative from the bail bond industry that offers similar technology, and a Clerk of Court and national expert on these issues from North Carolina. Their input will be followed by a Q & A time with participants. The event is free and open to the public.

Justice-Themed Film Festival Set For 9/23-26

This month's  DN-R Valley Justice column was written by David Smith, an incarceration survivor whose InThrive organization is doing this local event. There will also be exhibits of art work by people in our jails and prisons. Please help us spread the word. 

How were your ideas about our justice system formed? For many of us it was through scripted dramas like Law and Order, movies like Shawshank Redemption, reality TV series like Love After Lock Up, or our favorite true crime podcast–not the reality of what’s happening in our own communities. 

Each time we consume this media we’re letting our narrative about incarceration be shaped not by reality but by entertainment executives who want you to keep watching so they can sell more ads and make more money. The stories are compelling and the drama isreal, but they know they’re not portraying reality, they’re creating entertainment. And in the process  of creating entertainment they warp our understanding of what it means to be impacted by incarceration.

What if we understood the impact of incarceration not through the lens elite mediaexecutives but through the stories of people who actually lived it?

The Inthrive Film Festival is the only touring film festival to celebrate the voices and talents of actual incarceration survivors. Started in Richmond, VA, in 2023, the Inthrive Film Festival creates spaces for incarceration survivors to share their stories through film and art so the community can experience them first hand, be challenged by what they see, entertained by what they experience, and become connected to people in their communities striving to make a difference in the lives of people impacted by incarceration. 

We seek out films from around America that tell stories you won’t hear anywhere else. These films are just as entertaining and moving as what you can stream on your tablet or watch on TV but instead of being made by people who have never experienced incarceration they celebrate the voices and talents of incarceration survivors.

So what happens when we listen to people who have been incarcerated tell their stories on their terms? What happens when we give them the camera, the pen, the mic to share their real drama? We experience stories of trauma and overcoming, pain and resilience, sadness and joy. And, most importantly, we gain a truer understanding of what our criminal justice system is like and what it means to survive incarceration.

These are the powerful, moving stories you’ll discover when you come out to the Inthrive Film Festival-Shenandoah Valley presented by the Valley Justice Coalition from September 23-26. You’ll experience scripted dramas that show us the real life struggles of youth and others in our justice system and inspire us to dream of better ways to practice justice in America. You’ll learn from documentaries that challenge our views on treating addiction and show us what’s possible after incarceration when we support people in reentry. And you will see art made by local currently incarcerated men and women. 

Beyond the films and art, you can meet people and organizations working to make the Shenandoah Valley safer and be part of the conversation with local civic leaders and incarceration survivors as we discuss how we can remove barriers to successful reentry and reimagine former carceral spaces here in the Shenandoah Valley.

Are you interested in experiencing what stories about our prison and justice system are like when told by people who have survived it? Do you want to be part of the conversation on how we can improve the Shenandoah Valley for everyone? 

Then come and join the Inthrive Film Festival for films, community, and discussion at Eastern Mennonite University on Wednesday, September 23; Mary Baldwin University on Thursday, September 24; Bridgewater College on Friday, September 25; and the public forums at Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community (10-11:45 am at the Detwiler auditorium) and the Divine Unity Community Church (3-5 pm at 1680 Country Club Road) on Saturday, September 26. 

Thanks to the financial support of local sponsors like Park Rose Apartments, Bridgewater College, Cook Attorneys, Hometown Realty Group, Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community and the Park View Federal Credit Union, all of the Inthrive Film Festival events are free. We hope you’ll join us to experience powerful stories, connect with amazing people, and discover new ways to make the Shenandoah Valley a better community for everyone.

Full schedule and listing of films at: https://inthrivefilmfestival.org/shenandoah-valley. 

Not Your Ordinary Hymn Sing

 

I love our church's new hymnal, and
it's increased use of hymns with we, us,
and our language for corporate worship;

It's hard to imagine a school's alma mater, its cheerleader chants, or a statement of purpose recited at any organization's gatherings that would use singular pronouns in the text. Yet many songs in our hymnals focus exclusively on our individual relationship with God, which might be appropriate for one's personal praise and worship time (as in the beloved "I Come to the Garden Alone" for example), but for public gatherings?

Here's a proposal for a novel kind of hymn sing I'd love to be an experimental part of, as follows: 

First, participants would be seated in the round. hopefully in a place with great acoustics, enabling them to be singing to and with each other, and using all plural rather than singular pronouns in the hymns selected. 

In going through our church's newest hymnal as a part of my morning meditation time, I have been trying out some pronoun substitutions. Many of the hymns, especially those coming from a pietistic tradition, are primarily personal testimony songs, which isn't a bad thing, but it seems reasonable to me that most of what we sing when we are together should use the pronouns we, us and our in the lyrics. This is already true of the first 41 gathering hymns in Voices Together, and in many of the familiar texts in all of our hymnals.

There is precedent for making certain changes in our hymns, as in avoiding or reducing the use of masculine pronouns, as in the exclusive use of he, his him, man, mankind, etc. So changing some wording in our hymns isn't unheard of. 

I'm not saying that beloved songs like Blessed Assurance, When Peace Like a River, and others shouldn't be retained as they are, but many hymns could be modified to help us think more in terms of an Anabaptist concept of "corporate discipleship" by the use of plural pronouns.

And for future hymnals, fewer thees, thous and thines might not hurt either, though I can also appreciate some such reminders of our ancient heritage. 

But how would these texts feel when sung together?

VT 605 My Life Flows On (Our Lives Flow On)

1 Our lives flow on in endless song,

above earth’s lamentation.

We catch the sweet, though far-off hymn

that hails a new creation.

Refrain:

No storm can shake our inmost calm

while to that Rock we're clinging.

Since Love is lord of heav’n and earth,

how can we keep from singing?

2 Through all the tumult and the strife,

We hear that music ringing.

It finds an echo in our souls.

How can we keep from singing? [Refrain]

3 What though our joys and comforts die,

We find new joy in living.

What though the darkness gather round?

We waken to thanksgiving. [Refrain]

4 The peace of Christ makes fresh our hearts,

a fountain ever springing!

All things are ours since we are his!

How can we keep from singing? [Refrain]

VT 557 Spirit of God! Descend:

1 Spirit of God, descend upon our hearts,
wean them from sin, through all their pulses move.
Stoop to our weakness, mighty as you are,
and make us love you as we ought to love.

2 We ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies,
no sudden rending of the veil of clay,
no angel visitant, no opening skies;
but take the dimness of our souls away.

3 Did you not bid us love you, God and King,
love you with all our heart and strength and mind?
We see the cross— there teach our hearts to cling.
O let us seek you and O let us find!

4 Teach us to feel that you are always near;
teach us the struggles of the soul to bear,
to check the rising doubt, the troubling fear;
teach us the patience of unceasing prayer.

5 Teach us to love you as your angels love,
one holy passion filling all my frame:
the baptism of the heaven-descended Dove;
our hearts an altar, and your love the flame.

I think in most cases this would not require reprinting all the texts for use in a hymn sing, but before each verse the modified text could be read with the changes of pronouns.

Here's a link to a post on a related theme https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2015/01/my-father-who-art-in-heaven-paying.html

"You Can't Stand Up All By Yourself"--Thirty Years Of Celebrating Families at FLRC

At last night's fundraising dinner marking the 30th anniversary of our agency, the amazing local men's a cappella group Cantore sang,

Ah, you can't stand up all by yourself,

You can't stand up alone...

Those words by Jesse Winchester were especially appropriate as an introduction to the talk I was asked to give at that event, as follows:

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The family is an amazing institution. I love being a part of an agency that has “family” as a part of its name and its mission, something we celebrate this evening.

     I remember reading about this little boy who announces to his mother, 

“When I grow up I want to marry you.” 

His older sister chimes in with, “Oh you can’t marry your mother,” 

“Then I’ll marry you,” he said, disappointed. 

“No, you can’t marry anyone in your own family.” 

He’s shocked. “You mean I have to marry a total stranger?” 

     Well, that’s the way families start, two unrelated strangers forming a new social unit, then their children leave them to repeat the same thing, and the cycle of life goes on.

     We each owe our very existence to this kind of social organism. As someone has said,"There is no such thing as a baby. It is always a baby and someone." Without some serious nurturing by  some other human beings (even the less than functional ones) a child would not survive, or if it could, it wouldn’t be truly human, or even animal, but more like a vegetable. We need relationships with others in order to become ourselves.

The Ancestral Family

But FLRC is about more than just supporting the nuclear family of father, mother and one or more children. From a family systems perspective, we see each of us as linked to a lineage that includes all of our many ancestors, who have not only given us our DNA, but whose stories have shaped us in far more ways we realize. The more we come to know about them, the better we understand and know ourselves.

     As African-American author August Wilson has said, “Children who do not know their grandparents, and their grandparent’s stories, are lost people.” So in the spirit of something my oldest son once said, “If you want to make a point, tell a story,” I’ll begin with some of my own ancestral story.

     In 1742, one of my great, great, great, great, great grandfathers, Christian Yoder, at age 16, got off a packed and loaded ship, the Francis and Elizabeth, at the port of Philadelphia with his father and we’re not sure how many of his family members, to start a new life in a world free of religious persecution and likely, as a person of peace, to avoid being conscripted into the Swiss army. 

     Later, in 1776, when his own sons were of draft age, he packed up his family and belongings in a Conestoga wagon for a 200 mile trek from eastern PA to move to what was then the wild west of Somerset County, Pennsylvania, in part to keep his own sons from being coerced into fighting and killing, either on the side of the occupying British army, or with the rebel Continental army. From there his descendants moved further west and finally into Oklahoma and Kansas. We all have such migrant stories, unless we’re native Americans, or our forebears were brought over in slave ships.

     Then in 1946, when I was 6 years old, my parents, Ben and Mary, packed up their belongings in a freight car which my father accompanied on a 1400 mile journey by train from eastern Anderson County, Kansas, to Augusta County in Virginia, and my mother shepherded us eight children on that same long journey by passenger train. 

     The older I get, the more I realize how much my life has been shaped by my family story. That became so impactful the last night I spent with my father at the Waynesboro hospital in October of 1985. He was dying from a lung disease, and in taking my turn being with him at night, I was in the reversed role of parent looking after a needy, diminished and sometimes confused version of my father. 

     On my way home after that emotionally exhausting night, I found myself crying, not just over missing the extraordinary father of my memory, but crying for my past missed connections with him, growing up as I did in times of financial stress on our 120 acre farm, often wishing Dad would have more time to go for a walk or go fishing with me, or just have conversations with me. And yet I realized he gave me so much more than he had ever gotten from his father, and his own childhood. 

     My dad’s mother, grandmother Elizabeth, died at age 35 when dad was only three, from complications in giving birth to what would have been her fourth child with my grandfather Dan. And this was, tragically, the third of Dan’s wives to die. His first wife Lucy died at age 23 of measles, leaving him a widower with two young children, John and Anna, named after his parents. On the day of Lucy’s burial, little Anna also died, of measles. Dan’s second wife, Rebecca, at age 29, died of tuberculosis, leaving him with young John and five other children, the youngest of whom also died, of tuberculosis, within six months of her mother’s passing. After losing his third wife, my grandmother, Dan married a fourth time when my father was eight. In an extended recorded conversation I had with my father, he told me he had often cried himself to sleep wishing he could have a mother like other children did, rather than just his grief-stricken father and others who helped take care of their household, He knew Dan mostly as a “man of sorrows”. 

     But along with the blessing of gaining a stepmother at age 8 came other sorrows. The fourth wife, Miriam Mullet, was a widow with fifteen children and stepchildren. When Miriam married my grandfather Dan, a number of her oldest children were already grown and gone, but the remaining family of fun-loving Mullets never blended well with the somber and strict Dan Yoder side of the family. The resulting stress and ongoing grief could have turned my father into a bitter and negative person. Instead, he and my mother, who has a fascinating story of her own, were known as among the most hospitable and gracious people you could find. I can never be grateful enough for all I’ve gained from this part of my story.

     Without a doubt, my becoming involved with hurting and distressed people as a pastor and as a counselor was shaped by that history, and here at FLRC we are always interested in encouraging people to become better acquainted with their past story, and to get in touch with more of themselves by becoming reconnected, by "re-membering" forgotten or dismembered parts of their past as a way of their finding greater wholeness.

The Family Of Faith

A second even broader concept of family that FLRC represents is the family of faith. Perhaps our special niche as an agency devoted to “hope, health and healing” is that of encouraging, wherever possible and whenever appropriate, clients maintaining life-giving ties not only with their biological extended families, but with their chosen kin based on spiritual or other kinds of communities with whom they share common values and a common care for one another. Our agency was birthed by members of the Virginia Mennonite Conference, folks with a tradition of strong ties with each other, where no one starves unless everyone starves, and where whenever there are losses or griefs nor special needs, that no has to ever go through them alone. We are never about proselytizing, of course, but to affirm that individuals, couples, families and children greatly benefit by being surrounded by constant care and accountability that add to their strength and durability.

      I’m often saddened by people in crisis in my office having a very limited network of care around them, making their distresses doubly difficult to bear. 
     I’ll never forget having someone from another community share with me something that happened to her years before as a young adolescent. Her family were relative newcomers in their town, and they had neither extended family nor congregational family ties, so her mother decided to invite some of her classmates and neighborhood peers to a birthday party for her.

       As a middle schooler she was somewhat overweight, subject to teasing and sometimes near bullying in school because of it, so the idea of having a nice party in her honor was special. The day came, with all the preparations made, her mother had decorated a special cake for her, the time came, and they waited. And waited.
     But no one showed up. No one. And no one had bothered to send any regrets or to see that she was given a gift anyway. It was one of the darkest days of her life, one she still can’t think about without re-living some of the desolation and rejection she felt. 

     That should never ever happen to a child, or to anyone. We all deserve to be a part of what in my German tradition we called a freundschaft (our blood relatives), and a gemeinschaft (a community of people with close ties) former strangers who enjoy birthday and other celebrations together, people who show up at weddings and funerals and graduations and picnics and Sunday dinners. Individuals and nuclear families thrive in the context of these extended families of people who love each other and who powerfully influence each other and each others’ children. It does take a whole village, or a whole congregation, to raise a whole person.

     Just last week we experienced the tragic loss of one of my grand nephews, Cameron Yoder, age 23, of a congenital heart condition no one had known about, leaving behind a young widow after a marriage of only three years, and two precious daughters, one just under two, and another only 3 months old.

     Hundreds of members of both their freundschaft and their gemeinschaft were present at the memorial service held at Bethel Mennonite near Gladys, with an a cappella music group singing “I’m Just a Poor Wayfaring Stranger”, bravely claiming what we all prayed could be an anchor for this devastated young family--and for the rest of us who are left behind.

"I know dark clouds

Will gather 'round me 

I know my way

Will be rough and steep

But beautiful fields lie all around me

Where God's redeemed

Their vigils keep”

That, too, is a part of the FLRC concept of family.

God's Worldwide Family

But a final part is an even larger vision of family, one that includes God’s dream of a world "freundshaft" redeemed from every tribe and language and nation who are being restored to God’s shalom, that Hebrew word for peace that means harmony with all creatures and with all creation, where nothing is marred and nothing is missing. It’s the grand vision God has for a world in which wolf lies down with lamb, and no one will study war any more. In one sense, we can never be completely whole unless and until the brokenness of the world is healed and all are reconciled to God and to our every neighbor, including our enemies. 

     None of us can be fully whole until our starving fellow human beings, war and famine refugees around the world receive their share of God’s daily bread, where those who are cold and without shelter are offered clothing and safety and warmth.

     None of us can be fully whole until all of the tears in God’s family are being wiped away, until the emotionally and physically ill and disabled are being loved and cared for, the lost and the lonely, the orphans and widows, the sick and the aged are all sheltered as a part of God’s beloved family.

     None of us can be fully whole until the life and wellbeing of every child is nurtured from the womb to the tomb, where the married and the single and the celibate are honored and celebrated in our families and communities.     

     None of us can be fully whole until prisoners are released and restored and the oppressed go free and liberty is proclaimed throughout every land, until God’s will is being done right here on earth as it is being done in heaven, where God’s rule, God’s kingdom, unites us all as one family of grace and shalom, and where life becomes one ongoing Christmas gift exchange.

     We are all called to be a part of this, for the next thirty years and beyond, no longer just living by the values of the past, but inspired by the values and the vision of God’s forever future.

     I close with some words of the prophet Isaiah, with his grand vision of God’s dream family that I want to see people getting some taste of whenever they visit our FLRC house at Newman Avenue, and wherever they visit any of us wherever we live and work, 

      “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great Light…In that glorious day of peace there will no longer be the issuing of battle gear; no more the bloodstained uniforms of war…  For unto us a child is born…  and he shall be called “Wonderful Counselor,” “Mighty God,” “Everlasting Father,” “Prince of Peace.” He will bring true justice and peace to all the nations…  (from Isaiah 9)

     …the Lord Almighty is preparing a wondrous feast for everyone around the world—a delicious feast of good food, with the finest of wine…  he will remove the cloud of gloom, the pall of death that hangs over the earth…  The Lord God will wipe away all tears and take away forever all insults and injustice. The Lord has spoken—he will surely do it!”  (from Isaiah 25)

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To make a contribution to FLRC's scholarship fund to assist low income clients without insurance coverage go to: http://www.flrc.org/harrisonburg-counseling-services-family-resource-center-support-donations.html

Five End Of Life Wishes

An excellent book on this subjuct

As I enter my last quarter of life, here are some of my final wishes:

1. My first is that with whatever life I have left I can still be investing some good time and energy into causes I’m passionate about. I’m not about to retire just because I happen to be a decade past 65.

Fortunately, my health is still pretty good, but I realize I have only so much good time left, so my wish is to be able die used up and somehow “finished” to the greatest extent possible.

Jesus’ own next to last words were, “It is finished,” not so much as an expression of despair as of a life mission accomplished. Then his final words were, "Into your hands I commit my spirit".

I know I’m not Jesus, and I know no human goal is every fully reached, but I want to die feeling like I’ve given it my all, so at the end of my life, like at the end of a day, I can “lay me down to sleep,” content and ready to give my life a rest.

One of the things we may dread most about dying is the fear of never having fully lived, or of not having left any legacy of accomplishments behind. These don’t have to be huge things, just things that have made some kind of difference, that have left some kind of footprint. There’s a rabbinical saying, “All mortals die twice, once when they draw their last breath, and again when people no longer speak their name.”

2. My second wish is to leave a good and enduring legacy to my children and grandchildren. They know, and I know, that there probably won’t be much in the way of an estate or a lot of cash left over for them. So I’m working on a last will and testament of another kind, naming the blessings I want to leave behind for our offspring, the faith and values Alma Jean and wish to  have passed on--so that their children and their children’s children will carry some of the good parts of us forward.

3. A third end of life wish is to make sure that when I become incapacitated and my body is no longer capable of breathing on its own or able to take nourishment, that I’m simply given palliative care to help relieve any excessive amount of suffering. I don't want to be put on a respirator and have tubes forced down my throat or anything else that keeps me from communicating as well and as long as possible with my family and loved ones.

I know I can’t really control all of this totally, and that I could end up incapacitated for a long time through some accident or complicated illness--and maybe I’ll even lose my reasonably sound mind through Alzheimers or worse--in which case I pray my family will still love whatever is left of me to the end.

4. Which relates to my fourth wish. I want to die and be buried without a fancy casket and an expensive vault. My current instructions are to use a simple concrete vault and a welfare casket, the ones they don’t have on display at your local funeral home, but store in a back room somewhere, like the kind my parents were buried in.

If I could really have it my way, I would be fine with a Jewish-style funeral, one of which I attended about a year ago, where they don’t embalm the body, but lay it in in a plain, unvarnished pine casket and bury it without a vault. And while the rabbi reads reflections from Jewish scripture people take turns placing a shovel of dirt directly on the casket, not attempting to shield anyone from the reality of dust to dust, ashes to ashes, earth to earth.

Interestingly, on the same day I attended the Jewish funeral I also attended an Old Order Mennonite one, where a similarly plain wooden casket, made my one of the members of their church, was placed in a wooden vault, also subject to decay. Family members and friends took turns covering the grave while hundreds of congregants sang hymns in beautiful four-part harmony.

Poet Wendell Berry, in a piece he calls “Testament”, writes :

So treat me, even dead,
As a man who has a place
To go, and something to do.
Don't muck up my face
With wax and powder and rouge
As one would prettify
An unalterable fact
To give bitterness the lie.
     Admit the native earth
     My body is and will be,
     Admit its freedom and
     Its changeability.
Dress me in the clothes
I wore in the day's round.
Lay me in a wooden box.
Put the box in the ground.

I could be OK with cremation as well, though some members of my extended family are not, nor am I sure how they would warm up to the idea of "natural burial", where one's body is simply buried in a shroud and covered with earth, a totally natural process in which we welcome becoming one with the earth from which we came.

I love the Irish blessing which says,

May the blessing of earth--the good, rich earth--be with you...
May the earth be soft under you when you rest upon it,
tired at the end of the day.
May earth rest easy over you when at last you lie under it.
May the earth rest so lightly over you
that your spirit may be out from under it quickly,
and up, and off, and on its way to God.

5. Which brings me to my last wish, the “up, and off and on its way to God” part. I live with a deep sense of mystery when it come to things eternal, knowing we can at best only through “see through a glass dimly” when it comes to anything beyond our human senses.

But  there are some seemingly “unbelievable” things I’ll always consider too good not to be true, that some day “what is sown perishable will be raised imperishable; what is sown in dishonor will be raised in glory; what is sown in weakness will be raised in power; what is sown a natural body will be raised a spiritual body.”

This is not just something I hold on to for dear life, it is something that tenaciously holds on to me. And it’s my final wish, as in the African-American spiritual, “I want to die easy when I die, shout salvation as I fly...”

Some more reflections by Wendell Berry:

... do not let your ignorance
Of my spirit's whereabouts dismay
You, or overwhelm your thoughts.
Be careful not to say
Anything too final. Whatever
Is unsure is possible, and life is bigger
Than flesh. Beyond reach of thought
Let imagination figure
Your hope. That will be generous
To me and to yourselves. Why settle
For some know-it-all's despair
When the dead may dance to the fiddle
Hereafter, for all anybody knows?.." 

Or in the words of Job, "I know my redeemer lives." 

I close with some of my personal musings on my recent 75th birthday:

Can an old man continue to see visions and dream dreams

and finally lay himself down to sleep
well content when his time comes
feeling finished and fulfilled
at winter's end and eager to
welcome eternal spring
shalom
peace
yes!