Reflections on Disorientation and Lamentations

Kate Bradford

Our secular world often sees suffering as a deficiency that requires therapy. An entire industry exists around grief management. By contrast a Biblical world view does not see grief as something to be managed or a problem to be solved. The Bible offers a rich, nuanced exploration that takes us deep into the mystery of suffering and the possibility of new life emerging out of suffering. The Bible offers no techniques but rather suggests that we share one another’s burdens. Eugene Peterson simply describes pastoral work as pain-sharing[1]. To suffer is to experience loss: loss of health, loss of face, loss of a loved one, loss of things, loss of hope, loss of dreams, and loss of relationships. We walk together with those who suffer loss and grief and in doing so the sufferer is dignified and their loss and grief are validated. 

Disorientation

To suffer is to experience profound disorientation. For each sufferer there lies a challenge: to seek to find meaning in their new situation and eventually, re-orientation. The ministry of the chaplain is to accompany such people on this journey.

Chaplains need to be comfortable with the Biblical texts that particularly address the subjects of pain, loss and grief. The primary Biblical texts that deal with grief and loss are the Psalms of Lament, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Job and the New Testament passion narratives. The chaplain should also have a good working knowledge of several psychological models that address grief and loss. 

Walter Brueggemann[2], writing on Psalms identifies three phases or periods of life:  orientation, disorientation and re-orientation. These phases are not necessarily successive or even related to stages of maturity and once experienced they may occur again a number of times, in any order, throughout a lifetime. The Book of Psalms reflects this as a natural pattern of life, experienced both by individuals and by communities. Brueggemann notes that as people negotiate transitions between the phases of orientation, disorientation and re-orientation, different poetic expressions arise, notably psalms of lament, praise and thanksgiving. For example, moving from either orientation or re-orientation back into dis-orientation gives rise to lament. By identifying these phases and recognising the necessary adjustments that need to take place, people are then able to adjust their expectations and accordingly, come to view different facets of relationships with God, self and others.

Pastoral ministry to someone in a disoriented phase is to hold out an inkling of hope contained deep within the disorientation itself. This is because to claim that there is disorientation is to firstly assume that there was once orientation and that there is a faint hope of re-orientation. Just as shadows in themselves are evidence of light (as it is only by the occlusion of light that a shadow forms), if there is no orientation it would not be possible to become disorientated.

Grief and Loss Models

Psychological models and insights helpfully remind us that grief is normal and periods of disorientation are part of the human condition. The process of adjusting to loss and the accompanying grief takes time and there are healthy and unhealthy patterns of grieving. There are no short cuts that avoid the pain of grief.

Commonly referenced secular models are Kubler-Ross’ Stages of Grieving, extended grieving cycles, and Stroebe and Schut’s Dual Process model. These models engage with people further through the lenses of Bowlby’s theories of attachment, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Erikson’s early social and moral development, the total pain theory, continuing bonds, categories of loss and others[3].

Each of these systems, while not excluding the possibility of God and the reality of sin, are not designed to address humanity from the perspective of the fall of Adam, the promises to Abraham, the exodus of Moses, the kingship of David, the exile of Israel, the wisdom of Paul or the cross of Christ. It is the task of pastoral theologians and chaplains to ask how, or indeed do, these theories fit together with the Biblical accounts of suffering, concepts of faith, God’s loving kindness, and notions of sin, fallen-ness, guilt, redemption, forgiveness and reconciliation

Lament

The Bible approaches loss, pain and grief through another quite different lens – the lens of the lament. These writings unashamedly expose suffering and engage with it. Lamentations assumes a dialogue partner, and that partner is God.  The suffering is presented from different perspectives often oscillating between a human perspective and a divine perspective. Lamentations neither offers an answer to the problem of suffering nor does it explain pain, however it does help the sufferer face grief. Suffering is never presented as random or as an impersonal force, it is seen as intensely personal. Lamentations offers an articulation for suffering and companionship during the time of suffering. It is in suffering that the closeness to God, and distance from God is most clearly seen and keenly felt. 

The intensely personal book of Lamentations is never theoretical. The lament is a cry across a gap that must be negotiated between humanity and God, fallen-ness and holiness, mortality and eternity. An attempt to close this gap, either by a quick theological resolution (over realised eschatology that sees everything from a divine end point) or theodicy (theistic or philosophical explanations of suffering) unwittingly create a disjunction between what is real ‘here and now’ and the lost ‘ideal’. They attempt to close the gap too quickly.

The highly structured lament follows an acrostic pattern (each verse begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The A- Z structure guarantees against rushing through, causing both suffer and helper to attend to the suffering. The acrostic device thoroughly covered the enormity of the suffering and the myriad details of grief. The A –Z as it were, covered again and again and again and again (five times) the tragedy until the grief begins to dissipate and its intensity is finally spent.

Walter Kaiser[4] suggests the chapters of Lamentation correlate with perspectives of the suffering representing views from the: outside, inside, upward, overall and finally, with prayer towards the future. Much popular recent pastoral care practice focuses only on the inside view (and this from a psychological perspective rather than a theological perspective) and thus significantly decreases the possibility of helping a sufferer find wholeness. 

In pastoral visitation there is a general pattern to the sufferer led conversations, which closely follows the pattern of Lamentations. The sufferer will usually give an overview of events, and in doing so help put the visitor in the picture.  Secondly, the sufferer will usually share in greater depth their perspective on their suffering if given the opportunity. A skilled pastoral visitor, practiced in empathetic listening skills, helps the sufferer to express their feelings and find words for things, as yet un-named or articulated. Part of the pastoral care will be to help the sufferer to move from the ‘why’ questions that cannot be answered, to a gentle enquiry as to where and how God might be in this situation. Over time the conversation may oscillate between the grief and a catalogue of woes, pain, sin, injustice and unexpected inklings of hope.

Lamentations describes a loss and grief of catastrophic proportions and also suggests a model for those who wish to enter the pastoral work of pain-sharing. Lamentations locates suffering to particular events and gives words to the horrors experienced, the emotions and feelings are not aimless anxieties but connected to real events – a historical memory. Sufferers will tend to orientate themselves toward loss-orientation, or towards a reconstructive-orientation, or oscillate between the two[5]. It is here that the chaplain helps those who suffer to reconstruct their world, incorporating the grief.

The pastoral visitor holds onto the threads of grace and holds out a glimmer of hope throughout by the use of sensitive grace-filled conversation and prayer. Over time (often a long time) a new perspective is formed, very often containing deeply honest reflection and observation about self and others. Slowly a re-orientation begins to take shape. Yet each visit can return to any stage and oscillations are unpredictable. Yet the boundaries of the lament place limits on evil. Suffering – even suffering as terrible as in Lamentations – cannot go on for ever.  

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
    his mercies never come to an end;
 they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.” (Lamentations 3: 22 -24)

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[1] Peterson, Eugene H. ‘The Pastoral Work of Pain-Sharing, Lamentations’, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work. 1992. pp. 113 – 148.

[2] Brueggemann, Walter. The Spirituality of the Psalms. 2002.

 

[3] For chaplaincy, it is important to recognise that these psychological theories were not developed to reflect on the human condition in the light of Biblical wisdom. This reflection is the task of theology.

[4] Kaiser, Walter C. Jr.  Grief and Pain in the Plan of God: Christ Assurance and the Message of Lamentations. 2004.

[5] Cf Stroebe and Schut,  Health Outcomes of Bereavement, 2007.