Sermon: A Modicum of Control in the Midst of Chaos

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A Modicum of Control in the Midst of Chaos

By Charles Rush

October 17, 2004

thought of doing a sermon on limited control in the midst of Chaos ever since last spring when I was coming home on the train from Manhattan. It was the latter end of the rush hour and the train came to a dead stop in the Lincoln tunnel. All the lights went out. I just happened to be standing in between the cars. After a few seconds of total darkness punched the door and joined me. He pretty quickly moved down the stairs and was going to open the door out to the tracks when the lights came back on. He looked up. Our eyes met. He was panicked and embarrassed. I said nothing. Just before he got off at his station, he said, "You think I'm crazy to get off the train in the tunnel?" I said "No". He said "I'd rather just do something." And he went on his way. That is not a conversation anyone would have had until the last few years. But I suspect that quite a few of us are dealing quietly with our own 'terror management' issues. It is this undifferentiated anxiety that the most normal and banal routines could somehow be rudely transformed into a nightmare and like Alice in Wonderland, we find our world upside down and a with a parallel logic system that needs to be instantly deployed.

This is fundamentally a spiritual issue, though most of the time it is only written about from a psychological point of view. Psychologists have long noted the internal importance of a sense of self-control in the world. Shelley Taylor has noted the way that most of us have an exaggerated sense of responsibility for the world when things are going our way.[1] We take more credit for ourselves than we actually deserve and believe ourselves to be more responsible for our destiny and the world around us than is actually the case. Conversely, when things are not going our way, we tend to blame others too readily and curse the random character of factors arrayed against us. The problem is out there. In either case, it is very important emotionally for us to protect that sense that we are in control of ourselves.

It is a fundamentally important spiritual coping mechanism. Bruno Bettelheim, the renowned psychologist, did significant study on this subject interviewing survivors from the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau. What he found was that those inmates who lost the sense that they were able to control their destiny quickly lost the will to live and perished. Conversely, he found that among those who ultimately survived that barbarity and programmed arbitrariness were able to do it by spending an inordinate amount of psychic energy and time focused on things they could control. And I must hasten to add that they were largely able to do this because of the profound spiritual power of hope that buttressed them as they went.

I wanted to say something about this because it is a regularly recurring spiritual challenge in our lives and better to say something about it before the actual crisis comes. Of course, my genuine hope is that you never have to endure that crisis. But St. Paul, in our scripture reminds us of what the Christ experienced at Golgotha, before Pilate, and ultimately in his own death. That there is a divine presence and a spiritual strength that can fill us so that in all things we can find our peace.

Paul Michael was a young physician in Nashville who was suffering fatigue and lack of appetite, when he finally went himself to see a doctor, probably a regular affliction of the vocation.[2] After a CT scan, his colleague came into his room, tried to give a diagnosis with a straight face, but broke down in tears as he told him that he had advanced pancreatic cancer, a terminal disease with only a short life prognosis.

He went home and told his wife. "Her response and pain shall remain private." But shortly after that he "became frenetic in making arrangements for [his] practice, [his] teaching responsibilities, and financial responsibilities." In remarkably short order he had a paradigm shift, focusing on his family and their well-being without being overwhelmed with the horror of the situation personally.

The most difficult thing for him was telling his 18 year old son and his 16 year old daughter. When he started to practice his speech, he broke down and cried like a baby for an hour, realizing that the thing that was most difficult for him was missing the flowering of his children's lives.

Indeed, even after he got himself composed, it was a very difficult conversation as his children became understandably hysterical. "But as the hysteria died down, another merciful paradigm shift occurred: [They] all put [their] arms around each other and promised to make each day count and to be open and honest about everything."

Pretty quickly his children changed in substantial ways. They made different plans for their immediate futures in order to be closer to their mother in the next period of time. They assumed much more responsibility.

He said that one night he was having a conversation with his son, a senior. Surely, he had, as we all have, many conversations with our teenage sons that are painfully immature. This night his son was weeping with fear. He said, "Dad, I always looked forward to those things that you enjoy with your father-graduating from college, marriage, you playing with your grandchildren." Then he stopped, shifted gears, and said "Dad, are you afraid?" It is funny and profound, the way that our boys can sometimes become men in an instant like that.

Dr. Michael said, "No, son, I am not afraid of dying. I am afraid of not living. I, to, will miss all those milestones you just mentioned. That is the only thing I fear."

He couldn't control, ultimately, his living and dying. But he decided to do what he could control. And over the next weeks that he lived, he wrote a series of letter to his children that he deposited in a safe deposit box that were to be opened on certain occasions: upon his death, upon their graduation, upon their marriage, upon the birth of children. What a generous and spiritually productive thing to do.

Interestingly, he reported that those days were concentrated with life- with sadness unto despair but also with a euphoria that comes from purposed filled spiritual living with blessing, grace, faith, and hope.

It is not all that unusual to hear patients simultaneously express anger and sadness over the fact that something beyond their control is happening to them and, at the same time, a profound gratitude for the rich concentration of live that pervades their very being. One patient said this, "Since I've gotten cancer, it's shown me things- the important things that people don't realize until their 65. I'm going through so much, the pain of it but I'm also getting the good things, all these important lessons. I don't want to forget them quickly because the way I think life works, it keeps giving you lessons over and over until you learn them, until you remember them…"[3]

It is a complex, concentrated process, so it is difficult for people going through it to answer the well meaning, but over earnest question, 'hoooowww arrrreeee youuuu?' as we used to say in the South. It is an off-putting question because answering it authentically would take too much time and require too much reflection but begging off politely with a generic genteel response like, "I'm fine" seems so shallow and pointless. But 99.5% of the time that is how people respond.

We are understanding more broadly how important it is to give people a sense of control in the midst of chaos. I read about a hospital in Melbourne Australia that gets it. They had a woman who was to undergo stem cell transplantation. That required her to be isolated for a month and if you develop complications from the procedure, you can become sick up to the point of death. So before she began the treatment, she brought some personal furnishing to her room, decorated it, even put some flowering plants outside the window, and made generous use aromatherapy oils. She was exercising control over the part of her health regimin that she could control. When someone asked her about it she said that she was transforming sterility into a sacred space. She is right. Don't discount the importance of these seemingly trivial matters viewed from a distance. They are actually far more spiritually productive than the learned helplessness that we unwittingly encouraged in patients a generation ago with all our rules in hospitals that made us defer to the experts and return to a juvenile stage of our dependence in those ridiculous dignity defying little gowns with the slits up the back and the cold steel tables. We are better now.

And we can get better in the Church as well. Last summer I stood in one a receiving line with my brother after his wife died and heard all of the well meaning exchanges of support that ended up with far less effect than the sender intended for them to have. Over and over people said something like "Call if you need anything… really". But you can't do that or you won't and people genuinely want to help. And we can do it in a way that helps out and let's them keep a modicum of control in the midst of the chaos of their lives.

About 15 years ago, Wendy Bergen died from a long battle with cancer, leaving behind three small children. But before she did she left a few practical guides on how you can be effective in helping people going through a major illness or a major crisis in their life. It preserves their sense of choice and respectful control:

1. Cook a dinner for my family, but offer a choice of two courses (every generation has it's version of 'tuna caserole' from my youth and three nights of it in a row…) and bring it in disposable containers so I don't have to remember who to return them to.

2. Make homemade cookies or brownies and bring them frozen or well sealed so I can have the delight of sending off fresh treats with my kids to school.

3. Call before you visit, but drop by for short visits (10-20 minutes) when you can.

4. Ask me who you know that I might like to see and bring them by. Often I am too shy to approach a friend on my own.

5. Offer to run two meaningless errands a week for our family. If I have to call you, I probably won't; but if you call and say 'I'm going to the store, can I get you anything?' or 'I'm headed to the movies, can I take your kids?' I'll probably say 'yes'.

6. Allow me occasionally to feel sad or prepare for the worst. Everyone wants to be encouraging but sometimes having a good cry lets the tension out.

7. Tell me a joke. I need to laugh.

8. Touch me. The isolation of being invalid makes the power of love sweeter.

9. Say the word cancer around me and talk about the real life you are living. This helps me feel less like and untouchable and like I am still involved in the world of normal things.

10. Remind me of the abundant life and the promises our faith holds out to us all. It is easy to overlook these things.

11. Tell me how great I look considering what I am going through. I still need to feel honestly attractive.

12. I probably don't need as much medical advice or stories about your relatives as you need to give; but I could use help with specific research on topics that I tell you about. It takes a lot of time to do.[4]

13. And this last one is from me. Don't be afraid to pray for people, especially people that you really know well. Keep it short, let there just be silence, maybe say the Lord's Prayer together, but there is a great power when it is natural and right.

St. Paul once said that we are to bear one another's burdens, but he didn't give us much practical information on how that should be done. Just like an academic preacher to stay in the realm of ideas. We're getting better at understanding the emotional dynamics and that wisdom is helping us become more humane every generation. You are the force of hope concretely as the Spirit moves through you to others.

In a world in which we must regularly cry out 'The center does not hold', we can find a way to help our loved ones, our friends, our neighbors keep a modicum of control, a sense of dignity, and purpose to overcome. That is healing. Amen.

[1] My thanks for this section to the short piece by Isla Carboon "Control in the Uncontrollable -- The Case of Cancer" that was found at www.meaning.ca/newsletter04/self-control_june04.htm (link now gone). Shelley Taylor's Book is "Social Cognitions, Positive Illusions"

[2] This came from an article written by Dr. Michael in The Tennessean in 1996 entitled "A Time of Dying" for the regular column Healing Words p. C2. I only have a Xerox copy and am missing certain information.

[3] Op cit. from one of Isla Carboon's patients.

[4] This came from Lois Cappeta Bhatt, the Director for Bridges our outreach program. She wrote a nice volume "I'm Sorry You Have to Be Here A Mother's Story of Cancer, Family, and Survival" (Madison: PinkInk, 2001), pp. 226ff.