A tremendous insight on grief: Share it with someone you care about…

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart. Don’t scratch for answers that cannot be given now. The point is to try to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then, someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.  – Rainer Maria Rilke

By Rabbi Akiva Feinstein and Charles W. Sidoti

When life turns difficult, a common way of trying to get around the pain is to try to think our way out of the situation. The problem with this is that it assumes the process of effectively dealing with emotional upset and spiritual challenges is linear, sort of like a Betty Crocker recipe, in that one step necessarily follows another in order to get the desired outcome.

The truth is that the process of inner healing is inherently non-linear and is often contradictory. When things do get better and our inner struggle eases for awhile, we often don’t know how or why we feel better; we just do. Have you ever gone to sleep with a problem on your mind and awakened not troubled by it anymore? As the saying goes, “What a difference a day makes!” Nothing about your problem changed; you just went to sleep.

Our mood and therefore our perspective change constantly, and that has much to do with the way we process the problems that come our way. Sometimes we wake up feeling great and ready to face the day’s challenges. On these days, problems that come up don’t bother us too much. We process them easily because we approach them from a positive perspective and keep moving along. The very next day (or even hour), we may feel totally different. The world seems to be spinning in the wrong direction and it seems that everyone is working against us. In addition to affecting the way we handle the daily problems that arise, our moods and our perspective affect the way we handle the big problems in our lives. This is especially true regarding the way we process grief, the pain involved in losing someone or something very important to us.

The Jewish tradition, which is full of wisdom gained by facing pain and suffering head-on, says a great deal about mourning, and how to understand the life path and grief process of the mourner. Mourners often suffer deep anguish and trauma. Helping them to recover, according to Jewish tradition, requires the implementation of customs and practices that can seem contradictory.

Yet these work well in helping mourners deal with their own contradictory feelings. For example, individual mourners can feel the need both to be alone and to be surrounded by people and love; the need for silence, and the need to be able to tell their story; the need to give and the need to receive. They can experience waves of denial and waves of acceptance.

It’s contradictory, yes, but it all can be a very real and necessary part of the healing process and the nature of mourning. It is very wise counsel to advise a mourner thus: “Let these contradictory feelings be, feel what you feel. Live with the contradiction and don’t fight it, for it will eventually evolve into something else.”

It is very difficult to put this advice into practice, for in our rational, modern society, we find these contradictory truths difficult to accept. The fact is that the suggestion to learn to live with contradiction is not just some remnant of a confused, out-dated psychological model. Rather, it’s a keen insight into the human condition itself and is a testimony to the power and efficiency of contradiction.

For example, human relationships are uniquely able to stay intact despite competing feelings of pure love and absolute frustration. There are rules to human emotion and pain, but the hope and the salvation lie in the fact that for much of it, there are no rules. It is what it is. You can be sad and happy at the same time. You can harbor a lot of pain, but still move on. You can cherish a memory of a lost dream and still pursue a brand new one.

Quantum physics, which helps us to at least begin to understand the universe, is based upon one of the most poorly understood contradictions known, yet it works and does its job just fine. Quantum physics teaches that it can be scientifically proved that light travels in waves (up and down) but it can also be proved that light moves as physical particles. A person with knowledge of quantum physics understands these principles to be mutually exclusive, yet the whole science of quantum physics is based on both of them being true.

If we cannot answer life’s questions, we should not go into despair. Many a Jewish grandfather would tell his children, “From an unanswered question, you don’t die.” Living with the questions makes life more exciting. A life lived looking for something that has not been found yet is a whole lot more interesting. Consciously deciding to live the questions is a way of responding with trust to life and its inherent challenges.

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This article is an excerpt from “Living at God’s Speed, Healing in God’s Time” written by Charles W. Sidoti with Rabbi Akiva Feinstein

Visit my Blog: Finding God in Daily Life https://sidoticharles.wordpress.com/

My “Open to Hope Radio”​ Interview

I was invited to do a radio interview with the “Open to Hope Foundation” on January 30, 2017. It was just recently posted to their foundation website.

The interview is titled, “Simple Contemplative Spirituality,” It is about how our personal way of understanding (our image of) God can influence our level of openness to receive the inner healing we desire. It asks us to consider the question: “Am I able to see what has happened as a part of my life journey, with the realization that there is more to come?  The message I hope to convey in the interview is that as we learn to turn into life, and resist, as best we can, the temptation to turn in on ourselves, we discover that the healing we seek is growing from the very ground upon which we stand – from God’s living presence in our lives.”

The following link is to the Open to Hope radio interview:  http://www.opentohope.com/charles-sidoti-topic-simple-contemplative-spirituality/

I invite you to listen to it and share your further thoughts and reflections. I hope you like it!

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Family Meeting Resolves Son’s Moral Dilemma

Reprinted from Vision – The professional publication of the National Association of Catholic Chaplains. The March / April edition is dedicated to “Moral Distress” in healthcare:  http://www.nacc.org/vision/2016-mar-apr/

If we could not agree on a medically appropriate plan of care, the result could be moral distress involving the medical staff.

By Charles W. Sidoti

I recently participated in a goals-of-care family meeting regarding a 73-year-old female patient in the ICU. The patient’s son had been told that his mother had a poor prognosis for any meaningful recovery from her coma due to anoxic brain injury, without evidence for improvement. The patient also suffered from other serious and advanced co morbidities. One option would include the removal of artificial life support in favor of a comfort-focused plan of care. The other option would require a tracheostomy to continue artificial life support on a breathing machine and a tube for nutrition.

The palliative care physician, who would be leading the family meeting, felt that my presence might be helpful, because for religious reasons, the patient’s son considered that removing life supports was equivalent to causing the patient’s death. However, a tracheostomy and placement in a long-term care facility for artificial life support to continue was something that the son knew that the patient “would never want.”

The patient’s son was experiencing moral dilemma between making a decision that he knew his mother would not want (continuing artificial life support) versus his religious beliefs. His understanding was that by agreeing to remove artificial support, he would be “killing my mother.”

This type of moral dilemma is not the same as moral distress, but its implications reached beyond the patient and her family. If we could not agree on a medically appropriate plan of care, the result could be moral distress involving the medical staff. When a comfort-focused plan of care is indicated for a patient approaching the end of life, but the legal decision-makers insist on aggressive curative treatment that only prolongs the suffering of the patient, the medical staff must perform treatments and procedures that have little or no chance of achieving their intended benefit. Moral distress contributes to nurses and other medical professionals feeling a loss of integrity, and often causes nurses to leave the work setting and profession. And conferences such as the one I had been called to often end badly, from the staff’s point of view.

I arrived a few minutes early and noticed the son was in the patient’s room. I introduced myself as the hospital chaplain, and he warmly welcomed me. He was holding a Bible in his hand. The son shared with me that his mother had been a very prayerful woman her whole life and a minister in her church. He also said he was a minister in his Pentecostal church. Shortly afterward, the palliative medicine doctor arrived and the three of us went to the conference room.

My impression of the patient’s son, who appeared to be in his late 40s or early 50s, was that of a sincerely religious and friendly person. I perceived that he had strong religious convictions, but I did not sense that he was going into the family meeting with his guard up.

I suggested that we begin with a prayer. The patient’s son responded, “Yes! Let’s begin with a prayer. I think this is great.” We all joined hands and I led a Christian prayer asking for God’s guidance and wisdom in our discussion and blessing upon the patient and her family.

The physician then very compassionately began to review the patient’s current neurological and medical status, as well as estimating her prognosis for meaningful recovery and survival. The son was not surprised to learn that it was extremely unlikely for his mother to regain any significant neurologic function. He spoke about his religious beliefs for several minutes, concluding with his belief that if he agreed to discontinue artificial life support, “I will be killing my mother. I can’t do that. I believe that we have to do everything.”

I asked, “Did you and your mother ever discuss what she would want if she was ever in this type of condition?” He replied, “Yes, I did, we have talked about it. She said that she would never want to be kept alive by machines. But I can’t kill her. I wish she would just die in her sleep and there would be no decision to make. Oh (laughing nervously) I don’t mean that … can I say that? And if someone else were to make the decision to kill her, I would not want to know about it.”

I gently interrupted, saying, “You need to unburden yourself. You need to understand that in choosing to withdraw artificial life support, no one is killing your mother — not you, and not the medical staff. That would be called euthanasia. It is illegal in this state, and it has nothing to do with the decision you are being asked to make. Death is a natural part of life, and everyone is going to die at some time. Today we have wonderful life-saving technology, but it is important to understand that we have a responsibility to use it wisely, for situations where there is a reasonable hope of meaningful recovery — and also with humility, acknowledging that we are not God. The decision to be made today is whether to artificially extend the dying process, or to acknowledge that the dying process, already taking place with your mother, is irreversible, that it is a part of life, and choose to let it be.”

I asked him what he thought his mother would want if she could choose for herself. He replied, “She would want us to let it be. She would never want this.” We all laughed because we realized that we had quoted the Beatles song “Let It Be.”

The son asked what would be involved in removing artificial life support. The physician explained in detail the compassionate weaning process, explaining how the patient’s comfort becomes the primary focus of care. The patient’s son asked if the removal of life support could take place on Sunday at noon, to allow for family and church members to be present. The physician agreed.

It was clear that the meeting was over, and the physician suggested that we conclude with a prayer. The patient’s son offered to lead the prayer. We all joined hands and the son gave thanks for the life of his mother and for the medical staff. After the patient’s son had left, the physician asked me to stay in the room to debrief.

The physician and I looked at each other and said, “What just happened?” After a goals-of-care meeting when the patient is clearly approaching the end of life, it is not unusual that a surrogate decision maker chooses a comfort-focused plan of care. We both acknowledged, however, that it is unusual that a surrogate decision maker who cites religious beliefs would change his mind in favor of allowing the natural process of death to occur.

While the physician and I did a very good job in the meeting, I did not say anything that I do not ordinarily say to patients and families in this type of situation. I attribute the son’s change of heart to a quality of openness that helped him to evolve in his thinking with regard to his religious beliefs and EOL options.

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My Two books that transcend religious barriers and make “being spiritual” very “do-able!”

1) “Living at God’s Speed, Healing in God’s Time” with contributing author – Rabbi Akiva Feinstein: https://www.amazon.com/Living-Gods-Speed-Healing-Time/dp/158595831X?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

2) “Simple Contemplve Spirituality” http://amordeus.com/giftShopProducts.aspx?cat=148