Spirit in Action
And God Created Hope - Grief and Recovery
I have no hands but yours to tend my sheep No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep I have no arms but yours with which to hold The ones grown weary from the struggle and weak from growing old I have no hands but yours with which to see To let my children know that I am up and up is everything I have no way to feed the hungry souls No clothes to give and make, give the ragged and the morn So be my heart, my hand, my tongue Through you I will be done The fingers have I none to help undone The tangled nuts and twisted chains that strangle fearful minds Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmead. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action and progressive efforts I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all, I'll seek out light, love and helping hands Being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life I have no way to open people's eyes It's clear that you will show them how to trust the inner mind I'm pleased to have us my guest today on Spirit in Action, Rabbi Mel Glaser Mel is author of a new book and God created hope, finding your way through grief with lessons from early biblical stories which helps people do the work that heals grief and leads to a resolution Mel has been a Rabbi for 33 years, doing his work in many forms, including four years, some time ago, when he was the Christmas Rabbi in Nashville, Tennessee He speaks of grief and healing experientially, as well as out of his training with the grief recovery institute, and he also draws liberally from the religious well in which he's been raised, Judaism Mel, welcome to Spirit in Action, how are you doing today? I'm doing great, Mark, thanks very much And the weather over there? The weather is a little bit rainy, but I'm sunny Okay, Mel, you've been a Rabbi for how many years now? This will be my 33rd year 33rd year, have you considered a new career along the way? I mean, you've done radio at least, I know I've done radio, I love being a Rabbi, now there are different ways to be a Rabbi, you know, I've been a Rabbi for 33 years in congregations I've also been a Rabbi at summer camp, teaching kids, when I go on the radio and do talk shows, which I've done, I'm also a Rabbi What kind of talk shows have you done? When I was in Nashville, Tennessee, I substituted on Christmas Day, four years when I was there a long time ago, so that the DJ could go to church And so I was called a radio Rabbi wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas, I had a wonderful time That wasn't at all uncomfortable for you, it's a little bit like maybe, I don't know, it's reaching across religion a lot, and doing that, it wasn't uncomfortable No, it wasn't uncomfortable for me and apparently it wasn't uncomfortable for my listeners, because they called in all day to tell me how wonderful they thought it was That a Rabbi was doing Christmas music on country western, two of my favorite kinds of music For me, it was again, it was a different way of being a Rabbi, my congregation was expanded on that day I was doing a good thing, because the regular DJ could go to church, actually, don't tell anybody, he stayed home and slept all day Christmas day I'll tell you the only problem I had was when I did the news, I read the news and the weather and the sports and the public service announcements The only problem I had was when I read news stories from Bethlehem in Israel, and the headline from, I think, UPA or AP was Bethlehem Israel occupied West Bank, that was the only problem I had, because I don't believe that it's occupied, I believe that it belongs to the state of Israel, God gave it to us, but never mind, I read it like I was supposed to, I was a good announcer and a good talk show host What do you see your work as being as a Rabbi? What is your work that you're called to do when you're a Rabbi, in your particular case, of being a Rabbi? I try to make connections between us and God, and I think, in a nutshell, that's really it That is, I believe that we are all created in God's image, some of us know it less, and my job by my teaching, by my role modeling by everything that I do is to create and strengthen the connection that we have with God and to understand that we're all created in God's image, no matter what our religion, those who have religion, those who don't have religion no matter what our color, no matter what our anything, each of us is created in God's image, and so my rabbinate is devoted to the notion that we have to understand that about everyone else The Torah never says you have to love everybody, it says you have to respect It does say you have to love the stranger, it does say you have to love God, it does say you have to love yourself, love your neighbors, you love yourself And so that's what I try to do, I try to encourage people to reach out and understand who they are and what God wants from them I think there are a lot of people who don't realize that love your neighbor as yourself is actually from Jewish scripture A lot of people think it's only Jesus said it, but actually the scriptural place where Jesus says that, he's actually asking a Jew, what does the law teach? Where do you find it in Scripture? Well it's from the Book of Leviticus, the interesting thing about that is that there's two commandments there, one is love thy neighbor and the other is love thyself And I find that if you don't love yourself it is impossible to love your neighbor, you can't do it because you have nothing to base that love on If you don't love and respect yourself and understand that you are entitled to joy and happiness and hope and justice and love Then there's no way that you can transfer that love, you have nothing to transfer to anyone else Well maybe that's a good way to segue over to the work that you are particularly called to do that you've done a lot of and that you've just published a book on Now can you tell me about your recent book and the work that you've been doing behind that led up to that book? Sure, I have a book that's being published at the end of December, it is called "And God Created Hope, Finding Your Way Through Grief with Lessons From Early Biblical Stories" And what I try to do in that book is to take Bible stories that we all know and love, Bible stories of loss and death and relate them and translate them into our own lives, into our own stories Understand that we are on a journey, those of us who are grieving and mourning and we are on a journey to the promised land and we can reach that journey And that God gave us hope and so that's my message for the world that God gave us hope, everything will be alright if you do the actions that you need to do Is this a journey that you've gone through personally or is it something that you've just gone through vicariously with the people that you've counseled? My daddy died two days before I turned 12 years old, that's when this book started, although who knew at the time, I didn't know What I knew is that nobody told us how sick he was, me and my two siblings, my younger sister and brother No one told us how sick daddy was, no one told us what he died from, we were not allowed to go to the funeral even because they thought they were protecting us from pain My mother, may she rest in peace, never talked about daddy after he died, none of my relatives did and so we had nothing, we had no way to mourn And I guess this book is really my chance to make sure that this never happens for anybody else, I couldn't say the word daddy for 30 years after he died So I'm saying again, you know, when he died, that was the beginning of this book Is there a biblical story that particularly helped you on that path? Well, there's wonderful stories, but one in particular when the high priest Aaron was supposed to be inaugurated and installed in that position His sons participated in that ceremony, and they were so carried away, and we don't really know what happened, but they offered up sacrifices to God That we're not asked for, God didn't command them, and so God was so upset that he killed them that day And Aaron never talks about his sons ever again, and I thought, well, I know that, that's my story You know, my mother never talked about daddy ever again, my relatives never talked about him again And again, it took me 30 years before I began to heal So that really, that shock and anger, the first notion is shocked, the first feeling you get when someone dies is shocked, even if they've been in the hospital for a week or month Even if they have Alzheimer's, still when they die, you're in shock, and then quickly turns to anger, you become angry at everyone, anyone and everyone So I like that story, because it really says a lot about who I am and what I went through I guess I maybe should seek some counseling from you It was 43 years ago, this past week, that my mother died when I was 9 And I just had an exchange of emails with my brothers and sisters, cousins, about that, and some of the places, the holes and the pain and the anger left in our lives about that So I think there's probably a lot of people out there in the world doing this kind of work I detareable, broken heart I detareable, broken heart I detareable, broken heart I detareable, broken heart You were born on the day, my mother was buried My grief, my grief, my grief You were born on the day, my mother was buried My grief, my grief, my grief As you probably recognize that was Shenandoah Connor, and the name of the song is Tiny Grief Song I'm Mark Helpsmeet, and my guest today on Spirit in Action is Rabbi Mel Glaser, whose new book is, and God created hope Finding your way through grief with lessons from early biblical stories Mel, do you do this counseling this work with grief? Do you do it just with people from your congregation, or do you do it in a wider setting as well? Well, grief doesn't have a religion, grief just is, loss is loss And so I have some clients who are some are Jewish, some are not Jewish, some are members of my congregation, most are not People call me, they go to my website and they look me up and they call me and we have a relationship and I try to help them heal themselves That's what I do, that's another piece of my being a rabbi helping people heal themselves Because for me you see, if I help you heal, I'm helping myself heal as well I have a good friend Rabbi Jack Reamer who's in Florida, and he says when he preaches, he preaches to himself because he needs to hear what the rabbi has to say And if anybody else is interested, that's great So this book is really for me, it's really about my journey and helps me heal at the same time And I find that healing is not limited by anyone's particular brand of religion Some of the stories, I guess, are not common amongst the different traditions I guess if you're speaking to a Hindu or maybe a Muslim, maybe the stories aren't so much in common Do you have that, you know, when you tell this story, when you try and help people know that they're in the community of people who've dealt with grieving Do you have it that they don't get the story, it doesn't convey Well, some of God's children say like Hindus and Buddhists don't study the same stories that I write about from the beginning of the Bible And yet the principles are exactly the same When someone dies, it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what you studied as a kid in whatever school you went to Whatever religious training you got, you know, you have these feelings and these feelings are all alike I've been in conversation with some Muslims and in addition to having some real similarities in how we prepare bodies before the funeral We talk a lot about these feelings that we have and the path that we take And I find that there's great similarity between Jews and Muslims in terms of how we deal with death and dying Do you do this grief counseling? Do you do it as licensed psychotherapist type counselor, or do you only just do it on the side? Do you just do it as your lead? Many years ago I was trained by some people in Los Angeles called the Grief Recovery Institute They are my grief rabbis as I like to call them They've written some books about grief and I spent a week or two with them and then subsequently have studied with them over the years And they certified me as a grief specialist, it's a grief recovery specialist I have a Doctor of Ministry degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and my thesis was about how Jews deal with death and mourning How we prepare bodies for burial And so I have lots and lots of education in this area I've studied a lot, I've been at conventions, I've spoken at conventions and conferences I'm going to be at Duke University in May for a conference on the end of life Talking about what we do as Jews and there'll be ministers there as well as rabbis and imams And talking about the end of life and how all of us respond to that So I'm not a licensed psychotherapist, but between my 33 years in a rabbinate I've been dealing with people who have sustained losses of all kinds Not just deaths, but all kinds of losses And my educational training, I feel like I'm qualified And other people do because they keep coming to me Is this the kind of work that we should be doing with one another also? I mean, there's a tendency in, I guess, the last 100 years Everybody's a specialist, so you have your marriage counseling done with your specialist as opposed to With your friends and neighbors and your rabbi I mean, I think there's been a move away from it Being broad-based to being specialty-based Is this the kind of work that if we read your book We're going to be able to do it better with our friends and neighbors? You're going to be able to do it better, but I would hesitate to sort of ordain everybody to do this kind of work And I'll tell you why The world that we live in does not help us deal with loss The world that we live in trains us and encourages us to acquire, to buy, to get more, to have more But it doesn't train us how to lose anything So, when Papa dies, when brother divorces, when his sister gets fired from her job, when your pet dies You know, we are willfully unprepared to deal with that because we get what I call false messages About how to do that, and I'll give you some examples The first message that our society says somebody dies, they say to you, don't feel bad Either he was older, he's better off, now he's not in pain You know, well, you have to feel bad, you do feel bad You can't feel good until you feel bad, and so to shut that feeling down is not a good thing For example, the levels of divorce are unfortunately rising And so we hear all the time when there's a breakup or a divorce, people will say, well, you know, she was never good enough for you anyway Or he was not a good person, you're better off without him Those kinds of things say, don't feel bad, don't help us The second thing that people in our society say is, well, we'll get you another one You know, when you lose your first boyfriend or girlfriend, you come home to your parents, and you're crying, and you're in tears, and you're devastated And they'll say, don't worry, there are more fish in the sea You don't have another fish, you want the fish, you just lost Or people will say, stop crying, don't cry, suck it up and just deal with it Well if you don't cry, it means you can't show your emotions, and our society doesn't really like us to show emotions, but we have to show emotions Some people say, well, you know, just give it time, and everything will be okay, and you'll feel much better That's like saying, if you fall down the stairs and break your arm, just give it time, you don't have to do anything about it, just wait, and time will heal your arm We know that's impossible, but our heart is like the arm It needs care, and so when it's broken, when the heart's broken, we gotta do something about it The next thing the people say is, you gotta be strong, and I remember the day my daddy died And we were staying with some relatives, me and my siblings, and we went home, and all family was there, and we didn't know he died And mama took us in the living room, and she put her arms around us, and she said, daddy died And her oldest brother, Uncle Jack, I'll never forget this He put his arm around me, he says, Melvin, you have to be the man of the house now You have to be strong for everyone Well, I was 12 years old, what did I know? I didn't know anything, I didn't want to be the man of the house The final thing that society teaches us is, keep busy, don't think about it Just keep busy Well, we know that doesn't work because I know people whose parents died 40 years ago who come to me because they're still mourning And they just can't deal with life, and they're unhappy, and they're thinking suicide, and emotionally they're drained, and they don't know what to do So, I find that what society teaches us is false, doesn't help us So, I would encourage, I mean, read my book because it gives a lot of help The Bible gives a lot of help, actually, and will all be better qualified But I would hesitate to have everyone go into the grief business before they're trained and before they're really ready Wait, hold on just a little It will all turn out all right I've been, I've been thinking I've been wake all through the night You say I say we can't take it It's got to be an end to all this pain Maybe we're gonna have to hit rock bottom Before we can rise rise up again Wait, hold on just a little It will all turn out all right I've been, I've been thinking I've been, I've been wake all through the night Nothing, nothing simple We always seem to think that it can be Take all the wars, the anger, and the fear It all just comes down 'til we will be Come on now, I've been wondering Just what it is about these times Remember when the snow drifted six upon the fields The cold days were never unkind Wait, hold on just a little I'm counting on it, turning out all right I've been, I've been thinking I've been wake all through the night That bittersweet song was by Cindy Kallet It's called Hang In There You're listening to Spirit and Action I'm Mark Helpsmeet and my guest today is Rabbi Mel Glaser Mel has been a rabbi for 33 years Doing his rabbinical work in many ways Including in grief counseling And his recent book is "And God Created Hope Finding Your Way Through Grief With Lessons From Early Biblical Stories" Mel, you kind of painted two different alternatives One of which is kind of wallow in the feelings That's how some people might phrase it Versus "Keep Busy, Move On" You said we need to experience the feelings And a lot of people have the fear that if you experience them You'll stay locked in them, you'll wallow in them, they'll go on Everywhere and you won't ever move on You'll spend 30 years locked in those feelings What's the more appropriate response And what actually happens when you face the feelings? Listen, when someone dies Your old life, your old normal has come to an end And it's now time to create a new normal And the new normal is scary, we're all afraid We don't know what to do, we don't know what the new normal is going to look like We know what the old normal looks like, but we don't know what the new ones going to look like And we're afraid to leave So we're just like the Israelites who when they left Egypt, they wandered in the desert And the only way they could get to the promised land was to wander They had to do it for 40 years, in their case they're wandering led to healing In my case, my wandering led to healing Now when we wander, we wander in two directions at the same time We wander backward and we wander forward What that means is, we want to go back to the past We want things to be just like they were Because we felt comfortable, we felt safe, knowing what the reality was So we want to wander backward At the same time, there's this life force within us That propels us to wander forward We do want to create a new normal We do have hope, the problem is that the fear keeps us wandering backward We want to recreate the past Well, the Israelites in Egypt, you know, God said that the old generation has to die off The slaves need to die, they're not going to be the ones who are going to inherit the land of Canaan We have to have free Israelites who inherit, they're going to be new, they never knew slavery So my theory is that when we want to wander forward more than we want to wander backward, healing has begun Are there appropriate prayers when you're in that morning period? I mean, I think in Jewish practice, you pray cottage for people who've died What kind of prayer can authentically come out of a person who's in that wandering phase? You know, while we're wandering, as you say, we recite the cottage prayer Which is a hymn of praise to God, never mentions death But we recite this for 11 months after a parent dies And my advice to my congregants and to anyone else Let the words of the cottage be sort of a mantra to you So that as you're reciting the words of the cottage, they take you away from where you are They take you inwardly to another place And what I suggest is that they vision in their minds eye their parent Or whoever was that died And they just sort of try to focus on an incident that happened, a relationship piece of their lives And what I suggest is that they either forgive the person who died for creating pain by what they said or didn't say Or express a feeling of gratitude for something that happened during our relationship We use the phrase "May they rest in peace" But you and I know the truth, and that is that when somebody dies If you have not completed your relationship with them, they can't rest in peace Because the relationship is still the old relationship You haven't really completed it and concluded it When you complete your relationship and you take care of all the personal business that you have Then they can rest in peace because your relationship is at peace So I suggest that the words of the prayer be a mantra to allow them to do this So it doesn't really matter what the words are, you know I love the Lord's Prayer, I grew up in Atlanta and every morning We had prayer in our public schools and we ended every single session We had a little learning, a little piece of Bible from the Oldton New Testament And we concluded every morning with the Lord's Prayer And it could be the same as the cottage So if you want to recite the Lord's Prayer, you close your eyes You bring visions of your relatives who have died into your heart And you do the work that you need to do So the words themselves are really less important, I think, than what kind of process we engage in And while we are praying those words Even though the specific words are maybe not the point I wouldn't mind hearing what they come out to in English I assume they start with baru kataad anai Or something like that, very close The kaddish actually is not like that The kaddish begins with the words yit kaddal, viit kaddash Shemera ba magnified and sanctified be the name of God In this world that God has created, we ask God for peace We ask God for hope, we ask God for justice And there are three paragraphs And at the end, we conclude with the phrase o se shalom bimromov May God, who created the world, hu yas se shalom allenum May God bless us all with peace The alkolius dryel, and upon all the nation of Israel The alkolius reite veil, and upon all the inhabitants of the world And we say amen Did you go through that process of praying kaddish, I'd assume when your father died? No, I did not. I did it for my mother when she died 30 years ago But I did not do it for my father, because I mean I said the kaddish I recited the kaddish because I knew that's what you were supposed to do I had no idea of the healing power of the kaddish No idea When my mother died, I had much more of an idea And it worked for me, because at the end of 11 months, we were at peace So I can talk about her with love without feeling any of the negative aspects Every relationship has its ups and downs There's no relationship that is all good, and no relationship that is all bad As a footnote, when we attend funerals, we hear ministers and rabbis pretending that The one who died has been a saint his or her whole life Well, those of us who know the people who died, know that's not true It's not, it's just not true Life isn't like that So when my mom died, our relationship wasn't that great But now it's fine, because I can speak to her I can speak to her, you know, I envision her and my father before I go to bed I say goodbye to them, I tell them, I thank them, I apologize to them I keep doing that, because it's important to me That's the way it is when somebody dies I did it for my mother, and I meant it the right way for my father, I just said the words That's the difference So you really prayed kaddish for your mother, but for your father, you said kaddish Correct, it's a good way of looking at it Way back in the beginning of our talk, you mentioned that we're all created in the image of God What does that mean to you? What does that mean in Jewish practice? Listen, in the Garden of Eden, there were just Adam and Eve There was not Adam and Eve the Jews, or Adam and Eve the Muslims, or Adam and Eve the Catholics, or Adam and Eve the Buddhists There was just Adam and Eve, and the Garden of Eden is the story of the perfect world It's a story about how the world ought to be Every time I read the story of the Garden of Eden, as we do at least once a year when we read the story from the Torah I remind myself that no matter what you believe, you're still created in God's image I mean, I have members of my congregation that I never see during the year They don't pray publicly, they may pray in their homes, although I doubt it, but it's the same with ministers And, you know, other priests as well We all have people who either join our institutions or don't join our institutions Participate or don't participate, they're all created in God's image It doesn't matter to me, I like to say I am not God's kosher cop with a K and a K I don't have to deal with those situations, I mean, I reach out and love to everybody because God created them I didn't create them, God created them, and so my mission is to bring them close to me and to God and to each other And if they don't believe in God, okay, they don't believe in God That's like saying, I don't believe in motherhood Well, it doesn't matter to your mother, whether you believe in motherhood or not, of course she gave birth to you So, people who say I don't believe in God, so it doesn't matter to God, God created us in His image I believe in God, and so I obligate myself to reach out because that's what God commands me to do I'm still groping here for what the essential part of image is Because God created us, God also created cockroaches The question is, what is that essential part that is so worthy of our care and love? What is that part that is in God's image? I can tell you what I think the difference between man and animals is And maybe that'll help We have the ability to self-reflect We have the ability to think about our own death That's an ability that I don't think goldfish have They worry about food, they worry about fear, because all God's creatures do, but they don't worry about their own death That's for me an essential difference, and that's what it means to be created in God's image You have the gift from God of being able to reflect on your own death And that reflection, hopefully, should give meaning to your life If you don't care about your death, then you're not going to care about your life Does that help? Yeah, that is good Okay How do you get this across to the people that you counsel, that you work with on grief? Can you give me some examples of people who've heard the stories, and it led them out of the wilderness Or you got them going on the path through the wilderness? I have lots of people who mourn the death of their parents, say, or their spouse, or even God forbid their kids And when someone died, the first thing after shock, you get angry at God, you get angry at the doctors You even get angry at the ones who died, but that's a deep, dark, dirty secret that we don't like to talk about So you get angry, and then you feel like it's normal to feel that you are less of a person because they died That you were valuable only because you were part of this relationship I know lots of elderly men and women, and not so elderly men and women who don't know what to do when their spouse dies They just don't know what to do, for example I got very close with a man who died a month ago, a month or half ago at the age of 90 He's a past president of the congregation, and he was a real supporter, he was a beloved man in the community He died, and his wife now is a drift, she doesn't know what she can do with herself He paid the bills, he took care of all the insurance policies, he took care of all the bank issues He took care of all the investments, he did all that stuff, he took care of the money, she has no clue So she's getting help from her kids, from their kids, but now she's a drift, what is she gonna do, and she is 86 years old Can she stay in this big house by herself, I don't think so She's beginning to say, you know, I'm ready to die because without him I'm nothing My job is to help her understand that she's grieving, and she has hope for a future There is hope for her, she has a future, that she's wandering, that she is created by God, in God's image, and she is worth something Alone, not just as a married woman That's an example of how I try to apply the notion of being created by God's image, and wandering, for example, in particular that come to me You mentioned earlier Mel, the struggle that goes on in our society with move on, don't experience your feelings, all that kind of thing Something I've observed about our society is that we have this great fear of death Death used to be next to us when grandpa died, he died in our house and we saw it That is to say, it wasn't an aesthetic thing, they got, you know, covered up, put makeup up, we could just deny it We saw death firsthand, and now I find that our denial of death and our fear of it has assumed almost epic proportions Is that the kind of thing you're seeing too, with people? Absolutely, you're right, it used to be a normal, understood as a normal part of life The book of Ecclesiastes says there was a time to be born, and a time to die It was normal, it's part of our lives, and yet you're absolutely right I'm not so sure, I don't know whether we're more afraid of death, or of dying, I think we're afraid of pain I think we want to go peacefully and painlessly And that's a good thing, and that's why the hospice movement is such a wonderful thing, because it allows people to do just that Whether you are in a hospice residence, a separate place, or whether you're at home, surrounded by your family, and you are pain free I think that we really don't want to be in pain when we die I'm not afraid of death, I have no idea what's there I have no idea what goes on after this life, none, nor does anybody else We have beliefs, but nobody's come back after 30 days to tell us what's going on, so we don't know Do you face getting kicked out of the rabbinate, because you say that, aren't you supposed to have a doctrinaire statement of "I'm a believer, I'm a Jew, therefore I know what's going to happen after death?" No, not at all, if we don't know, we don't know We can believe something, but faith means you believe in something without all the evidence being in That's what faith is, because if I know what happens, then I know what happens, but I don't know what happens after I die So, I have faith, now, there are two kinds of visions that we have of heaven and hell, for example One is the vision that you and I learned in Sunday school, that is there's a physical place called heaven, and the righteous will live out the rest of eternity at the right hand of God Right hand of God's throne, and they'll be revered forever, and evil will spend eternity in hell Fire and brimstone, that's one view, I call it the real estate view of heaven and hell It's a real place, and that's what I was taught, and that's what you were taught And that's taught in Jewish practice too? Correct, there's another view that I teach, and that is a good Jewish practice view, and that is much more emotional, for example The man that I mentioned before, Sy, who died at the age of 90, when we think of him, we think only good thoughts Because when you and I live in this world, everything we do, every action we take leaves memories, and so when we die, those memories remain after we die And so, when people think of Mel or Mark, and they think of us in good ways, and they think that we were teachers, and we gave to the world didn't just take from the world They remember us as good godly people, to me, that's heaven On the other hand, Adolf Hitler, for example, when anybody thinks about Adolf Hitler, they think horrible thoughts So for me, Adolf Hitler's in hell, whether it's a real place or not, Adolf Hitler's in hell, Mother Teresa is in heaven Doesn't matter to me one bit, whether there's a real place or not What matters to me is how you remember me after I die That's the first comment, the second comment is, "Chunie, there was always taught that what happens in this world is much more important than what happens in the world to come" We live in this world, we don't know about the world to come, so it's important what we do now to make this world a better place And we believe that when we have done everything we can to make this a better place, then the Messiah will come The Messiah is not going to come, pulled like a genie out of a box, we have to work and get the world as good as we humans possibly can And then he'll come What are some of the most difficult, most intractable cases of grief that you faced, that you've dealt with, that you've tried to help people through or by or with? I had a man that came to me, his daughter, she developed a brain tumor, and she was in the hospital, and she was in a lot of pain Despite everything that the doctors and the nurses tried to do, she was in tremendous pain She didn't even know who he was anymore, and he was in pain because his daughter was in tremendous pain So one day he went to the hospital with his gun, and he went into her hospital room, and he asked the nurse to leave for a few minutes He wanted to be alone with his daughter, he shot his daughter through the head and killed her So, as you could imagine, after that, he was numb, he was in shock, he was angry with himself He was imprisoned for ten years for murder, and yet it's interesting, when he was in prison, he was protected The biggest and baddest inmates in prison protected him because they understood what he had done That he had put an end to his daughter's suffering Well, he got out of prison, and he heard about me, and he called me several months ago He's a former alcoholic, and so that was something that he was worried about, you know, reverting to And he called me to talk about forgiveness, and I asked him, "Whom did he need to forgive?" And he said, "I need to forgive myself for murdering my daughter" And we talked about that, we talked about it, and it turns out that he had grown up not feeling very good about himself Because his father, who was a gambler, had never respected him at all, and never loved him as a father should love his son So this poor man, who shot his daughter, had grown up thinking that he was not as good as God made him That he wasn't entitled to feel good about himself That was the real issue First he had to forgive his father, and then, and only then, he could forgive himself I couldn't get him to forgive himself until he understood that he was entitled by God to be happy Once I got him to the place where he felt he was proud to be happy, then he could forgive himself And I spoke to him about, "Yes, you might have caused pain to your daughter" If you did, and I'm not sure you did, even if you did, it was a split second of pain, and then it was over So he's on the way, is he healed yet? No, he's still wandering in his desert He has not yet reached his promised land, and I pray, you know, every night before I go to bed, he's in my prayers That he gets to the place of healing that he needs to get to That was a tough case, is a tough case In your own case with your father, do you feel like you've finished your wandering with that? I mean, is there an end to this suffering, this wandering that we go through? Do you normally get to see that with your clients, yourself included? I'll talk about my clients first I let them go when they're in their promised land I only let them go when they've reached their promised land I can't reach it for them, I can direct them to it, I can teach them, I can be with them on their journey, and then as they're reaching their promised land, they don't need me anymore, they've healed In my own case, yes, this book is a symbol that I have healed from my father's death It is a tangible symbol of, I believe, and I treat it as that A tangible symbol you see, because I could never say goodbye to my daddy I never had the chance to do that, I've since done that At the cemetery writing letters, there's a whole process that we go through In the grief recovery institute field So, this book is the final step, I think, where I take my healing and I try to share that The way that I have come to heal with my readers And it took you 40 years? Something like that, yep Was there a religious person you held on to that for 40 years? No, that was very good, that's very rabbinic mark Very rabbinic, but no, I could get a sermon out of that But I don't think, it took as long as it, that's the other thing There's a wonderful saying, there is no clock for the soul Which means, takes as long as it takes As long as you do something about it, like I said before Time, even though itself only passes, doesn't do anything Nothing, for people who are in just as bad a shape 40 years later as they were then Because they haven't done anything about it Mel, are there special times when grief seems to get the upper hand when our focus is especially brought to grief? Well, I'll tell you when people think about it the most, and that is at holiday time Because holidays are very special opportunities for families to come together and celebrate And yet, you know, we're going to sit around our holiday table And we're going to celebrate, and yet, they're going to be empty chairs around the dinner table The chairs that last year were filled with loved ones who have died Or divorced out of the family, and they've been lost to us When they were there, we were safe and comfortable, everybody was sitting in the right chair Everybody sits in the same chair every time we get together Now the order is all wrong, who's going to sit in grandpa's chair this year? Nobody wants to sit in grandpa's chair this year And who's going to be the next grandpa? Who's going to be the next family leader? Who are you going to call with family business when there's a family crisis? So I have some suggestions that our listeners may find helpful to help them deal with these empty chairs About eight or nine suggestions, the first come way before the holiday dinner itself If, say, it's grandpa or grandma, you need to talk to your kids about that You need to ask them questions like, "How would you feel about grams at dinner this year?" And then maybe if you're making the dinner, prepare some of their favorite foods To remind you of them And then the night of the dinner, you know, before everybody comes, you might want to leave his chair empty for the first year You might want to light a candle to remember him and place it on the mantelpiece You might want to put some family pictures with him or her and put them on the mantelpiece This is sort of a creative atmosphere of love Because they're not there, and they're still there At dinner, I would suggest that before you say, "Grace, you go on the table and you talk about who's not there and you tell stories" "Tears are good, laughter's better" "Laughter's better" Tell a favorite story And then finally, to remember, I suggest some acts of loving kindness In memory of those who are not there, for example Why not invite someone who is alone for the holiday to fill in for them at your dinner table? Invite someone to join you for dinner You've done good things twice You've paid him forward with two acts of love You're remembering him with love and affection and you're giving someone else joy and companionship What a wonderful way to remember And finally, I would take some presents You know, take some Christmas presents And say that they're from gramps and take them to a children's hospital Or go feed the homeless on Christmas day In his honor and his memory Because then you're going to make a connection You'll keep his goodness flowing And what I like to say, you'll keep his godliness flowing as well So, if you do those things, then even though your loved ones are not there at the table with you Their memories will always be with you They'll sound like some really rich suggestions Yeah, thank you, I hope that people take them seriously and do them Because they help So, for our listeners, Mel, if they want to pursue this kind of healing Is the first step to buy your book and God created hope If they buy that book, will that get them started? And where'd they go from there? Well, let me give you my website Okay, because there's lots of stuff on my website About healing and about me and about some of the kinds of ways that I help people both individually and in groups My website is called yourgriefmatters.com You know, I'm getting up a website from my book called endgodcreatedhope.com If people wanted to get it, where did they go? You can get it on amazon.com, you can get it at Barnes and Noble.com As a matter of fact, it's already discounted And it's not even published yet Such a deal I have for you I'm telling you, the book sales are $14.95, you can get it at $12.10 But I'm not supposed to say that Plus shipping That's the way it is Plus shipping, that's right But the book stores will have it, they'll all have it When you write a book, so your publisher talks about who's your market And some people have real small niches You know, if I wrote a book about the love life of kangaroos, for example There are not a whole lot of people in this country that will really be interested in that But there's a whole lot of people who are interested in grief because everybody has got losses in their lives And as I said before, it's not just somebody dies You get fired from a job, you're in big loss You're pet dies You know, that's a major loss I remember, I write about it in a book that When I was writing a national Lady called me the second week I was there and she said, "Rabbi My dog done died, when can we have the funeral?" And I said, "Ruthy honey, we don't have funerals for animals, we only have funerals for you Well I know, but I loved him so much" What did she call me today? I would have a funeral for her dog because I understand now I grew up with dogs, but I didn't understand anything I now understand that pets are so close to us because they give us love And they require so little of us So when your pet dies, it's like a member of your family, a part of you dies There are all kinds of losses in the world When you lose a way of looking at the world, when you lose an idea that you thought was important All kinds of losses in this book deals not only with the death of a person, but also with the losses that we sustain in our lives Mel, are there any songs that really speak to your condition that really, for you, touch this central thing that you're talking about? You know, Mark, you may think that this is ironic or unrovenic, but I love the song Amazing Grace, I just love it Even though it's not so Jewish in its theology, I love it because the passion, the power of the words really moves me And I listen to it in my car all the time, I love gospel music because of the power So that's my favorite song Amazing Grace, I'll sing the sound that saved a red light me I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind But now I can see, it was grace that taught my heart to fear And grace that fear relieved how precious did that grace appear Only hour I first believed Here I am, I got to die, near I to die, and I did be a cross that raises me Still on my song gently, near I'm, I got to die, near I'm, I got to die Oh, if one just for me, live in the sky, sour moonness does vocal, a portrait fly So my mind was to die, near I'm, I got to die, near I'm, I got to die Here I am, I got to die, near I'm, I got to die, near I'm, I got to die (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) - Amazing grace. ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Sing grace ♪ ♪ How sweet ♪ ♪ The sound ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ - Well, congratulations on your new book. - Thank you. - And God created hope. - Thank you. - And I thank you for helping people through their grief. There's the phrase good grief. Grief, I guess, practiced rightly is good grief, but most of what we do is kind of constipated grief. So thanks for helping people out of that. - My pleasure, it's good to be with you and maybe we'll talk some more. - Okay, thank you very much, Mel. - Thanks, bye-bye. - You've been listening to a spirit in action interview with Rabbi Mel Glaser, the author of the newly released book and God created hope, finding your way through grief with lessons from early biblical stories. The last song you listen to, Amazing Grace, is a version done by Lady Smith Black Mombazo, along with Paul Simon. You can hear this program again via my website, northernspiritradio.org. You can hear my other programs there and you can find helpful links and information about the programs on that site as well. The theme music for spirit in action is "I Have No Hands But Yours" by Carol Johnson. Thank you for listening. I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. You can email me at helpsmeat@usa.net. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is spirit in action. ♪ I have no higher cause for you and please ♪ ♪ To love and serve your neighbor ♪ ♪ Enjoying selflessness ♪ ♪ To love and serve your neighbor ♪ ♪ Enjoying selflessness ♪ ♪ To love and serve your neighbor ♪ ♪ To love and serve your neighbor ♪ [MUSIC PLAYING]
Rabbi Mel Glazer is author of a new book And God Created Hope, Finding Your Way Through Grief with Lessons from Early Biblical Stories which helps people do the work that heals grief and leads to a resolution.