Rethinking Life After Death

Life Continues

As the ghosts in Hades presented themselves to Odysseus, one in particular stood out from the rest. It was his mother, Anticlea. There, in the land of the dead, Odysseus finally realized that he had been absent from his family’s life for nearly fifteen years. The grief gripped him in a powerful way. He inquired of his mother the condition of his home in Ithaca and of his wife and son. He had a strong desire to know how his father was faring and the manner of his mother’s death. As his mother relayed the news from home, the Greek king fell into agony, understanding that to his family he was thought dead and that he had missed out on much of life.

When we stop to visit the graves of the loved ones that have passed on before us, it is difficult not to consider the living we have done since their passing. Births, graduations, marriages, and other major life events come and go, with the deceased individual apparently missing it all. This can provoke very powerful feelings of sorrow in those who are still here. It is no different for adolescents who lose someone special.

A student who loses a beloved grandmother, for instance, might have a difficult time around holidays, knowing that life’s customs and traditions are taking place without her presence. Another, experiencing the death of a close friend, may struggle with feelings of grief or guilt after winning an important basketball game. A teen whose mother has died could experience serious emotional pain during her senior prom, knowing that her mother would have loved to see the color and style of her prom dress. The dragon that stalks all these students, constantly struggling with the things they know their loved one is missing, is known as Despair.

How can we work with students who are grieving because they have come to the realization that their lives are continuing without the presence of someone they loved? What can make a difference in their lives?

One of the most crucial things we can do is to pay attention to the student who has lost someone special. Watch their behavior and interaction with other students, especially around times of the year and during events that may have been significant to the one that died. Does the student seem sad or cry easily? Is he unusually irritable or angry toward his friends? Do you notice that he is quiet, almost trying to disappear? These can all be clues as to the inner conflicts of the heart.

If you should happen to become aware of such changes in behavior or attitude, address it as soon as possible. Be a listening ear if students are comfortable discussing their struggles with you. Sometimes simply talking about the feelings one is experiencing can be very cathartic.

Art therapy works well in grieving situations, as well. Try having a student draw the things they wish the person who died could have experienced. Writing a letter to the deceased, describing what they have missed, can be very freeing to the young person who is grieving. Letters or artwork can be placed at the gravesite or similar memorial. Be creative. Try to empathize with the adolescent—put yourself in their shoes. The dragon of Despair would want a young heart to wrestle with these issues alone and in isolation. This beast can be slain by affording students an opportunity to share their pain with others, thus ultimately freeing the spirit to begin living again.

Odysseus, still in Hades, met his old ally Achilles, the mightiest of the Greek warriors. The hero, now a resident of the underworld, asked Odysseus for news of his family and whether or not his name was still remembered in the lands of Greece. Odysseus could not supply him with this information, but he was able to tell the ghost the tale of his son, Neoptolemus, and his heroic endeavors on the field of battle. Upon hearing this news, the great Achilles swelled with pride and went off along a meadow, now at peace.

Rethinking the Shadow of Death

Every man dies. Not every man really lives.
William Wallace

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.
Jonathan Swift

Death. Let’s face it—the word itself can bring us down. For adolescents, the concept of death and dying is one that can cause feelings of dread and foreboding. Yet every student will eventually have to face the cold, hard fact of human mortality, whether through a friend, a family member, or an acquaintance. When someone near to us dies, it shakes our world and forces us to take a personal inventory of our own lives. The minions of the enemy—fear, isolation, defeat, despair, and depression—smell blood in the water and begin to encircle the student who has been dealt one of life’s most severe blows. In the next few posts, we will examine the concept of death and dying, and how to guide and fight for students through the grieving process, by sifting through the words of Homer as he describes Odysseus’s journey through Hades.

Rethinking the Lotus V

As ninth-graders go, Terry was a pretty typical kid. He had average grades, average athletic ability, average looks. For the most part, that is how Terry viewed himself: middle of the road, nothing special. His father had died when Terry was in the fifth grade, and the loss was especially difficult for his mother. While his mother increased her already heavy drinking to relieve the pain she was experiencing, Terry muddled his way through middle school. He had been largely unnoticed by his teachers. After all, he wasn’t exceptionally bad, nor was he exceptionally good. He was, well, somewhere in the middle.

If you had asked him what his interests and hobbies were, he probably wouldn’t have been able to tell you much. His heart was in pain, though on the outside it really wasn’t observable. One day, a new student arrived at his lunch table, bearing news of enticing lotus fruit. His name was Gordon, and he was what the teachers and administrators would refer to as a “problem child.” He was open about the fact that he frequently used marijuana and would share stories of being high with the others at the lunch table. Intrigued, Terry began spending more time around Gordon, eventually riding the bus to his house after school one day. It was there that Terry first experimented with pot. He and Gordon began riding their dirt bikes to the middle of the woods. There they would “light up” after school. His mother, in a haze of alcohol, would rarely say anything to Terry about not coming home from school until hours after it had already ended. He would spray down his clothes with deodorant to cover up the scent of the smoke.

For the greater part of his ninth-grade year, Terry would steal money from his mother’s wallet and buy dope from Gordon to satisfy his ever-growing cravings for the drug. This wasn’t his personality. He wasn’t really a thief. But his demeanor changed, he became apathetic toward his schoolwork, and his grades began to plummet. He cared little about his future and his life, for thought of getting high consumed his thoughts.

The parallel between the mythical lotus and substance abuse is a fairly easy one to draw. When Terry was high, the fact that he was average didn’t matter. The fact that his father was dead didn’t matter. The fact that his mother was an alcoholic didn’t matter. When he was high, the marijuana whispered softly that all was right in the world and that he didn’t need to worry about his cares. The wounds of his heart were still throbbing, but he was, in the words of Pink Floyd, “comfortably numb.”

Rethinking Resurrection

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. Psalm 22:14-16

It is Good Friday. Christians around the world are commemorating the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. At first glance, it appears odd that such an observation would be known as Good Friday, but if we look deeper, look beyond, we will see that it is indeed...good.

Throughout the millennia, human beings have developed a mythos around the seemingly impossible hope of resurrection. It is a brave hope, a desire to overcome the ever nearing reality of the grave. The Sumerians who created the world's first civilization told the story of Dumuzi, a fertility god who was carried off to the underworld during the hot Summer months, only to rise again at the autumnal equinox. The mythology of the Egyptians describe the brutal murder of Osiris, his descent to the underworld, and his eventual resurrection and establishment of the god of afterlife. The Greeks held that Dionysus experienced a resurrection of sorts, as did the Persian Mithras. Polynesian legends speak of a divine eel that gave up its life, only to rise again as a coconut tree so that the islanders would be provided with sustenance.

Even our modern tales carry this primal desire aloft. I love how the movie Braveheart shows the impassioned rise of the warriors of Scotland following the horrific execution of William Wallace. Neo experiences death at the hands of computer-controlled agents of the Matrix, but then is restored with an even greater power and sense of purpose. Gandalf the Grey falls to his doom, doing battle with the demonic Balrog in the darkness of Moria, but is then reborn into Middle Earth as Gandalf the White, head of the Order. Resurrection is and always has been the great hope of humanity.

Nature itself conveys the deep longing. Spring turns to Summer, which turns to Autumn, then eventually to Winter. With a beautiful intensity, the endless Winter once again gives way to the joy of Spring. A seed dies, is buried, and rises again as a flowering plant, something much more majestic that it once was. The sun dies in the west and rises again in the east. Sorrow and death are overcome by laughter and splendor. All creation speaks of this mystery.

In the first century AD, Jesus of Nazareth, a real historical figure, embodied what all the myths had echoed throughout the centuries. He incarnated the hopeful mystery of restoration whispered by the first sweet winds of Spring and the bright rays of the dawn. Just as an author makes use of foreshadowing in a good novel, so too does the Author make use of this literary tool in the Great Story. Jesus was crucified on a hill called "The Skull" and buried in a rock tomb. This all happened on a Friday.

But You caused my life to ascend up from the pit, Yahweh, my God. - Jonah 2:6

The entombment of Christ is often compared metaphorically with an earlier biblical story, that of Jonah. In the book of Jonah, the prophet is swallowed by a whale due to his refusal to obey God. What is the significance of Jonah in the belly of the whale? Well, the belly is where digestion takes place. One substance is destroyed, broken down, and through this transformation, the substance is converted to energy. The tomb in ancient times was viewed in much the same way. The term "sarcophagus" literally means "flesh eater" because what was temporal wasted away in the tomb.

When the disciples of Jesus went to his tomb early Sunday morning, they found it empty. He had risen. Death had been overcome. Likewise, Jonah was vomited out on the shore, a changed man. The belly of the whale had digested the old self and had created a new man. The resurrection of Jesus pierced the veil that separated the temporal and the eternal, creating a way for humanity to partake in the same transformation that poets, prophets, storytellers, and nature itself expressed in epics, oracles, and the germinating seed.

Are you experiencing the belly of the whale right now? Are you sealed in some personal tomb? What is being digested and broken down in your life? Allow the transformative power of Christ's resurrection to create a new life within your heart, an Easter of your own. There is hope...never lose sight of this even in your darkest hours.

The sign of the cross has to be looked upon as a sign of eternal affirmation of all that ever was or shall ever be. It symbolizes not only the one historic moment on Calvary but the mystery through all time and space of God's presence and participation in the agony of all living things. - Joseph Campbell

Rethinking the Enemy

We need to open our eyes to see what is really going on. All good myths and fables contain an enemy of some sort—a dragon, a giant, or some other fearsome foe—that the hero or heroine must confront. Adolescents, too, face opposition in this life, an enemy that wants to crush hearts and spread despair. There is an unseen contest between hope and despair, and one truth that every great story teaches us is that there is more to reality than what we see upon first glance.

One night, after we had put our son to bed, my wife and I watched the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). I have always been a strong admirer of J. R. R. Tolkien, due to the universal messages of truth that can be found throughout his works, and as I watched the scene in the movie where the Lord of the Nazgul stabbed the young hobbit Frodo, I began to feel as if I needed to pay close attention. In the scene, Sam, Merry, Pippin, and Aragorn watch helplessly as Frodo slips further and further into unconsciousness and toward death.

By the time the elf-princess Arwen arrives, Frodo has nearly become a wraith himself. In a beautiful, yet terrifying scene, she races against time, carrying him on her noble white horse toward Rivendell, the home of Elrond, the elf-lord and the only one with the skill to heal a wound caused by a Morgul blade. Charging through the woods and across the fields, clinging desperately to the hope of Frodo’s healing, Arwen is pursued by the Nazgul, the screeching Ringwraiths, who are determined to see the hobbit descend into their world. The music reaches a fevered pitch as the shadowy wraiths grasp and claw at the wounded Frodo and the Ring he carries. But Arwen deftly guides her brave horse through the woods and plains and on to the river that shields Rivendell from all evil.

Once she at last crosses the great river, Arwen turns toward the Nazgul. The wraiths pause at the water’s edge, sensing that this place is a domain of good. The elf-princess then does something that few of us would have the nerve to consider. She actually challenges the dark hosts! With a voice like fire and with her sword drawn, she defies the pursuing darkness, saying, “If you want him, come and claim him!” Not used to being resisted, the Nazgul are momentarily taken aback. Finally, with their cold, cruel swords flashing and hearts full of malice, desperate to snatch Frodo and the Ring, they begin to cross the river. At that moment, Arwen utters ancient words in the elvish tongue, which causes the waters of the river to rise to a raging torrent, and the Ringwraiths are washed away in the mighty flow!

What a scene! If only there were opportunities in real life to take a stand against such evil and play the hero in some great adventure. Replaying this scene again and again in my mind, I began to draw some important connections. What if the circumstances that unfolded in the lives of young people today are every bit as heroic and mythic as the events played out in the Fellowship of the Ring?

Think about it. Why do stories touch our hearts like nothing else can? One reason is that life comes at us scene by scene, just like a story! We remember our lives in an almost chapter by chapter way, don’t we? There was the fourth-grade chapter, the middle school chapter, the high school chapter, the college chapter, the first job chapter, . . . Yes, there is something about our lives that is very storylike!

I have been a middle school teacher for many years now. In that time, I have formed relationships with many students and had the opportunity to watch them grow and learn. I could tell stories that would leave you in stitches from laughing so hard! Other stories would bring tears. If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that some of the trials that befell us during those school years would be things that we wish we could forget. Let’s face it, growing up is hard! We have all seen our share of heartache, harassment, the loss friendship, isolation, divorce, death, humiliation, and pressure—if not in our own story, then at least in the stories of our friends and loved ones. Some try to shrug it off, saying that this is all just a part of adolescence, and that the kids will “get over it.” But many of you have witnessed these ordeals firsthand . . . and many have never gotten over it. The wounds they have endured in those years of life have stayed with them, like a cancer on the soul. One man I was mentoring finally confessed to me after several months that the tormenting he endured in eighth grade at the hands of a few bullies has played a huge part in his current struggle with anger issues.

As the diabolical Spider-Man (2002) movie villain the Green Goblin plotted the demise of the web-slinging hero, he cackled, “The cunning warrior attacks neither the body nor the mind. Attack the heart!” Look at your own life. Your heart has been wounded. Things that you did, or that were done to you, have shaped the person you are today.