Looking for Francis Weller

My response to “no rituals” and “no community"

Greetings to my Reflections at 85 readers,

To catch you up on my whereabouts and reflections this past few weeks: I’ve been one busy woman! My hopes and dreams for retirement and leisurely reading and socializing with family and friends seem farther away than ever.

In June, I facilitated two legacy writing workshops. Lucky for me they were on related topics: “How Do I Want to be Remembered.” I had my six month (Yes, it’s already six months) check up for my left breast lumpectomy, and can happily report that all is well.

I’ve received several marvelous Covid legacy stories, and have been working some on the book. I am about to begin chapter 4. My problem is this; each time I sit down to write (on my trusty Mac) I tend to begin at the beginning of the introduction, and continue to make changes on almost every page…that does not lend itself to great progress.

But it does cause me to reflect … on my first book, Heartmates: A Guide for the Partner and Family of the Heart Patient. I wrote that in the mid-1980s on the first Apple computer, the Apple 2E, really a typewriter with the ability to “cut and paste” and “erase by back-spacing” that was miraculous. I can’t imagine how writers who chose typing over longhand could make a change or an error - perhaps “x-ing out” or having to rip the page from the roller and begin all over with each page. It would have made me insane, let alone wasting reams of paper. Thinking of paper, the printer that accompanied the Apple 2E was tractor fed with corrugated edges on every page. The computer was so amazing that it now has its own place in the Smithsonian.

And then there was my reading, for my book club, Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, for my wisdom group, On the Brink of Everything by Parker Palmer, for my pleasure , The Women by Kristin Hannah - which I think highly of - about women Army nurses in Viet Nam with a delicious love story, Ecclesiastes for my study group, and a grief, death and dying book that had been recommended to me, On the Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller, which leads me to the topic of my reflection today.

I was very appreciative of Weller’s book until I came to his strong statement that we, Americans, have no rituals and no community. I so disagreed, and wanted to write to him. I looked everywhere I could think of, followed every website, but could not find his email anywhere.

So I thought the next best thing would be to publish my disagreement on SubStack with the hope that some reader would know him or how to find him. So here I go - - -

To FrancisWeller:

Having just completed your book, The Edge of Sorrow, I was moved by a number of exercises and rituals, as I am a retired psychotherapist, and have done a significant amount of work with aging and dying. However, I disagreed and experienced invisibility when you wrote about community. When you looked at large swaths of the human community that had experienced terrible losses, you never mentioned the Jews and their loss in the Holocaust of six million, and many other losses in our 3000 years of history.      

When you spoke of ritual you stated that there isn’t any in our modern community. I challenge you to look at the Jewish community, in which we have kept ourselves alive, and intermittently thriving, through practices of a variety of rituals. They’re not the rituals as you explain them, but they are the rituals that have kept the Jewish community together generation to generation for almost 3000 years.

For example, I suggest the worldwide Jewish ritual of holding a Passover Seder, in which families join together in remembering and telling our story about the exodus from Egypt and the gifts that God gave us in the wilderness (Torah, manna, the ten and the 613 commandments). That is one of the annual rituals practiced especially for the young generations.

Then there are the weekly rituals of Shabbat (Sabbath) like lighting two candles (one to keep the Sabbath, the other to remember the Sabbath) at Friday sundown. That is a ritual connecting women throughout the world today and throughout the centuries. It is one of the tasks that Jewish women are commanded to do.

And there’s the ritual of saying the prayer of gratitude when we break bread every meal but particularly on the Sabbath eve. We even have a special bread that women bake for Shabbat called challah, one of several rituals of the Sabbath. I could go on with a variety of rituals done: yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily to keep our community alive and thriving.

Perhaps some of the death and mourning rituals would be more interesting to you. At seven days, thirty days and one year we acknowledge and remember the dead, by lighting candles, and honor the mourners at each stage of their grief. Beyond that, we light a 24 hour candle on the anniversary of a loved one’s death (within the family) and in the sanctuary each is remembered by name and with a communal prayer.

Although Jews number just 2% of the world’s population, the rituals of our community have not only kept us alive, but in fact, have inspired us to give great gifts to the world: in science, medicine, technology, music, literature, agriculture, and humor to name just a few. As well these gifts suggest our ritual of obligation, tikkun olam, (healing the world) as outlined in our sacred texts, the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the Midrash, Pirke Avot (Wisdom of the Fathers) that keep us in relation with our God.

I’m sorry you couldn’t have used us as “an example” of a people held together in community through ritual.

Sincerely,

Rachael Freed