The Blog That Speaks: When Presence Is the Present
One of my favorite movies that I watch each February is Lars and the Real Girl. [Spoiler Alert: this blog gives away the plot line].
Special thanks to blickpixel on Pixabay for the image
Lars (Ryan Gosling) is a 27-year-old introvert who purchases a life-size silicone doll named Bianca. Bianca is a real girl in Lars’s mind. Although marketed as a sex-doll, Lars suggests that their relationship is chaste when he requests for Bianca to stay with his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and his wife Karin (Emily Mortimer), who live next door. For Lars, it is inappropriate for Bianca and him to sleep in the same place since they are young and single. Bianca’s life story, as invented by Lars, includes her being an orphan who was raised by nuns. This, in turn, led her to become a missionary, who is currently on sabbatical. Lars accommodates her inability to walk by maintaining that she is wheelchair bound. Consequently, caring for Bianca becomes a family affair since she is dependent on others to bathe and dress her.
Neither the characters nor the viewers are explicitly told the exact cause for the sudden emergence of Bianca in Lars’s life. Viewers, however, are presented with clues that indicate that Lars is both grieving a death and fearing a possible corresponding death. Lars’s grief involves his mother who died while giving birth to him, and he fears the possible death of Karin, who is currently several months along in her pregnancy. Discerning viewers will detect parallels between Lars’s story about Bianca and his own lived experience. For instance, Lars recounts that Bianca’s mother died while giving birth to her. He then inserts a significant detail: Bianca is unable to bear children, a telltale sign of his own defensive measures. While observers recognize that Bianca’s silicone quality preserves her, Lars protects himself from another death and grief through the story of her infertility. The introduction of Bianca and her accompanying story, then, appears to be compensating for the death (i.e., absence) of Lars’s mother and the potential death (i.e., absence) of his pregnant sister-in-law. These are the determining factors for the origination of Bianca in Lars’s life. Let it also be said that it is not abnormal for Lars to fear Karin’s death and seek to shield himself from loss as Karin’s due date quickly approaches. It is common for the bereaved to fear the deaths of those with whom they have a close relationship.
Like Lars, people’s fears and anxieties surrounding the subject of death is potent.
Such anxiety may be evident when my husband, a retired hospice chaplain, and I, a facilitator of grief support groups, explain to others about our work. We frequently hear, “That’s hard. I could never do that.” Even now as I mention death, some of you are unconsciously marshalling all of your internal resources to resist thoughts of your own mortality while consciously denying your powerlessness against death or attempting to deflect the issue. Such efforts are called proximal defenses in that you are directly opposing thoughts of death through minimization.[1] You may be saying to yourself, “Well, I’m not planning on dying today” or “I eat right and exercise, so I’m in good shape.”
Another common method used to create distance from the reality of death is a Western preference for euphemisms for the word “died.” We commonly hear and use such phrases as “passed away,” “in a better place,” “bought the farm,” “no longer with us,” “gone to heaven,” or “with Jesus.” Perhaps anxieties about death and grief are the reasons I frequently hear from the bereaved of how friends now avoid them or tell them, “You should be over it by now” or “He/She wouldn’t want you to grieve like this.”
Christians, when encountering a mourner, frequently focus on an event in the future rather than embracing their co-humanity with the mourner by being present to the bereaved’s sorrow and fear in the here and now. These would-be companions leap ahead to a time yet to come with the words, “Oh, you will see them again,” barricading themselves against the reality of a beloved person’s absence in the now.
As it turns out, Lars is not the only community member to form nontypical coping mechanisms. The audience observes that a male co-worker of Lars is attached to plastic action figures while a female co-worker has bonded to a stuffed bear. Viewers hear about a church member’s cousin who dressed his cats in dresses and that a deceased member was a kleptomaniac, being buried with another church member’s earrings.
That is, we all have ways of coping with our pain and fears. Some are super cleaners. Others are perfectionists. There are those who binge, be it on television or junk food. Then there are the persons who are the shoppers.
When members of the community recognize their co-humanity with Lars (i.e., their creative ways to cope with their fear and anxiety in relation to grief, loss, death, and dying), they enter into Lars and Bianca’s world and treat Bianca as if she is real. They become present to Lars and his world. For instance, a church member presents Bianca with the church’s flower arrangement for that week following the Sunday service. This particular incident conveys an insight into Lars’s grief and fears about the death of others. As Lars pushes Bianca in her wheelchair away from the church, Lars tells Bianca, “Those are nice, huh? And they’re not real, so they’ll last forever.” As the community incorporates Bianca into the normalcy of their lives, they are joining Lars in his grief, fear, despair, and inability to stop death’s arrival. They are accompanying Lars into the absence of his mother and the potential absence of his sister-in-law.
* * * *
The Christmas season is normally an occasion to remember Jesus’s birth, a joyous event. Bright lights adorn our homes. Aromas of delicious baked foods fill the air. Bright wrapping paper with bows and ribbons decorate packages. We sing of angels proclaiming a message that produces a celebratory response. We include a remembering of the Magi from the East who brought gifts to the young King Jesus. Yet, underneath all the glitter, shadows linger. Darkness is juxtaposed with the coming of the Light in the darkness (John 1:5), reminding us that we know light because of darkness.
The darkness, of which I speak, is found in the fact that Jesus is fully human, and humans die.
I am not denying that Jesus is fully divine, but I am centering on his humanity. As Karoline Lewis asserts “that which is human must die.”[2] The Gospels do not evade the fact of his death, even when proclaiming a joyous announcement of Jesus’s arrival. In the same chapter that describes Jesus’s birth, Luke writes:
“Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘Listen carefully: This child is destined to be the cause of the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be rejected. Indeed, as a result of him the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed —and a sword will pierce your own soul as well!’” (2:34-35).
The Gospel of John, which does not include a description of Jesus’s birth, also has a theme of Jesus’s death from beginning to end. For example, an implication of death appears from the start in John’s Prologue (1:1-18) when John informs the audience that no one has seen God. Accordingly, this points toward the Hebrew Scriptures’ assertion that those who see God die (Ex 33:18; Isa 6:5);[3] yet, according to the Fourth Gospel, in seeing the incarnate God, it is not humans who die but God. This truth is heightened by the repeated words or phrases that signal Jesus’s death in John. The first of these is a Greek word that is translated hour or time (e.g., 2:4; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23, 27; 13:1; and 17:1) and refers to the occasion of Jesus’s crucifixion and his return to the Father. An additional repeated phrase is “lifted-up” (3:14; 8:28; and 12:31-32), and like hour or time, it, too, signifies Jesus’s crucifixion and his ascension. Thus, while persons in late-modernity use proximal defenses to attempt to dispose of any thoughts of death, Jesus speaks frequently of his death in John. Jesus Christ joins in humanity’s death by becoming human. In the face of his death, he is simultaneously turning towards the other, embracing his death to safeguard our lives.
The fact that Jesus is born and dies suggests that Jesus is fully present to humanity in birth, life, and death.
Being present validates our humanity.
Being present to humans communicates our worth.
Being present heals humanity.
* * * *
As the community in Lars and the Real Girl walks alongside Lars and his relationship with Bianca, evidence of Lars’s healing is demonstrated as Bianca is eventually laid to rest. Lars and the Real Girl, then, becomes a reminder of the power of presence amidst grief and fear. It powerfully communicates the healing that may transpire when a community is present to someone’s pain, grief, and fears. As followers of Jesus, the way of Jesus is to enter into the bereaved’s sorrow and death. The one called the Resurrection and the Life entered sorrow and death. He defied death by speaking of it.[4] Hence, it is because of Jesus’s resurrection that we, as followers of Jesus, are able to enter into the other’s sorrow in the absence (death) of a person.
During the holiday season, many mourners wonder how to forge ahead in the absence of someone who has died. Some are tempted to ignore the holidays, climb into bed, and wait for it to be over. Some naively believe they must do things as normal: decorate a tree, put up Christmas lights, attend holiday parties, send out holiday cards, organize normal family gatherings, and bake and bake and bake some more. It is what friends and culture expect, right? But nothing is normal. No amount of wishing will return to us the life that we knew prior to the death of someone significant to us.
The chair at the table will still be empty.
And so, my invitation for those who have friends and family members who are experiencing the absence of a significant someone during this holiday season is to give the present of presence in absence. Join in their sorrow and fears amidst the death of their person. Participate in Christ’s ministry of presence by joining Christ in his ministry of healing presence. As Christ’s healing presence to humanity is available every day, so too the present of presence is a healing gift that may be given throughout the year.
[1] Spee Kosloff, Gabrial Anderson, Alexandra Nottbohm, and Brandon Hoshiko, “Proximal and Distal Terror Management Defenses: A Systematic Review and Analysis,” in Handbook of Terror Management Theory, eds. Clay Routledge and Matthew Vess (London, UK: Academic Press, 2019), 33.
[2] Karoline Lewis, “The Calling of the Disciples, the First Sign, and the Temple Incident (John 1:19—2:25),” John: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2014), 29, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9m0w2g.9.
[3] Lewis writes, “To see God will incur the fate of death (Exod. 33:18; Isa. 6:5).” Lewis, “Introduction,” John: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2014), 21, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9m0w2g.7.
[4] Root writes, “To speak of death is to defy it, to refuse its claim to paralyze.” Andrew Root, The Promise of Despair: The Way of the Cross as the Way of the Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 2010), Kindle Edition, 92-93.