All Our Losses / All Our Griefs

This is the start of my blogging about the wonderful little book by Kenneth R. Mitchell and Herbert Anderson entitled "All Our Losses / All Our Griefs"

I'll start this series off by quoting for you the entire 'Forward' from the book and then next I'll go through the book chapter by chapter.  I will however just give a few quotes from each chapter and then give you all an overview along with my own personal thoughts about each chapter.

So here we go, I hope you all enjoy this series of blogs and I assure you that you won't go wrong purchasing this little book.

In His absolute Grace & Love,
Roy

All Our Losses / All Our Griefs

Forward:

This is a book about loss: how serious personal losses take place, why we react to loss as we do, how many important forms of loss go unnoticed, how we can recover from the impact of loss, and how we can help others to recover from loss.  So far we know, no other approach to the subject of grief has made use of resources similar to ours; furthermore, we have emphasized elements of loss in situations that do not at first appear to be situations of loss and grief.  What we have tried to accomplish in the following pages consists of several elements.

First, our resources.  For years, both of us have been collecting statements about loss and grief from a wide variety of persons: our friends, our parishioners, our students.  By the time we agreed to collaborate on this book, we had amassed records of more than a thousand experiences of loss.  We sifted through those records, allowing those with whom we worked to become our teachers.  What we have written here comes largely from them.  Some of our material is theoretical, but this book essentially comes from the losses and griefs of those who have trusted us with their experiences.

Second, it is our conviction that grief is a normal response to significant loss: grieving is not, as some writers have suggested, evidence of sickness or disease.  It is something to live through rather than to cure.  It is no more pathological than the rush of adrenalin experienced when one has narrowly escaped danger.  Grief is a normal response.  It is a disservice to grieving persons to interpret their feelings and behavior as though there were a warp in their psychological makeup, or a deficiency in their spiritual formation.

Third, we are convinced that many people, including such potential helpers as Christian pastors, are unaware of the many kinds of loss that are an ordinary part of life.  Grief is usually thought of as a response to the death of a loved one.  That is, to be sure, the most profound and personal form that loss takes for most people.  Powerful as that death of a loved one is, it is not death that teaches us what loss and grief are.  We learn about loss much earlier in life; it comes, in fact, before we know much about death at all.  Death is only one form of loss.  Our purpose is to help caring persons become more sensitive to the man instances in life when a "grief ministry" is called for.  We have intended to be thorough in our attention to this aspect, considering not only such losses as death and divorce, but also less easily noticeable experiences that involve significant loss.

Fourth, we also intend this book to be squarely within the discipline of pastoral theology.  There are several books on funerals and on ministering to the bereaved which are good indicators of "what to do".  There are other good books designed to help grief sufferers work their way through the grieving process.  As pastoral theologians, we have drawn upon the resources both of theology and of the human sciences to guide both private and public ministries with those who grieve.  We have included in one volume three questions that have often been dealt with separately: (1) Why do people grieve, or what is the genesis of grief in human life? (2) What are the dynamics of grief and the characteristics of grieving? (3) How can we help those who grieve?  That scope is part of the uniqueness of this book.

Although our original intention was to produce a source for the teaching of pastoral care in seminaries, we have also written this book as a resource  for all persons who care about others suffering from loss and grief.  We believe that pastoral work and mourners is the work of the congregation, not just of certain professionals.  Thus, this book is intended for any person who wants to understand loss and grief, whether to minister to others or to come to terms with one's own experience.