The following is a reflection delivered by Rev. Elizabeth Olson, M. Div, BCC at the Rogue Valley Hiroshima Nagasaki Remembrance on August 6, 2023.

Rev. Elizabeth Olson, M.Div., BCC

It is an honor to be here today gathered with each of you, on this beautiful
morning, this horrific anniversary, this One Sunny Day.

In asking me to provide a reflection today, Elizabeth said, “Liz, we could use a
chaplain.” And so that is the lens and orientation for my remarks.

I have two thoughts to offer you. Both are about the value and importance of
being here at this gathering for this remembrance.

Why be here this morning? So early… leaving your home rather than sleeping in …
or enjoying the quiet and peace of a Sunday morning. Why come here where you
might stir up feelings of pain and anger and disbelief at humanity as we
remember the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why come here and face
remembering that this bombing did not shock humanity into forever outlawing
atomic or nuclear weapons. No. It sent us to into a whole new surreal reality
where bomb after bomb, one impossibly more powerful than the last, would and
continues to be methodically built and readied.

I wonder what emotions and feelings are stirring in you? Outrage? Anguish? Are
you repulsed? Scared? Overwhelmed? A mix of many of these and more, I would
suspect.

And so, I want to thank you… for having the courage to come here, for knowing
that difficult feelings may awaken and arise in you and for being willing to allow
that. Knowing that bearing witness may mean bearing very uncomfortable
feelings …and coming anyway. Your courage to do so says “I care.” It honors those
who have suffered and died. Your presence here today is an act of resistance that
says “I will not forget” and “I will not condone this folly.”

What I want to share with you as a chaplain is that there are consequences to
unexpressed and unacknowledged grief. Rosemary Randall is a British climate
psychologist who wrote an influential paper in 20091 about the grief that people
were starting to dare to come public with in regards to our looming climate crisis.
Grief that was rather taboo to bring up in public, in social settings, within families,
amongst friends, even to ourselves. She founded Carbon Conversations – one of
the first support groups that helped people process their feelings and concerns
and also work together to take actions. She taught that when our grief gets
tucked away and never dealt with, there can be negative consequences in our
own personal life and for society.

In my training as a chaplain, we were taught about working with people’s grief
and bereavement, and we studied William Worden’s model – 4 Tasks of
Mourning:

• Task I: To accept the reality of the loss.
• Task II: To process the pain of grief.
• Task III: To adjust to a world without the deceased.
• Task IV: To find an enduring connection with the deceased in the midst of
  embarking on a new life.

Of course, Worden was writing about grief from the death of a loved one …and it
takes time to do these “Tasks.” But what I want us to examine in his model is that
he also explains the negative outcomes for unaddressed grief. Rosemary Randall
saw these negative outcomes arising in humanity as we face our globally shared
existential threat. She was thinking of the existential threat of climate change,
and today we can just as easily sub in the existential threat of nuclear disaster.

• These are some of the impacts that Worden and Randall caution against when we
• do not acknowledge our grief:
• denial of the facts
• denial of the meaning of the loss
• shutting off of all emotion
• idealizing what is lost
• numbing through substance use or manic activity
• and just not adapting, becoming helpless, bitter, angry, depressed, withdrawing.

Of course, we cannot be feeling our grief and pain all the time – that is not the
suggestion. It is not healthy either to be constantly vigilant to existential threat.

So that is the first thought I wanted to share with you – that the emotions and
feelings you are willing to bring to bear at a gathering like this are not only
honoring others and serve as an expression of resistance, but the awareness of
them and the courage to face them also has a very practical efficacy for our
mental wellbeing – and therefore on our ability to act responsibly and effectively
as we engage in dismantling these threats.

The other thought I wanted to share with you this morning, is that the act of
coming together to do this ritual, to take this action, is the way we must function
as we go forward. Coming together whether to share in grief, or coming together
to act and make change. We cannot do it alone. We cannot sustain isolation or
promulgate isolationism. We cannot act as a lone wolf or romanticize the
“independent man.”

Atomic Fission, nuclear fission, is the completely opposite action of coming
together. Fission occurs when a neutron is violently slammed into a larger atom,
splitting it into smaller atoms. Fission is an unnatural act of isolating, separating,
blasting apart what used to be conjoined and mutually dependent.2 The
exquisitely beautiful atom, Nature’s physical thumbprint and foundation of life, of
God’s creation, I would say. Fission is the antithesis of life and, somehow, we have
called it “genius.”

Life happens and succeeds, rather, through a system that connects and
interweaves and interacts and is interdependent. Like a mycorrhizal network of
fungi weaving a web with the plant roots… A system of many different and
diverse elements coming together and contributing to the life and the functioning
of each other. This is the way all life systems naturally operate. And this is the way
WE need to operate.

The health of our spirit is about the health of our connectedness. The field of
Palliative Care in which I work has this National Consensus definition of
Spirituality3:

Spirituality is the aspect of humanity that refers to the way individuals seek
and express meaning and purpose and Spirituality is the way we experience our
connectedness to the moment, to self, to others, to nature, and to the significant
or sacred.

So, the health too of our spirit and emotional selves depends on the quality
of our connectedness.

I took beginning Japanese three times over a period of a couple decades, trying to
really get it to stick – and maybe a little bit has – “chotto dake.” One phrase that
kept coming to mind as I prepared these comments was “issho ni.” Issho ni – it
means “together.”

My prayer for us is one of gratitude for today, this gathering, this honoring. And
my prayer is for us to continue to come together to share our grief, or whatever
may be arising – painful or joyful – and, to proceed “issho ni” as we act to create
an interdependent, diverse, complex, beautiful and thriving world.

1 Rosemary Randall. Loss and Climate Change: The Cost of Parallel Narratives.
Ecopsychology.Sep 2009.118-129.http://doi.org/10.1089/eco.2009.0034

2 There is recorded evidence of a slow-moving, naturally occurring fission chain reaction within
the deep mantle of the earth. D. F. Hollenbach and J. M. Herndon, Deep-Earth reactor: Nuclear
fission, helium,and the geomagnetic field. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences
Vol. 98 | No. 20 September 25, 2001 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.20139399

2 There is recorded evidence of a slow-moving, naturally occurring fission chain reaction within
the deep mantle of the earth. D. F. Hollenbach and J. M. Herndon, Deep-Earth reactor: Nuclear
fission, helium,and the geomagnetic field. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences
Vol. 98 | No. 20 September 25, 2001 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.20139399