Growing in grief

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This article was published 15/05/2021 (1601 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kari Miller has her whole life ahead of her, but she’s thinking about the end.

The 23-year-old recently graduated from Canadian Mennonite University with an interdisciplinary degree, the focus of which is thanatology — the study of death.

The untimely death of a close friend inspired Miller’s interest in the subject.

“I became curious about how people experience death and face death,” she explains.

Miller’s academic studies and personal experiences have led her to believe that North Americans don’t know how to grieve well.

“We numb our pain or our grief, and maybe we are uncomfortable sitting with sorrow or sitting with someone who’s experiencing sorrow,” she says. “That led me to questions like, how do we suffer well? How do humans understand our pain well and grieve?”

Miller began applying those questions to the environment last summer when she took a job organizing day camps for children at A Rocha Manitoba, a Christian environmental stewardship organization.

“When I started working with A Rocha, I was seeing life and death happen every day in the natural world,” she says. “When the seasons come — winter, spring, summer and then going back into fall — we can see how death is a part of our ecosystems. Death is also inherent in things like compost, where you have plants and decaying food waste that die naturally and are made into rich soil and nutrients that encourage other life forms to grow.”

“Working with A Rocha and my studies have taken me to a point of saying, maybe part of the reason we struggle with knowing how to grieve in North America is that we are often so disengaged and separate from the natural world,” she adds.

That idea inspired Miller to organize a virtual panel discussion last month on exploring ecological grief — a way of acknowledging and mourning the land, people, plants and animals that have been lost to the climate crisis.

The panellists included the editor of a new book about food justice, an artist-theologian, a journalist and one of Miller’s A Rocha colleagues. They spoke about lament as a powerful communal act that helps people acknowledge sorrow and leads them away from despair.

Panelists went on to discuss how taking the time to mourn environmental degradation has allowed them to step forward in hope and take action toward restoration and new life.

Born and raised in Portage la Prairie, Miller fell in love with the outdoors while attending Winkler Bible Camp as a child.

“Coming from a background of faith, I think the natural world is somewhere where we can experience and know God, and feel God’s presence,” she says.

Before people can work toward the restoration and healing of the natural world, Miller says, “the first step is to recognize what has been broken and grieve it.”

That’s where lament comes in, Marta Bunnett Wiebe said during the panel discussion.

Bunnett Wiebe, editor of the new book, Germinating Conversations: Stories from a Sustained Rural-Urban Dialogue on Food, Faith, Farming, and the Land, shared that for Christians, it is within the tension between hope and despair that the practice of lament resides.

“Lament is unique from despair in that lament is the practice of trusting God with our grief, whereas despair is a loss of trust — a loss of trust in God and in the possibility of a future for the Earth, in the case of ecological despair,” she said. “Despair is the lack of imagination for other possibilities. Lament on the other hand does not give up, even in spite of it all.”

In order to work for climate justice, people have to allow themselves space to grieve, said Josiah Neufeld, a journalist and organizer with the Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition.

He added that he finds hope in communal action.

“That’s what I find the most hopeful, is being in the streets with people who are grieving the same things I’m grieving but it’s not paralyzing for them,” he said. “There’s lots of action that needs to be taken, and when you take it with a group of people, it lifts the spirits in a way that’s really powerful.”

Organizing the discussion, which drew roughly 50 participants on Zoom, was a positive experience for Miller.

She adds that while she and the panellists are Christians, the idea of ecological grief and hope isn’t rooted solely in the Christian religion.

“It can be felt in many different religions,” Miller says. “Even people who don’t claim to believe in God (know) there’s value to be found in the natural world.”

So how can people grieve better? Miller hesitates to answer the question because she is not a grief counsellor, but she does suggest that sharing one’s struggles with others can be helpful.

“Sorrow feels a little less overwhelming when you’re walking with someone,” she says.

When it comes to ecological grief, Miller believes it’s important for people to rekindle their relationship with the natural world by engaging with the environment around them.

“Get curious. Go for walks. Ask yourself: What are the trees in my neighbourhood? What is that bird that always sings outside my window in the morning? What can I garden?”

Asking these questions, Miller adds, can lead people to ideas for practical ways they can care for the environment.

In doing so, people might just be able to live healthier lives.

“When we’re seeking human wholeness and well-being, we also need to seek well-being for the environment around us,” Miller says. “I don’t think those can be estranged or separated from one another.”

Watch a recording of the panel discussion at youtube.com/watch?v=DKlLzvlByss.

aaron.epp@gmail.com