In a note from Glenda Taylor, the leader of the woman’s retreat I will be attending this weekend in Texas, she did something she’s done every season in the 32 years that I’ve been attending. She shared the topic– Care, Self-Care, Care for Others, Compassion, and some ideas to get us thinking. These are familiar themes because we are drawn to this gathering as a place where it’s ok to care. One year, when I was a professor at a university, and the support system to get things done was so broken, people often expressed out loud the attitude, “Don’t confuse me with someone who gives a damn.” I remember telling a colleague,” I’m off to my retreat this weekend. This trying to not care is killing me.”
This need to care and how to do it became a book, even updated, and published as a revised second edition, Stillpoint: A Self-Care Playbook for Caregivers to Find Ease, and Time to Breathe, and Reclaim Joy in 2018. But hanging out with brilliant intellectuals like Glenda is humbling. In exploring a topic, she often visits her “old thick red hard copy Websters dictionary” from her college days and then moves on to more modern definitions. “Always, I learn something important,” she says.
According to Webster: The word “Care“– “Origin: Middle English, Anglo Saxon. Caru, cearu, meaning sorrow”
Glenda: At the ancient root of caring, we find it means sorrow. Thus, to care is to sorrow! Built in. A given!”
As you may know I am a grief consultant, a grief advocate, and working on my next book titled The Art of Grieving, so Glenda is not the only one learning something important from her journey through her dictionaries. I have been exploring and writing about companioning, which is supporting a loved one while they journey through their grief, and of course, what’s needed for that job is compassion. Compassion means “to suffer together” so now I understand more fully the connection between caring and sorrow.
Glenda: Next my dictionary says:
“Akin to Goth kara & German kar- the suffix in karfreitag, which is Good Friday” !!!
(Wow! Care, at least originally, meant not just sorrow, but big suffering sorrow, Good Friday crucifixion sorrow.)”
Glenda: Further origins – “IE base gar is to cry out, to scream, and, as in Latin, garrulus garrulous (checking my Webster, garrulous means “to chatter, to talk much, often about unimportant things, loquacious.“ Thus, at root the meaning of care is, of necessity, to cry out, to scream, and to talk, talk, talk.
What happened next can only be explained by one of my favorite quotes, “God comes to us disguised as our life.” I have been in email communication with a minister colleague from the InterPlay improvisational art community, Johannas Jordon. She responded to what I had written about “communal grieving processes not being in place to help individuals and communities grieve losses that happen, especially due to large scale societal forces.”
Jo offered this example of what might be behind our cultural lack of caring and compassion sometimes. “It hit me that we don’t even let Jesus be killed and die. We don’t want to hear about it or see it. Many Christians I know reject any image of the Jesus crucified. Crucifixes are not tolerated in their houses of worship or their homes or on their persons. Crosses, empty crosses are seen in abundance. But not the one with death. We tidy up and water down the death of Jesus, which is central to the Christian religion! How nuts is that?”
Following the definitions in her newer dictionaries, Glenda finds five definitions for care which helps to explain how complicated caring can be, and what we mean by it.
- Grief, mental pain, (suffer with)
- Close attention, watchfulness, (“Take care of yourself.”)
- A liking or regard (for) inclination to do something
- Charge, protection, (children in our care)
- Something to worry about or tend to
Seeing these choices, I thought about a particular care of mine – a liking, a dedication really to doing a good job. An incident last week made that impossible when my zoom account was cancelled suddenly and unexpectedly, creating an emergency sorrow which didn’t play well in solving the problem. When I learned that it was my mistake, I had failed to renew my subscription, I struggled to treat myself with care and compassion, and to worry less about the people trying to get into my zoom room. But as writer Sally Kempton puts it, “It’s hard to fight an enemy that has outposts in your head.”
So, I’m off to Texas this Friday to be around people who love and care about me. I’ve warned them that “I’m a bit of a mess,” but Glenda reassures me that they already know that, and she says, “You’re our mess.”
If you want more of the wisdom of Glenda Taylor visit her website https://oneandallwisdom.com/
