Three columns from January

Good marriage requires sweat

BY NORRIS BURKES • FLORIDA TODAY•
January 9, 2011

I've done a lot of premarital counseling. It's a
serious endeavor, but it can be fraught with
comedy.

Just a few weeks before a wedding, I once had a
groom-to-be toss me a "by-the-way bomb."

"My fiancée wants to omit the promise, 'Till death do
us part.' Would that be a deal breaker for the
ceremony?"

Deju vu. It was the same question from a bride-to-
be who asked me to change the promise to read,
"Till love do us part."

"I really have to stick with the unabridged format," I
told them both. The first couple found another
chaplain and the latter couple dissolved their
marriage when the groom left on a Navy cruise and
the bride parted to go with a land lover.

Unfortunately, marriage counseling is far less
comedic and much more frustrating. The most
frustrating thing is that I feel like I have been
blessed with a marriage that I cannot clone in
others.

A good marriage is a complicated dish, and I don't
have the recipe or I'd publish it.

Often I've come home from a difficult counseling
case, and I'll hold my wife tight. There is no greater
priority than my marriage, because I believe God
gave marriage to mankind as the closest equal to
unconditional love. Despite God's intention for
marriage, many are willing to take the risk of making
marriage analogous to hell.

While working as a hospital chaplain, a respiratory
therapist burst into my office, "Chaplain, Chaplain!
She said 'yes!' "

"She" was another therapist who'd just accepted his
wedding proposal after two years of dating. I knew
them well enough to assume their biggest challenge
would be to quit smoking. Despite what respiratory
therapists witness, some still smoke like chimneys.

He heralded the news from
floor to floor until he arrived on the bottom floor --
literally and figuratively. Upon arriving in the unit
where his old girlfriend was the shift manager, she
gave him a congratulatory hug. Then she invited
him into a closet, where she "congratulated" him a
bit more thoroughly.

In a hot Texas minute, a two-year relationship went
up in smoke. Hospital administration congratulated
them both with unpaid vacations.


When you see people like these therapists risking
something so precious, it shakes you. You try to
define and categorize what you have in a vain
attempt to keep it and control it. I wish it worked
that way.

I am not entirely sure what my wife and I have. It's
the kind of love that continues, whether I burn the
toast or burn my temper. It's a love that tells me I'm
forgiven before I ask. It's the kind of love described
in our wedding vow that "halves a sorrow and
doubles a joy."

Like many couples, we sometimes go to bed dead
tired, sometimes too tired for the fun I seek and too
tired for the prayers she wants. But we rarely are too
tired to talk out our day and absolutely never too
tired for our three good night kisses and "I love
you."

Still, maybe there is a thing that I know about
marriage that respiratory therapists also know about
smokers. Therapists, who watch smokers die, know
they are no less likely to become smokers.
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Ministers, who watch marriages die, aren't any less
likely to divorce. It takes work to quit smoking, and
it takes work to make marriages successful.

So at the end of the day, I realize there is something
Freudian about the way my fast fingers always often
seem to mistype "sweetheart" into "sweatheart."

A good marriage takes a lot of work and spiritual
sweat.

I love you, sweat-heart. Happy 31st anniversary.

Burkes is a former civilian hospital chaplain and an
Air National Guard chaplain. Write
norris@thechaplain.net or visit thechaplain.net.



I don't understand unimaginable tragedies


BY NORRIS BURKES • FLORIDA TODAY• January
16, 2011


Last week, when all hell broke loose in a Tucson,
Ariz., parking lot, I was attending a writer's
workshop. The instructor challenged us to write an
essay beginning with the phrase: "I've never
understood why . . ."

Normally, my writer's block kicks into overdrive
when faced with contrived topics, but the Tucson
events easily cued me to write about a similar event
22 years ago this week.

I've never understood why we aren't doing more to
stop these tragedies. If you were there with me in
the Stockton, Calif., schoolyard after Patrick Purdey
released a hail of bullets that injured 29 and killed
five Asian children between 6 and 8 years old, you,
too, might say, "I don't understand."

If you shared tears, as I did, with the school's
principal who caressed the pale faces of dying
children, you, too, would say, "I don't understand."

If you stared into the eyes of the Cambodian mother
and her 11-year-old son as she repeated, "No
understand. No understand," you'd wonder as I did:
How can I make her understand the unimaginable?

So, I showed her a list of names and pointed to her
daughter's name. I pursed my lips to hold back my
own tears and shook my head sadly.

The woman immediately understood. "Sh-di?" she
said. Our eyes collided with a pained look of
confusion. I did not understand her.

"Sh-di?" she repeated.

This time I understood. She was asking if her
daughter had died.

"Yes," I said, looking into her stoic face. "She died.
I'm so sorry. She die."

She looked at her English-speaking son in search of
a second opinion and he gave a confirming nod.


She did not cry. Neither one of them moved. But
suddenly, in something that I can only describe as
"emotional ventriloquism," her grief was transmitted
into her son's eyes and a small tear traced a path
along his frozen face. Inside he was surely saying, "I
don't understand."

How could I make them understand that, despite
their escape from the killing fields of Southeast Asia,
their children could be mowed down like wheat in a
field within the boundaries of a country that had
begged them to come.


If you had been in that room with us, and in my
bedroom for the next year as I lie awake nursing
those horrendous images, you, too, would shake in
anguish saying, "I don't understand."

So as I watched the news coming from Tucson, I
kept saying, "I don't understand." And I still don't.

I don't understand why we aren't taking better care
of the mentally ill. I don't understand why news
media talking heads from both sides of the political
debate continue to fuel the fire with hateful rhetoric.

But most of all, from my perspective, I don't
understand why the Federal Assault Weapons Ban,
passed a few years after Cleveland Elementary, was
allowed to expire on Sept. 13, 2004. I will never
understand the opposition to common sense things
like a national waiting period to buy guns or better
background checks.

I think we all understand, however, the universal
teaching, "Thou shalt not kill."
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And when we entertain hateful rhetoric, stifle health
care for the mentally ill and fail to responsibly
regulate guns, we share complicity in these killings.

I suppose I should steel myself for the onslaught of
e-mail from people who will urge me, as people
often do when they disagree with me, to stay out of
politics and stick with religion.

And to those folks, I pre-emptively declare: There is
no more important religious issue than life. I
choose life.





Norris Burkes: Expressing sympathy can be a tricky task


BY NORRIS BURKES • FLORIDA TODAY• January
23, 2011


"What we've got here is (a) failure to communicate" is
the statement made famous by the prison warden in
the 1967 film "Cool Hand Luke." It's a line I find
myself repeating when a reader's interpretation of
my column sounds like something pulled from a
rabbit hole.

I'll usually respond with: "What I meant to say . . .,"
but it's rare that the reader will renege and let me
know, "Oh, now I understand."

Such are the limitations of written communication.

Perhaps nowhere is communication more important
than in the moment we attempt to convey sympathy
or understanding. As a chaplain, I've noticed there
are three ways people can show concern toward
someone who has experienced a tragedy or a loss
in their lives.

First, there is a written form. Inevitably, someone
introduces written communication expressed
through a greeting card. Discussion arises on who
will pick the card. What is appropriate? Something
direct or something poetic?

With the card purchased, everyone signs it. Some
are artificially relieved with the feeling they've done
something. And yes, it's something, but it's very
limited in what it can convey.

Secondly, I encourage people to talk to the bereft,
because speech doesn't have the limitations of the
written word. If someone misunderstands your
speech, it can be repeated, slowed, rephrased,
softened or strengthened. Or you simply can try
again later.

There are good things to say to those who are
hurting that will help them express their grief. I
advise people to simply state their observations.

You can say things such as: "I know you were very
close to her." "I have no idea what it must be like for
you." "People are going to miss him, especially you."
"All of this is unreal. It must be hard to accept."


The best conversations share memories of the
deceased. By offering stories and anecdotes, you
show willingness to keep memories alive. If you
didn't know the deceased, it's a good idea to invite
the sharing of a story or photo.

But even speech has its problems. The list is long of
things not to say, such as: "It was God's will." "I
know how you feel." "God doesn't give you more
than you can handle." "Give it time."


Unfortunately, the fear of saying the wrong thing
often will silence people and leave the grieving
feeling neglected.

That's why I favor personal presence as the best
form of communicating your sympathy. Presence
trumps writing and speech.

I often quote the story of the nurse who introduced
me to a woman whose mother was bleeding to death
in our operating room. Knowing there was nothing I
could say to make it better, I simply asked her if I
could sit in reverent silence while her mother died.

She readily accepted.

People who share their presence are people who go
beyond the impotent offer, "If there's anything I can
do, let me know."

When my father died, my sister anticipated these
cliché offers, so she prepared a signup list of
errands and chores that invited people to be present
in the grief process. People who were sincere in
their offer stood up and showed up. One man even
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mowed my widowed mother's lawn for a year.

By communicating willingness to disregard our
comforts and be present following or during the
moments of tragedy, we ensure there is no failure to
communicate God's love.

Burkes is a former civilian hospital chaplain and an
Air National Guard chaplain. Write
norris@thechaplain.net or visit thechaplain.net.You
also can follow him on Facebook at facebook.
com/norrisburkes.