For this week’s litany I’m thinking of the texts, in which we are exhorted to BE JOYFUL! Because God is saving the day. God is rescuing, healing, restoring, setting-right. But I’m also thinking about Bargaining, the third stage of grief, as proposed by Dr Kessler and Dr. Kubler-Ross. For more on why I’m juxtaposing these two lenses on Advent, please go back and read my introduction to Advent Week 1.
In the Bargaining phase, our sorrow-stricken minds fight against reality. We cannot accept the state of things, so in our distress, the ego puffs up. It tells us that we can change this, we can fix it; it insists that this is not the way things will be and we’ll use whatever means necessary to remedy it. We bargain - possessions, behaviors, money, priorities, whatever we have at hand - in the futile hope that we can make a deal with the Powers That Be that will change their mind. Perhaps I can give up this bad habit and God will relent? Perhaps I can perform this act of service and the mind of the Universe will be changed? We try to force things to be the way we want them to be.
This is different from Denial. Denial cannot look reality in the face. Bargaining observes it and insists that it can be controlled. In the Bargaining phase, we believe we can trade something of ours for a different outcome. Advent is traditionally considered a penitential season. Our tendency toward bargaining slips in when we imagine that we might use the penitential season for our own ends.
I think we all get lost in this Bargaining phase now and again. Hopefully we pass through it sooner than later. I see whole swaths of church culture that are based in a prosperity gospel ego ponzi scheme of bargaining.
But real joy doesn’t come by force. It has no strings attached. In my experience, it comes to me by way of my awareness: I wake up to it - it was there all along. I was just too distracted to see it before. I must cultivate my awareness so that I can flow with joy.
Where bargaining forces, joy allows. Where bargaining tightens, joy releases. Where bargaining resists what is, joy looks without judgement and sees beyond. Where bargaining seeks control, joy assumes childlike trust. Spiritual teachers the world over have been saying this for millennia.
This is not to say that this, or any, phase of grief is inherently bad. It’s simply a point on the journey many of us will take. No need to try to avoid it. All we can do is notice and learn. We can offer loving awareness to that urge to strong-arm our circumstances.
God, sometimes we get caught up in illusions of control.
We think that we can force the world to bend to our will,
Or manipulate our grief away.
We hold joy at arms-length while we struggle to avoid pain.