Wild, Wandering Dogs
Help me create a new series about spiritual deconstruction through the lens of grief
Deconstruction is a grieving process.
In Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church by the late Rachel Held Evans, she writes:
“There are recovery programs for people grieving the loss of a parent, sibling, or spouse. You can buy books on how to cope with the death of a beloved pet or work through the anguish of a miscarriage. We speak openly with one another about the bereavement that can accompany a layoff, a move, a diagnosis, or a dream deferred. But no one really teaches you how to grieve the loss of your faith.”
She wrote that almost ten years ago, and, unfortunately, it’s still true.
Grief and deconstruction are, in so many ways, similar. But while the former is clothed in language, the latter is not. One has support groups, while the other is primarily internalized. A self-contained implosion. A uniquely isolating experience.
I don’t say this to minimize the soul-rending experience of traditional grief but to shine a light on the process of deconstruction and illustrate why souls walking through it are so disoriented, wounded, hopeless, and in despair.
In this new series, I’m going to be exploring the deconstruction journey through the lens of psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and her modified seven “stations” of grief:
Shock
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Testing
Acceptance
This series has been researched and will include input from theologians, psychologists, writers, and other trained brains. But, like with most of my writing, I’ll also be pulling from my own experiences with deconstruction.
I would also love to include you and your experiences. If you have a deconstruction experience heavily colored by one of the grief terms listed above, please email me: lauren@cibene.com.
You will, of course, be credited and linked in the final post unless you’d like to remain anonymous, which is absolutely okay, too.
A Note About Order
Just like with traditional types of grief, spiritual deconstruction is lawless. It observes no rules and certainly no timelines.
Each of the seven “stations” can occur whenever they want, and they stay for however long they want. Some might not show up at all. Some will keep showing up, over and over, like a nocturnal animal that keeps knocking over your garbage cans. It’ll make a huge mess every time and prove particularly frustrating for type-A people just trying to power through each season like tasks on a To-Do list.1
But this is all normal. In the words of Sarah Bessey in Out of Sorts, “Few of us follow a straight line in our spiritual story: we squiggle and wiggle, stop and start, progress and regress, rest and recoup, charge ahead recklessly and take sharp turns or stumble into ditches that turn out to be portals.”
So, while I’m listing each of the seven seasons in the order that they usually appear in textbooks, I do want to make it clear: each deconstruction process is unique. And just because yours might not look like this list doesn’t mean you’re somehow off track or left behind or doing it “wrong.”
To that same point, I’m adopting the terminology established by Mark Gregory Karris in Religious Refugees. He uses the word stations instead of stages because, in his words, “The word stage conveys an air of judgment. Stages assume that people move on to higher and higher planes of experience—and, of course, the higher the stage, the better off a person is thought to be.”
I would also add that stage can feel dismissive and minimizing. I would never tell someone their anger is “just a stage,” because the simple fact is that might not be true. Regardless, it is neither helpful nor empathetic to say.
On the other hand, stations, Karris says, implies a gathering place. A place to rest where we can commune with people who identify deeply not only with the struggles we’re facing but also with the insights and healing we might have just stumbled into.
That feels really comforting to me.
Onward
I once heard a decorated sommelier tell a story about two exchange students hiking along South Africa’s Wild Coast.
On their second day on the trail, the students noticed a wild dog was following them. They didn’t mind. It wasn’t aggressive, nor was it particularly shy. For six days and 100 miles, the wild dog was a constant presence and companion until, in the middle of their final night on the trail, it disappeared.
When the tired hikers arrived in town, they asked locals about the wild dog. The locals weren’t surprised. “Oh yes, that’s Lubanzi. He lives on the trail and walks alongside first-timers.”
The name Lubanzi means love is vast.2
This deconstruction trail we’re walking is rough.
It’s winding and long, and the elevation sickness can be brutal. But even out here, there are reminders that love is vast. If we pay attention, we might notice that it’s walking right beside us.
I hope you’ll lace up your hiking boots and come along on this journey with me.
It’s me. I’m type-A people.
Those two exchange students went on to partner with local South Africans to start a forward-thinking and socially responsible wine company named for that wild, wandering dog. Lubanzi is committed to an equitable supply chain and providing health and education resources for the families that work in South Africa’s wine industry. Not to mention, the wine is simply gorgeous.
Great 👍
My favorite meditation on the experience of loss, grief, trauma, deconstruction, and reconstitution--not quite healing, not quite restoration, but a secret third thing--is a video game entitled "Gris." Calling it a video game wildly mischaracterizes it, however; it is in fact performance art enacted by the player in conjunction with the writers, designers, artists, and musicians who created it to be so accessible, anyone could walk through it. You can play it on your phone, computer--anything. I recommend it to everyone, including people who would never pick up a game. You must try it. It gave me so much hope and comfort during a time when I had almost no other source of it. And, yes--it's all about those stations.