Fundraising for local charities and dancing with stars years ago, I was paired with professionals to move and groove to R.E.M.’s hit song Losing My Religion. Though the southern band explained the song’s title as comparative to losing grip of one’s situation, like when Jesus lost His temperament with the Pharisees or drove moneychangers from the Temple, it speaks to most listeners about the chasm that separates corporate ecclesial structures from individual heart’s longings. On some level we each periodically get in a state of losing our religion.
I like the song, personally, because I view Jesus as an outlier of His Jewish religion, a man who challenged the many ways that religion becomes an obstacle to our relationship with God; if He walked in flesh among us today, I suspect Our Lord would have similar things to say about Christianity. Losing our religion may, in some circumstances, help us discover our faith. Like a homilist that preaches many sermons but on only a few themes, R.E.M. repeats, reprocesses, and re-presents topics in the lyrics of their many songs: It’s The End of the World As We Know It, Everybody Hurts, Night Swimming, What’s The Frequency Kenneth, Shiny Happy People… The themes include hope through suffering, redemption amidst craziness, peace in personal challenges, joy in the human condition, and mysteries of the human psyche.
The group admittedly put little thought into their name when forming a band in college. “R.E.M.” refers to rapid eye movements, a phenomenon that occurs while dreaming. When we dream, we are not in an unconscious state, or even one that is subconscious, but in an unawakened conscious state of reality. The eye movement indicates that we are actively engaged in activities we perceive in our mind or soul. Eye Movement Therapy or EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a popular modern psychotherapy approach to healing or coping with past difficulties or trauma. Though I have memories from childhood when I felt shame or embarrassment, and which I wish I could erase, they can’t compare to the trauma of countless women who were sexually assaulted in their youth or countless soldiers who suffered the horrors of combat and subsequent life-altering injury or countless children who grew up in material and cultural poverty with its severe ramifications. EMDR, which utilizes bi-lateral stimulations—like eye movement, hand tapping, alternate audio tones—helps victims of traumatic events reduce the negative impact of their encounters. This bi-lateral stimulation somehow helps the brain to reprocess the memory and reduce its emotional intensity, thereby quelling its negative and haunting impact when the recollections surface. Like people with chronic physical pain, those who carry emotional scars may never rid themselves of bad memories or post-traumatic stress, but they can be guided to manage their distress. If you would like to meet with a professional about EMDR, I will gladly refer you.
Where there are memories, we can rememorize, reprocess, and represent them. Each time Catholics gather for the Holy Eucharist, we recall Jesus’ instruction, “Do this in memory of me,” and, as members of His body, we re-member, re-memorialize, re-process, and re-present the horrific sacrifice and suffering He endured for the salvation of the world. Among Christ’s many titles is Lord of the Dance, and beyond the death march is a victorious dance of new life. This name title is also a song title in which the lyrics tell us that Jesus and the dance of life were present from the beginning of time, that He was enfleshed to move and groove with us in the joys and sorrows of our human condition, that He was rejected by religion but found faith in humanity, that He suffered unspeakable trauma, and that the divine dance takes us from this life’s tragedies to a glorious existence beyond where we will dance among heavenly stars. As we do this in His memory, we live with hope through suffering, redemption amidst craziness, peace in personal challenges, joy in the human condition, and we embrace the mysteries of our human psyche. His eye is on us and His loving gaze will help us overcome our struggles.
