Seeking comfort in faith
By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion & Ethics Writer
Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser
Joyce Cassen Levey took her last hike with her 19-year-old son Daniel on July 4. They rose to the top of Kamehame Ridge, to which Cassen Levy returned alone last week.
Joyce and Norm Levey sit atop Kamehame Ridge high above Kaupo Beach near Makapu'u Point. Their son, Daniel, 19, died in July while hiking another Ko'olau ridge. Kamehame Ridge was one of Daniel's favorite places on O'ahu.
Here, at the apex of the ridge, rolling clouds cast shadows onto reef-rippled Wai-
manalo Bay below. Here, in the ponderous quiet, she can think about the "whys" left by her son's death a few weeks after that hike.
Daniel fell to his death July 21 on another ridge hike, part of his summerlong quest to hike all the summits of the Ko'olaus.
Why, asks the mother of two, was her eldest taken at the first blush of adulthood? Why did a young man with such potential fail to see his junior year at the University of Oregon? "Maybe it'll become clear in future," she said.
Cassen Levey has found comfort in the rituals of her religion, Judaism, yet there is no question that times like these try people's faith — including that of her 16-year-old daughter.
What can be said to those tested by the worst that fate passes out? Honolulu clergy from several different religious traditions said the key lies in how you phrase the question.
"Comes down to, what do you expect from God?" said the Rev. Chris Cartwright, a Jesuit priest. "That's the heart of questions of faith."
Answer depends
Sometimes a minister confronts a time without answers. Young people can die long before their time, like Cartwright's older brother, who died of cancer at age 47.
Others linger long past, like his 107-year-old neighbor, who outlived her husband by 52 years. The woman asked, "Why is God leaving me here?"
Daniel Cassen Levey From the "senior section" of the 2001 Punahou yearbook
If you expect God never to let anyone face a tragedy or death, you're in for hard times, said the director of Catholic Campus Ministry at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.
"Don't ask for a light load, ask for a strong back. The greater the challenge, the greater the glory. You can't look at a man on top of a mountain and say he fell there."
"People die by the minute, for inexplicable reasons," Cartwright said. "I think there is non-sense — some unexplainable things."
But, he adds, "I personally don't want a God who pulls strings."
Sometimes the answers are hard.
The Leveys' faith counselor, Rabbi Itchel Krasnjansky of Chabad of Hawaii, said he believes God has a plan, a purpose, for everyone — but we might not like it.
"We human beings can't understand God's plan," he said. "We are limited, finite, small specks in the scheme. The wisdom we do have is wondrous." Krasnjansky said it's not his job to defend God: "God doesn't need defending."
Sometimes the answers are easy.
A woman who suffered a miscarriage asked John Honold, senior pastor of Hope Chapel Kapolei, why God was punishing her.
Honold said he does not believe God brings condemnation on anyone. But God is there to comfort through the pain.
Faith helped
Daniel Levey
It comforts the Leveys to know that Daniel died doing the thing he loved. Running and hiking trails put him close to God.
Last photo taken before he fell and died on a hike of Mau'umae trail above Maunalani Heights.
"He said the first five miles were physical," remembers his father, Dr. Norm Levey, an oncologist. "But the next five were spiritual."
Their faith community included supportive friends who helped them through the hard times, said Cassen Levey, who recalls the shiva and sheloshim for Daniel as important milestones in her mourning.
In their faith, "there is no excessive mourning," said Rabbi Krasnjansky. While the Jewish tradition sets a time for a shiva — seven days in which the family stays home to take in their loss — as well as sheloshim, a memorial service held 30 days later, they are given a year to mourn. A gravestone-setting service bookends the mourning, though the person is remembered on the anniversary of his death.
From there, one looks forward.
"We believe the soul is eternal," the rabbi said.
Cartwright, a former high-school chaplain, knows about looking forward.
In Arizona, at the Jesuit high school where he served, two boys who had just graduated were driving in Mexico. They swerved on a turn. They weren't wearing seat belts. And the two boys were lost. The community was devastated.
When he spoke at their funerals, Cartwright talked about how full of life the two men were when he got to know them on their senior retreat. (Ironically, the retreat was called Kairos, which means "God's time.")
"Grief isn't wrong. It's not something we get rid of ... We're not true to them if we don't go forward; it doesn't do them justice," Cartwright said at the funeral. "They were moving forward — we admire that in youth. We're left breathless by it. To be true to them, we must move forward."
'Hope of slaves'
Cartwright, who was raised Catholic, is more comfortable than most with the concept of death, but even he says it's harder to counsel people who don't believe or find hope in the notion of God: "I don't know what to say to them."
While a recent Newsweek poll reported that an astounding 76 percent of Americans believe in heaven, Michael Cain is not among them.
"The hereafter is the hope of slaves," said Cain, 37, a Honolulu environmental policy analyst. "(Believers say) 'This life sucks, we'll be happy in the afterlife.' No, this is life we have. It makes it more imperative to fight for the rights of others. ... Without a next life, we have to accept what's now."
Cain, who grew up in Detroit and calls himself areligious, used to manage a crisis hot line that dealt mostly with the violently mentally ill, suicides and homicides, he said.
"On the crisis line, we didn't notice a difference between believers and non," he said. "Sometimes the believers had a harder time (when a crisis struck), because they wondered, how could God betray them?
"Of course, I don't have an answer."
Cain's friend, Manny Escarcega Jr., didn't have religion to turn to when his mother, a devout Catholic, died. "My faith crisis began when I was in sixth grade," said the 37-year-old Mexican American, who chose not to be confirmed with his class in eighth grade.
When his mother died, Escarcega did not take part in religious rituals in the funeral, though he was in the church.
"I (still) relied on family support and friends," he said. "I've always been able to draw on my own inner self in a crisis. I saw religion as empty. I couldn't get any comfort (from it)."
He finds intellect carries him further than divine influence. "I don't say, 'God wills it' (but) 'This happens because there's a disease, and the disease wasn't discovered in time.' ... That which I don't understand, I accept."
'Close to God'
• After her son died, Dr. Joyce Cassen Levey found it helped when people let her take the lead in mourning. She appreciated when people let her approach them. "You want to be on autopilot, cruise for a little while," she said. • Routine helped Cassen Levey gain strength, such as going to work: "I was able to five or 10 minutes click into office practice (mode)," she said. "That made me feel good. I'd exercise, make coffee. ... I never liked having a routine before, but I found security in it." • Recognize there's a time to mourn, said John Honold, pastor at Hope Chapel. And counseling can help. • Don't expect closure, said the Rev. Chris Cartwright, but quiet acceptance. "It's never over. But quiet acceptance goes hand in hand with the ability to walk forward, carrying your burden." • As for comfort, Father Cartwright likes something he heard another priest say at a funeral once: "Think as if you're saying goodbye to someone going on a long journey, whom we'll never see again. We should realize there's someone on the other side of their journey, waiting for them, ready to greet them with open arms, whether it's a journey to the other end of the world or the next world." Resources: • "The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning" by Maurice Lamm is a good guide, Cassen Levey said. • "The Mourner's Dance: What We Do When People Die" by Katherine Ashenburg • "Death and Bereavement Across Cultures" edited by Colin Murray Parkes
The Rev. Kaleo Patterson says his faith gets stronger in a crisis. And Patterson knows crisis. His family lost its home in Hurricane 'iniki, and just last week his Wai'anae home caught fire, taking with it his daughter's 13th birthday presents.
Dealing with trauma or loss
"What happens is you get real close to your source," said the kahu, pastor at Ka Hana O Ke Akua Church.
"I felt so close to God, and God was very near to us, concerned about us, guiding us."
As Daniel Levey put it in a paper he wrote for his Punahou religion class: "Religion is like a pillow for people. It comforts them, lets them sleep better and makes their life better. It answers questions in their life that might otherwise make them insecure, such as those dealing with life, death, or morality ... and also puts motivation, direction and purpose in people's lives."
Patterson said, "I always have that feeling that God is really helping us to work through this crisis, not the cause of this crisis. ... God is bringing people through in the way that's going to create a new beginning, make people stronger."
Meaning in crisis
The time of pain and grief "is a very holy time," he said.
"The hurt is an indication of deep love you have, and that's a special thing," he said. "It means you're alive. Not only you're alive, but you know love."
Hope Chapel pastor Honold knows loss helps us grow.
"Setbacks bring out the best in God's people," said Honold, who has suffered marital problems and physical problems, but says his faith outlasted both. "That's what I've seen happen."
Bible college student Dexter Kishida said God helped him through the tough times, like when his mother divorced a second time during his sophomore year of high school.
The 23-year-old food-service worker said he had seen proof of God in his life. "I've always known the peace in the midst of the storm," he said. "Sure, it's raining and pouring, the waves are crashing, but knowing He's in the boat with me gives me comfort."
But what do you do when the pain is so powerful, the burden so heavy, the path offers no escape?
If you're Cassen Levey, you head back to the heights that lured your first-born, and attempt to connect with his spirit — and that of his maker.
This morning, Cassen Levey and friends will start yet another hike to Hawai'i's heights, starting from the Kalawahine trailhead and heading to the Nu'uanu lookout.
"I feel that this will help me with closure of the tragedy," she said.
Reach Mary Kaye Ritz at mritz@honoluluadvertiser.com or call 525-8035.
