This time of year we Alaskans know what to do: Get outdoors a little bit each day, particularly when the sun is shining. Get exercise. Use a full-spectrum light (or something similar). Take plenty of vitamin D. And most of all, remember that the darkness will pass and the light has started returning.
We accumulate our strategies as the art and science of winter endurance. We aren't born with this as instinctive knowledge; it must be taught from one generation to the next.
Enduring the darkness is a skill needed not only for dark seasons of the year, but also for dark seasons of the heart and soul. We all encounter times when the hardships and sorrow of this world threaten to overwhelm us, and our instinctive knowledge of how to endure seems to fail us. For this darkness, as with the deep winter of Alaska, we need to accumulate strategies. For that reason, I recommend that we all take our children to funerals.
I realize that sounds weird. Hear me out.
Funerals are often held in the afternoon, when children are in school. Additionally, parents are reluctant to bring children to funerals: The topic of death is often avoided, even among adults, and we feel as parents that perhaps we ought to protect children from having to experience such weighty topics at a young age. It's also hard for children to sit through a funeral, as they are often fidgety and talkative, whereas a funeral service seems like a place for quite solemnity.
But we must push past these social discomforts in order to teach out children an essential life still: Hope. We are not born with the knowledge that these dark times pass. We must be taught. We are not born with the knowledge that joy exists in the presence of sorrow. We must be taught. And although we are born with the knowledge that it is good to cry, we often forget, or are convinced otherwise. We must be re-taught.
Concerned parents provide coaches to train our children and to conduct practice, because when the whistle blows it's too late to figure out how to throw and catch the ball. We provide teachers and tutors to prepare our children for math, because when testing begins it's too late to start figuring out how to add and subtract. We must also provide a training ground for grieving, before the day comes when our children must grieve the death of their friend, their sibling, their parent. You are their coach for grieving and loss.
So, bring your children to funerals. Let them see you cry -- and laugh afterward. Let them see you mourn -- and dance afterward. Take them out of school. Let them squirm through a time of grief and remembrance, and let them -- encourage them -- to ask all of those difficult questions. And in so doing, show them that even in times of great darkness, light may shine again.
Rev. Matt Schultz is pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Anchorage. He sits on the steering committee of Christians For Equality, and he moderates the interfaith group "Better Together."
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.