The passage of time is neutral. How it may feel, what it can mean, and what one does with one’s time is what matters.
On the Strength of All Conviction and the Stamina of Love
by Jennifer Michael Hecht
Sometimes I think
we could have gone on.
All of us. Trying. Forever.
But they didn’t fill
the desert with pyramids.
They just built some. Some.
They’re not still out there,
building them now. Everyone,
everywhere, gets up, and goes home.
Yet we must not
diabolize time. Right?
We must not curse the passage of time.
Jennifer Michael Hecht, “On the Strength of All Conviction and the Stamina of Love” from The Next Ancient World. Copyright © 2001 by Jennifer Michael. From The Writers’Almanac, 6/6/21.
The title of this poem alone is enough to make me reflect once more on the holiness of trying. Jesus of Nazareth was idealized at birth, then as he grew was accused of being possessed, crazy, heretical, criminal, and last but not least, suicidally critical of all religious and political authority of his times. For this he was worshiped and executed—all within a short 30 years. He made the most of his time.
In July,1998, I was driving too fast along the Massachusetts Turnpike, racing down to Connecticut, my eyes wet with tears as I munched on a hastily prepared, soggy tunafish sandwich. I’d received a call from the nursing home where my mom had lived for the last four years. The nurse apologized for the first call in which she had informed me that, although Mom was fading toward death, there was no rush. Now there was a rush. She was nearing death as I drove. Would I make it? Please God, let me make it?
My sister was on vacation and not coming home. I’d asked my oldest daughter who lived close by to go to her grandmother’s bedside. She told me later that Gahmy, as she called my mother, had ordered a peanut butter sandwich for her “last meal.” The nurse wondered if that was such a good idea, and Mom replied, “Can you think of a better one?” She then told my daughter that she saw an angel and said of her dying: “This won’t take long, darling.”
But I was speeding. Why? One more goodbye? To say what exactly? I wasn’t sure but, as I checked traffic in my rear-view mirror before I moved into the passing lane to increase my speed, I saw a clear lane. I also say my mother’s face. The image was clear, its message even clearer: “She tried.” I knew suddenly, after a lifetime of struggle with my mom’s zeal over me which I experienced as overbearing “sMOTHERation”, that she had tried. She tried to make everything nice and good for me and my family. Yes, it felt controlling to me, and yes it was her way of trying, the only way she knew. She had tried.
She was dead when I arrived at her bedside, but not by much. My daughter and a chaplain friend were there. What exactly does one do in such moments? You follow your own instincts—not Hollywood’s. I sat beside her and looked at her pale face. Her mouth was agape but not yet stiff, so I closed it, noting that on her lips there was a crooked line of fresh lipstick she’d painted on—by body memory. It was exactly how she would want to look to meet her “Maker”—possibly her own beloved father who had died and left her heartbroken at the tender age of twelve.
Silently I prayed, Oh God, if you do this sort of thing somewhere in the universe of all our projected heavens, tell my mother our whole story and wipe away her tears—and mine. Oh, and tell her I’m trying, too.
* * * *
Time passed, and in time, many who knew Jesus well recognized Divinity in his gospel and in his behavior. They wrote it all down, and now, centuries later, many still compete over the correct definitions for goodness/Godness in the world. And just as many, and more, keep trying, for that is the way of it.
Simply so.
Showing posts with label Death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Death. Show all posts
Sunday, June 13, 2021
2021.06.13 Time Passes—And Passes
Thursday, December 21, 2017
2017.12.21 A Death At Christmas
When someone dies near Christmas time people take it harder than at other times of year. Why is that? I suppose it creates an inner emotional conflict between joy and sorrow, between bright red and grey-blue. You know what I mean. We just have to feel both. God carries it all in one sacred heart, and good friends are friends or family who do not try to talk you in or out of your true feelings.
Christmas colors are bright red, gold, green. Christmas colors are also blue and black and gray. Simply so.
Today on the liturgical calendar is a day set aside to remember the apostle Thomas, one of Jesus’s disciples. He’s known for being a doubter, but that’s poppycock. All he asked for was the facts, please. And Jesus, with deep respect, honored Thomas’s request. Simply so. Death is like that.
On December 18th, a friend of many years died. Everyone called her Glo. Some of her grandchildren called her GoGo. Her full name was Gloria Masterson Richardson. She had more than her share of tragedy in her 90 years of earthly life, and yet she remained cussedly independent, no, obdurate, yet never lost her faith in Jesus Christ and herself, and kept her sense of humor, which was epic! As she was going in and out of her dying she quipped to me over the phone which the good nurse held to her ear: “Better stick around for the damn carolers!” That was Glo. She was a poet, a mentor, a sister in faith, and my first official writing teacher, not to mention heavy duty cheerleader.
Glo had three wishes she hoped would come true before she died:
-that she would be able to attend her grandson’s wedding;
- that she would live to see her dear friend Catherine admitted as a Companion to the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross, a “community of women, Christ's disciples, called by God to a life of prayer, transformation and reconciliation within ourselves, within our Companionship, within our faith communities, and within the whole creation” of which Glo was a member;
-that she would live to see her first book, a collection of her fine poetry, published.
All three happened—no miracle just the facts and lots of loving help . . .
Glo attended the wedding in a beautiful blue dress, which Catherine helped her buy—a comic adventure that ended in beauty. (Where is the bathroom in a huge department store—ever?)
Catherine McGeary was admitted as a Companion on September 16, 2016.
Glo’s book of poetry, Currents, was placed into her dying hands by Catherine less than 24 hours before she died. Did she know it? Dying or not, no one misses the feel of a first book.
Here is one of Glo’s poems—a prayer of wisdom and serenity and courage.
PRAYER
by Gloria Masterson Richardson
Open my heart, Lord,
so that I can be strong enough,
brave enough to surrender
to your healing love.
When I cannot say the words,
speak for me;
cannot trust, hold me;
cannot cry, weep for me;
cannot help, reach out for me;
cannot see the path, light my way.
Amen.
And here is a poem I wrote for her as she lay dying.
Helplessly Hopeful at 90
by Lyn G. Brakeman
The old lady poet
—never a poetess—
is dying,
wasting away before my eyes
and ears,
her voice stiffens
her chuckle flutters
her cheeks sag and pouch
her faith mellows.
She is dimming—
only a poem brightens her day,
engages her mind
delights her soul—
a poem or heaven
the same to her.
“I’m just moving on through it,”
she tells me.
No not yet, I think, and cry.
If I were God I’d say to her:
Gloria, you are a poem
Mine.
Christmas colors are bright red, gold, green. Christmas colors are also blue and black and gray. Simply so.
Today on the liturgical calendar is a day set aside to remember the apostle Thomas, one of Jesus’s disciples. He’s known for being a doubter, but that’s poppycock. All he asked for was the facts, please. And Jesus, with deep respect, honored Thomas’s request. Simply so. Death is like that.
On December 18th, a friend of many years died. Everyone called her Glo. Some of her grandchildren called her GoGo. Her full name was Gloria Masterson Richardson. She had more than her share of tragedy in her 90 years of earthly life, and yet she remained cussedly independent, no, obdurate, yet never lost her faith in Jesus Christ and herself, and kept her sense of humor, which was epic! As she was going in and out of her dying she quipped to me over the phone which the good nurse held to her ear: “Better stick around for the damn carolers!” That was Glo. She was a poet, a mentor, a sister in faith, and my first official writing teacher, not to mention heavy duty cheerleader.
Glo had three wishes she hoped would come true before she died:
-that she would be able to attend her grandson’s wedding;
- that she would live to see her dear friend Catherine admitted as a Companion to the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross, a “community of women, Christ's disciples, called by God to a life of prayer, transformation and reconciliation within ourselves, within our Companionship, within our faith communities, and within the whole creation” of which Glo was a member;
-that she would live to see her first book, a collection of her fine poetry, published.
All three happened—no miracle just the facts and lots of loving help . . .
Glo attended the wedding in a beautiful blue dress, which Catherine helped her buy—a comic adventure that ended in beauty. (Where is the bathroom in a huge department store—ever?)
Catherine McGeary was admitted as a Companion on September 16, 2016.
Glo’s book of poetry, Currents, was placed into her dying hands by Catherine less than 24 hours before she died. Did she know it? Dying or not, no one misses the feel of a first book.
Here is one of Glo’s poems—a prayer of wisdom and serenity and courage.
PRAYER
by Gloria Masterson Richardson
Open my heart, Lord,
so that I can be strong enough,
brave enough to surrender
to your healing love.
When I cannot say the words,
speak for me;
cannot trust, hold me;
cannot cry, weep for me;
cannot help, reach out for me;
cannot see the path, light my way.
Amen.
And here is a poem I wrote for her as she lay dying.
Helplessly Hopeful at 90
by Lyn G. Brakeman
The old lady poet
—never a poetess—
is dying,
wasting away before my eyes
and ears,
her voice stiffens
her chuckle flutters
her cheeks sag and pouch
her faith mellows.
She is dimming—
only a poem brightens her day,
engages her mind
delights her soul—
a poem or heaven
the same to her.
“I’m just moving on through it,”
she tells me.
No not yet, I think, and cry.
If I were God I’d say to her:
Gloria, you are a poem
Mine.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
2016.02.28 Death Is Not Eternally Ugly, Is It?
“The pain passes, but the beauty remains.” Pierre-August Renoir (1841-1919), the great painter in the early impressionist movement, said this to his assistants as he instructed them to finish his last sculptures in 1913. By then Renior was severely crippled with arthritis. He'd kept on painting through it all. Such passion reminds me of an organization I choose to fund in small regular ways: Foot and Mouth Artists. Despite the ugly pain of paralysis, these artists create significant beauty, holding brushes between their toes and teeth.
There is death in life, before biological death. Can death be beautiful I wonder? Can beauty contain elements of death? Many great artists paint, write, dance, or sing painful death scenes, like crucifixion. The art alone evokes beautiful feelings. I mean feelings profound enough to move one to the soul's core—of love, sorrow, even anger and fright, or deep joy. Sometimes, memory and awareness, changes of heart, and healing come out of death’s beauty. It is the beauty that remains.
When my sister Jeanie died at 34 after surgery for the removal of brain aneurysms, it was painful, and so unnatural as to be free of pain—almost. Though I shed tears, I couldn’t cry for a while, because I couldn’t believe this had happened. Jeanie was too young to die. She was the mother of three young children, my little sister, and a sweet soul I never knew well enough, and now could not remember well. The photo, taken not long before she died, of Jeanie with her husband Don and the children— Chris, 9 and Kellie and Michael, twins about 6—hangs on my bedroom wall. I see it every morning as I get up.
When this death intersected my life, I tried to think it through. Thinking accomplished a lot to contain raw feeling, but it did not, could not, forgive. Forgiveness, I thought, would help me move on. I thought of forgiveness not as a moral issue, but as spiritual path to new life in the middle of unforgivable death—not resurrection for Jeanie, who I thought was just fine now, but for myself. I didn’t think I had to forgive God, though at times I hated Jeanie for dying before I could get to know her better. With every death, I guess, one must forgive the utter failure of life, and beauty, and theology, and everything you thought mattered enough to die for, to console. I searched for Godde, for some beauty to hang onto till the pain passed.
I also had to forgive well-meaning sympathizers who said dumb clichés, such as: “The good die young.” What trash! Worse: “God meant this for a reason.” Or, “This too will pass.” True, but so damn what? Yes, I did search diligently for a reason. At first I blamed Oklahoma, where Jeanie and her family lived, descending into desperate and shameless Eastern elitism.
There was, it turned out, a medical reason: aneurysms at the base of her brain which, despite symptoms and many medical consultations over the years, were never diagnosed until it was time for emergency surgery. Too late. The surgery was “successful,” but Jeanie never woke up. “Cause of death: respiratory failure.” So said the death certificate.
The oddest experience opened a small space for my broken heart, my memories, and my grief, and, very strangely, a consoling mix of pain and beauty. My father, my living sister Laurie, and I went to a local church to pray at the approximate hour Jeanie was being cremated. It was my idea but I don't know why I thought of it. We didn’t talk much about our reasons or about why we each thought this was important, more important than the public funeral to come. My mother had chosen not to join us for reasons known only to her. So we three went. We just sat there together in our separate silences in a dimly lit sanctuary—a church but a church unadorned, barren.
Do you know how impossible it is to imagine the whole body of someone you’ve loved being thrown into a fiery furnace and burned up? A crematory is a furnace that combusts at temperatures as high as 2100 degrees Fahrenheit. It takes from seventy to two hundred minutes, depending on the weight of the body. Jeanie’s wouldn’t take that long. I winced, thinking how much the fire would hurt my dead sister. Oh God. The biblical story about Daniel and his three friends being thrown into the fiery furnace for refusing to worship the emperor instead of their God popped into my mind. God showed up in the furnace and the three men emerged, as unburned as the soles of firewalkers’ feet. The story was true myth—no facts but lots of truth. Would God be there for Jeanie now? What would God look like, ablaze with flame-tongues, yet unconsumed? We three sat side by side on the hard pew in the stone chapel. I didn’t look to see if Daddy or Laurie was crying. I hunched up tight, put my hands between my thighs to warm them, and hoped.
There is death in life, before biological death. Can death be beautiful I wonder? Can beauty contain elements of death? Many great artists paint, write, dance, or sing painful death scenes, like crucifixion. The art alone evokes beautiful feelings. I mean feelings profound enough to move one to the soul's core—of love, sorrow, even anger and fright, or deep joy. Sometimes, memory and awareness, changes of heart, and healing come out of death’s beauty. It is the beauty that remains.
When my sister Jeanie died at 34 after surgery for the removal of brain aneurysms, it was painful, and so unnatural as to be free of pain—almost. Though I shed tears, I couldn’t cry for a while, because I couldn’t believe this had happened. Jeanie was too young to die. She was the mother of three young children, my little sister, and a sweet soul I never knew well enough, and now could not remember well. The photo, taken not long before she died, of Jeanie with her husband Don and the children— Chris, 9 and Kellie and Michael, twins about 6—hangs on my bedroom wall. I see it every morning as I get up.
I also had to forgive well-meaning sympathizers who said dumb clichés, such as: “The good die young.” What trash! Worse: “God meant this for a reason.” Or, “This too will pass.” True, but so damn what? Yes, I did search diligently for a reason. At first I blamed Oklahoma, where Jeanie and her family lived, descending into desperate and shameless Eastern elitism.
There was, it turned out, a medical reason: aneurysms at the base of her brain which, despite symptoms and many medical consultations over the years, were never diagnosed until it was time for emergency surgery. Too late. The surgery was “successful,” but Jeanie never woke up. “Cause of death: respiratory failure.” So said the death certificate.
The oddest experience opened a small space for my broken heart, my memories, and my grief, and, very strangely, a consoling mix of pain and beauty. My father, my living sister Laurie, and I went to a local church to pray at the approximate hour Jeanie was being cremated. It was my idea but I don't know why I thought of it. We didn’t talk much about our reasons or about why we each thought this was important, more important than the public funeral to come. My mother had chosen not to join us for reasons known only to her. So we three went. We just sat there together in our separate silences in a dimly lit sanctuary—a church but a church unadorned, barren.
Do you know how impossible it is to imagine the whole body of someone you’ve loved being thrown into a fiery furnace and burned up? A crematory is a furnace that combusts at temperatures as high as 2100 degrees Fahrenheit. It takes from seventy to two hundred minutes, depending on the weight of the body. Jeanie’s wouldn’t take that long. I winced, thinking how much the fire would hurt my dead sister. Oh God. The biblical story about Daniel and his three friends being thrown into the fiery furnace for refusing to worship the emperor instead of their God popped into my mind. God showed up in the furnace and the three men emerged, as unburned as the soles of firewalkers’ feet. The story was true myth—no facts but lots of truth. Would God be there for Jeanie now? What would God look like, ablaze with flame-tongues, yet unconsumed? We three sat side by side on the hard pew in the stone chapel. I didn’t look to see if Daddy or Laurie was crying. I hunched up tight, put my hands between my thighs to warm them, and hoped.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
2015.10.04 Go With the Flow—Or Against it.
Have you ever been scorned for going against the flow, doing or saying something different from the ways things are going or the way everyone else is behaving? I’m sure most of us have had such an experience.
Yesterday we attended a workshop: Now and At The Hour Of Our Death: Medical Decision Making At The End Of Life. It was led by Episcopal Deacon, Daphne Noyes, and Christine Gryglik, R.N. I am grateful for the huge packet of resources I came away with. Death is no easy project! There’s lots to do to make sure your dying is, well, sort of in control.
More deeply I’m grateful to feel accompanied by a laughing and loving faith community, all of whom will die. Me too. Just to know you’re not alone is enough to face death with dignity and carry no assumptions about anything, no matter how many plans you make……….. Oh yes.
When we left I felt disgruntled and irritated and as if I already knew and had done most of this stuff— all sure signs that I was plain scared and pretending not to be. Denial in tow, however, we headed straight to CVS to get flu shots and updates on the latest pneumonia vaccine. It helped. I even wanted a lolly pop to reward my bold effort to grab life for all its worth, which is considerable.
Thanks to the science of physics, about which I know very little, I know that occasionally something completely random and unpredictable happens to make the word “inevitable” near obsolete. It make us sit up and take notice. It is when a whirlwind suddenly gets whirled in a new direction—a brief moment when things do swirl back against the flow.
Current popular wisdom consistently advises: Go WITH the flow. I’m lousy at that. I wonder if God makes counter swirls?
The teenager’s room won’t pick itself up, so you do it yourself, out of despairing smoldering rage. It takes less energy than nagging without results. Same thing applies to trying to get someone to stop destroying their life with an addiction. A counter swirl happens when the teen does it herself, without complaint, without being asked and then keeps on doing it week after week. It happens when the addict chooses abstinence, from whatever the substance or behavior of choice is, and can’t tell you precisely how that choice was made. Usually they can cite numbers of factors, none of them governing the exact moment of turning against the expected flow.
Some people call such Mystery moments the grace of God, or a miracle. That’s what my mother called my birth after three miscarriages. I went with the God part and rejected miracle status.
Such events seem to reverse the law of physics which says that energy ever seeks lower levels flowing from more ordered states to disorder, dispersing over time. It’s called entropy and comes form the Greek en (inside) + trope (transformation).
Transformation, ironically, is a powerful and positive word in the field of theology. In the Bible, and other religious scriptures, God is seen as a creative force, a restorer of order, a reverser of entropy from within chaos, often not in ways we can predict. The Christian idea of Resurrection, the transformation of death into new life, is one such example. I rather like it.
Inner transformation, change of heart, is what faithful people seek and pray for, as in the transformation of the inner chaos of addictive disease, mental illness, climate change, patterns of social violence such as we are experiencing right now in America with arbitrary gun violence and deaths of innocent citizens in the absence of laws that would regulate gun purchase and restrict gun use to hunting and sport. Faithful people pray AND write their congressional representatives asking them to craft such legislation.
Things are spinning out of control. Who will dare to initiate a counter spin? Who will dare to spin the current political paralysis in a new direction? Who will defiantly thrive? It will take sacrifice.
Think of the image of a whirlwind. Meteorologically, a whirlwind is a complex chaotic system suggesting not pure chaos but rather the turbulent emergence of complexity at the edge of chaos.
Now think of the story of Job in the Bible. It is a story of Job's suffering, supposedly at the hand of God, but clearly having nothing to do with the sufferer’s integrity, faith or character. Job begs God for answers about his suffering and gets none. He spins in a unidirectional whirlwind of moral, spiritual, emotional, and physical pain—unconsoled and with no answers about his plight and God’s refusal to address his grievance.
And yet………..Job does get something. He gets a strong vision and very strong spiritual experience of the divine presence which speaks to him right out of a whirlwind. In his vision, God escorts Job throughout all Creation, wonder by stunning wonder. Job is awestruck, both by the breadth of the vision, by how little he knows, and by the intimacy of the divine Presence at his side. Job is spun in a new direction and is invited to go on with his life in spite of all his losses. To put it in a mundane way, Job gets an entirely new perspective on life and is freed from his OCD panic. We do not know how or why, just what.
Job’s story is symbolic, yet it is so true to most earthly experience that it feels literal, historic. Job’s story is not just about suffering. It tells us, as does Jesus’s story, that there is a God who speaks out of whirlwinds and makes counter swirls.
Oh Godde, I know you don’t dole out death and illness, but I’m putting in my request anyway for more good years of life—specifically I want my eyesight, most of my hearing, and most of my mind—oh and my fingers to type with. Intervene with a counter swirl if you want to. Thanks for listening. Amen.
Yesterday we attended a workshop: Now and At The Hour Of Our Death: Medical Decision Making At The End Of Life. It was led by Episcopal Deacon, Daphne Noyes, and Christine Gryglik, R.N. I am grateful for the huge packet of resources I came away with. Death is no easy project! There’s lots to do to make sure your dying is, well, sort of in control.
More deeply I’m grateful to feel accompanied by a laughing and loving faith community, all of whom will die. Me too. Just to know you’re not alone is enough to face death with dignity and carry no assumptions about anything, no matter how many plans you make……….. Oh yes.
When we left I felt disgruntled and irritated and as if I already knew and had done most of this stuff— all sure signs that I was plain scared and pretending not to be. Denial in tow, however, we headed straight to CVS to get flu shots and updates on the latest pneumonia vaccine. It helped. I even wanted a lolly pop to reward my bold effort to grab life for all its worth, which is considerable.
Thanks to the science of physics, about which I know very little, I know that occasionally something completely random and unpredictable happens to make the word “inevitable” near obsolete. It make us sit up and take notice. It is when a whirlwind suddenly gets whirled in a new direction—a brief moment when things do swirl back against the flow.
Current popular wisdom consistently advises: Go WITH the flow. I’m lousy at that. I wonder if God makes counter swirls?
The teenager’s room won’t pick itself up, so you do it yourself, out of despairing smoldering rage. It takes less energy than nagging without results. Same thing applies to trying to get someone to stop destroying their life with an addiction. A counter swirl happens when the teen does it herself, without complaint, without being asked and then keeps on doing it week after week. It happens when the addict chooses abstinence, from whatever the substance or behavior of choice is, and can’t tell you precisely how that choice was made. Usually they can cite numbers of factors, none of them governing the exact moment of turning against the expected flow.
Some people call such Mystery moments the grace of God, or a miracle. That’s what my mother called my birth after three miscarriages. I went with the God part and rejected miracle status.
Such events seem to reverse the law of physics which says that energy ever seeks lower levels flowing from more ordered states to disorder, dispersing over time. It’s called entropy and comes form the Greek en (inside) + trope (transformation).
Transformation, ironically, is a powerful and positive word in the field of theology. In the Bible, and other religious scriptures, God is seen as a creative force, a restorer of order, a reverser of entropy from within chaos, often not in ways we can predict. The Christian idea of Resurrection, the transformation of death into new life, is one such example. I rather like it.
Inner transformation, change of heart, is what faithful people seek and pray for, as in the transformation of the inner chaos of addictive disease, mental illness, climate change, patterns of social violence such as we are experiencing right now in America with arbitrary gun violence and deaths of innocent citizens in the absence of laws that would regulate gun purchase and restrict gun use to hunting and sport. Faithful people pray AND write their congressional representatives asking them to craft such legislation.
Things are spinning out of control. Who will dare to initiate a counter spin? Who will dare to spin the current political paralysis in a new direction? Who will defiantly thrive? It will take sacrifice.
Think of the image of a whirlwind. Meteorologically, a whirlwind is a complex chaotic system suggesting not pure chaos but rather the turbulent emergence of complexity at the edge of chaos.
Now think of the story of Job in the Bible. It is a story of Job's suffering, supposedly at the hand of God, but clearly having nothing to do with the sufferer’s integrity, faith or character. Job begs God for answers about his suffering and gets none. He spins in a unidirectional whirlwind of moral, spiritual, emotional, and physical pain—unconsoled and with no answers about his plight and God’s refusal to address his grievance.
And yet………..Job does get something. He gets a strong vision and very strong spiritual experience of the divine presence which speaks to him right out of a whirlwind. In his vision, God escorts Job throughout all Creation, wonder by stunning wonder. Job is awestruck, both by the breadth of the vision, by how little he knows, and by the intimacy of the divine Presence at his side. Job is spun in a new direction and is invited to go on with his life in spite of all his losses. To put it in a mundane way, Job gets an entirely new perspective on life and is freed from his OCD panic. We do not know how or why, just what.
Job’s story is symbolic, yet it is so true to most earthly experience that it feels literal, historic. Job’s story is not just about suffering. It tells us, as does Jesus’s story, that there is a God who speaks out of whirlwinds and makes counter swirls.
Oh Godde, I know you don’t dole out death and illness, but I’m putting in my request anyway for more good years of life—specifically I want my eyesight, most of my hearing, and most of my mind—oh and my fingers to type with. Intervene with a counter swirl if you want to. Thanks for listening. Amen.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
2014.09.07 Who/What Is God/Godde or god?
A wondrous tweenager I'll call Tweenie got in a ‘tween-fight with other girls at school. What in the world would girls fight about but boys, or maybe fashion? These girls were fighting about religion. Excuse me?
One of their number was from an Assembly of God tradition and had very clear ideas about religion. To her, God was Jesus, and you had to be “saved” to get right with God, not to mention the community. My Tweenie, having been less “carefully taught” in the Episcopal tradition, thought that her friend's brand of religion was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard of. The girls got heated in their dispute about salvation and ended up in the Principal’s office. (I bet it was the first time this principal had to arbitrate this kind of an all-girl dispute. Rather refreshing, don’t you think?)
The Principal managed to extract what had happened and to arbitrate some mild reconciliation—with a bonus. Tweenie had said some very nasty things to the “religious freak.” There were witnesses. She was seized with remorse, so much so that she agreed to go to church with her freaky religious friend, at which point her mother called me—worried that her daughter would become a Jesus freak, or some kind of a politically incorrect fundamentalist.
I told Mom not to worry. Worse things than Jesus can happen. She wanted me to talk to her daughter. I told tweenheart just to go to church and observe. Be curious. I explained about altar calls and told her that God had given her a good mind and heart and trusted her to make her own decision in matters of faith—something like, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, though you might feel pressured. I may have said Jesus wasn’t all that bad, but I don’t remember.
So Tweenie went to church, and of course she came home with an "annunciation": “I am saved!” Turning to her older sister, she added: “You really should be saved. It would help you a lot.”
Out of the mouths of tweenagers............. Mom was relieved and told Tweenie she'd go to church with her the next week—good Mom. By the time next week rolled around, "salvation" was out and the mall was in. Annunciation # 2 and #3, just as vociferous, followed: “I am an atheist. I'm thinking about majoring in religious symbolism."
It’s easy to laugh at such innocence. It is quirky and wonderful. But I never scorn sincere confusion about God. You don’t have to be a teen to get confused. Many days I wonder myself. I just wrote to a friend whose dear friend, a young woman of 45, had finally wasted away and died from cancer and its treatments. I’d met this woman, whom I will call BFF-Beloved, and had been praying like mad for remission. My friend has as many queries about God as Tweenie.
I had no good words except those of my Christian faith in the God of Jesus Christ, by no means an easy-answer religion. And I had the memory of a primary experience of this God I’d met under a table as a very young child who listened to my every word, even the nasty ones, and let me know I mattered. On these two poles I balance, most days precariously, like the spinning plates of a juggler, all my faith and all my doubt.
So I wrote: “I want to hold in my mind my memory of your friend's former vibrant self, which, by my faith, is still there and will be resurrected in God. God, you know, is only a name, a vocabulary word really, for the unfathomable mystery of Love. Most of us know how inefficient love can be, yet it is always effective. And most people believe in the power of love, finite and infinite. You loved well. love, Me"
Tweenie has loved well, too. Now 15, she is about to be a godmother. A GODmother? I wondered what she’d do about the God she didn’t believe in. Still, she is honored to be chosen and proud to take on this role. Annunciation #4: "I am now an “agnostic theist.”
Could you do better than that?
One of their number was from an Assembly of God tradition and had very clear ideas about religion. To her, God was Jesus, and you had to be “saved” to get right with God, not to mention the community. My Tweenie, having been less “carefully taught” in the Episcopal tradition, thought that her friend's brand of religion was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard of. The girls got heated in their dispute about salvation and ended up in the Principal’s office. (I bet it was the first time this principal had to arbitrate this kind of an all-girl dispute. Rather refreshing, don’t you think?)
The Principal managed to extract what had happened and to arbitrate some mild reconciliation—with a bonus. Tweenie had said some very nasty things to the “religious freak.” There were witnesses. She was seized with remorse, so much so that she agreed to go to church with her freaky religious friend, at which point her mother called me—worried that her daughter would become a Jesus freak, or some kind of a politically incorrect fundamentalist.
I told Mom not to worry. Worse things than Jesus can happen. She wanted me to talk to her daughter. I told tweenheart just to go to church and observe. Be curious. I explained about altar calls and told her that God had given her a good mind and heart and trusted her to make her own decision in matters of faith—something like, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, though you might feel pressured. I may have said Jesus wasn’t all that bad, but I don’t remember.
Out of the mouths of tweenagers............. Mom was relieved and told Tweenie she'd go to church with her the next week—good Mom. By the time next week rolled around, "salvation" was out and the mall was in. Annunciation # 2 and #3, just as vociferous, followed: “I am an atheist. I'm thinking about majoring in religious symbolism."
It’s easy to laugh at such innocence. It is quirky and wonderful. But I never scorn sincere confusion about God. You don’t have to be a teen to get confused. Many days I wonder myself. I just wrote to a friend whose dear friend, a young woman of 45, had finally wasted away and died from cancer and its treatments. I’d met this woman, whom I will call BFF-Beloved, and had been praying like mad for remission. My friend has as many queries about God as Tweenie.
I had no good words except those of my Christian faith in the God of Jesus Christ, by no means an easy-answer religion. And I had the memory of a primary experience of this God I’d met under a table as a very young child who listened to my every word, even the nasty ones, and let me know I mattered. On these two poles I balance, most days precariously, like the spinning plates of a juggler, all my faith and all my doubt.
So I wrote: “I want to hold in my mind my memory of your friend's former vibrant self, which, by my faith, is still there and will be resurrected in God. God, you know, is only a name, a vocabulary word really, for the unfathomable mystery of Love. Most of us know how inefficient love can be, yet it is always effective. And most people believe in the power of love, finite and infinite. You loved well. love, Me"
Tweenie has loved well, too. Now 15, she is about to be a godmother. A GODmother? I wondered what she’d do about the God she didn’t believe in. Still, she is honored to be chosen and proud to take on this role. Annunciation #4: "I am now an “agnostic theist.”
Could you do better than that?
Monday, August 25, 2014
2014.08.24 Death and Hope
My dad would be 103 today. I think of him a lot. He was a taciturn guy, drop-dead handsome, as they say, quiet to excess, unless he held a martini in hand—or when he died. Dying, he made lots of noise.
Phrases in Christian hymns, chants and prayers, and sermons, especially during the run-up to Easter, say things like, “They did not know what we know now,” or “We know how this story ends.” Do we?
Such self-assured smug Christianity does not appeal to me at all. I don’t trust it, which probably makes me a good Anglican.
Is there a soul among us who embraces our death with sanguinity? Unless bio-life is simply not bearable, most of us really want to live and fight hard for that chance to live on. We do NOT know what will happen after we die, in the way we think of knowing. Faith knowing is a risk, not an assurance. I'll get honest and admit I'm a faithful agnostic when it comes to end times. I don't know, any more than the first Christians did.
A woman in a Lenten reflection group last year commented with a chuckle: “I hope to hell that what they’re telling us is true.” Hers seemed to be a more truthful statement than many Christians would dare make about the promise of resurrection. There was an edge of worry in her humor and our laughter.
What’s important, I think, is not to try to push and shove some kind of faith into place, like last-minute soul-shaping, just in case. Some say that faith-knowing is a gift only God Holy Spirit gives, and that it is given in the context of knowing each soul quite well. Sounds good, but how come some people seem to have it, and some don't? It does come more easily to some than to others. I don't know why.
Still, the time of dying is a time when people often worry about having enough faith. For what? Most people die with the personalities they lived with.
My dad wrestled his “demons” to the pillow, accompanied by the chiming of the grandfather clock. He was not in physical pain; he was groaning in travail as if he were waiting to be birthed—like creation. At one point he came briefly out of his dying and boldly asked me: "What's the point?" It was something he often said, almost rhetorically abut many things. I panicked. I thought that I, as a hot-shot seminarian— at Yale (Dad's alma mater) no less— ought to have the right theological answer, the soothing one. I didn't. So I just said, "I don't know, Dad. But when you find out, if you can, find a way to let me know." God, I felt inadequate. I should have said I love you or something personal, but the moment vanished as he sunk back into his dying.
My mother, au contraire, ordered a peanut butter sandwich as her last meal, and told her granddaughter: “This won’t take long, dear.” She was 84, a widow, living in a nursing home; she had some kind of internal bleed and had refused hospitalization. Then she, not in physical pain, turned aside, and onto her side—away from the door to her room, the door to the world—and settled into her dying without a fuss, leaving the sandwich untouched.
Do I think my mother had more faith than me or my dad? Perhaps at a very childish level, yes. She always told me she would put her head in God’s lap, and everything would be all right. (I think she meant her own father’s lap. He died when she was twelve.)
Do I think my dad lacked faith? Not at all. He had esophageal cancer and couldn't eat or drink anything by mouth. He was only 71 and could have lived that way, waiting for medical science to come up with something, but I think he made a choice to die. It took a week. He had things to settle his soul about, and he didn’t talk about these things in death any more than he ever had in life. It is by faith that I "know" he has discovered "the point."
My own feeling is that when we come to our death there comes a time of almost uncanny repose. I saw that a lot when I was a hospital chaplain. I don’t know if it is acceptance, although that word works, but it looked and sounded to me like embracing death almost as a friend or setting one's face in a new direction, as Jesus did toward Jerusalem. Or, like Jesus’ remembered sighs on the cross: It is finished. I commend my spirit. To what? To faith, hope and love, but not to certainty. To God, the giver of those seminal spiritual gifts.
Dying is our last life task/accomplishment. We do it with as much grace and faith as we can muster, each according to each one’s way. It is like commendation, not forced or giving up, but free: I will follow; it's time; I'm ready. But after death is God’s business and god keeps it to Herself. Some have returned to tell beautiful stories. They help my faith, not my knowledge. Like a kid for Christmas morning, I will have to wait and see.
Saint Francis called Death a Sister— a term of endearment, not enmity. I wonder if that is why many people die when their anxious grieving loved ones are gone from their bedside, and only a solo chaplain-stranger may stay on in the dark?
Such a strategic attitude and language, I think, would be more helpful to the ways we talk about life-threatening illness, physical and mental. We threaten it back, saying we will battle you, we will fight you, we will reject you, win over you. You are enemy and hateful. We make illness and death sound like condemnation or punishment. What if we, like addicts, befriended disease as a part of our humanity? They speak of being IN recovery, not cured. They will always be addicts.
We must seek treatment and cures, of course, and, at the same time, pray and have faith and courage. Fight FOR life, but don't make whatever we have into our enemy.
I suppose I could say that I hope my death is transition to a new kind of life. I am always IN God, just as I'm always IN recovery from sin, into some form of which I daily fall. But after I die, leave for good, I hope to fall into the soul of Godde more deeply—leave for good, to newer be.
The poet says it best: "we turn not older with years
but newer everyday."
Thanks, Emily. And Happy Birthday, Dad.
Phrases in Christian hymns, chants and prayers, and sermons, especially during the run-up to Easter, say things like, “They did not know what we know now,” or “We know how this story ends.” Do we?
Such self-assured smug Christianity does not appeal to me at all. I don’t trust it, which probably makes me a good Anglican.
Is there a soul among us who embraces our death with sanguinity? Unless bio-life is simply not bearable, most of us really want to live and fight hard for that chance to live on. We do NOT know what will happen after we die, in the way we think of knowing. Faith knowing is a risk, not an assurance. I'll get honest and admit I'm a faithful agnostic when it comes to end times. I don't know, any more than the first Christians did.
A woman in a Lenten reflection group last year commented with a chuckle: “I hope to hell that what they’re telling us is true.” Hers seemed to be a more truthful statement than many Christians would dare make about the promise of resurrection. There was an edge of worry in her humor and our laughter.
What’s important, I think, is not to try to push and shove some kind of faith into place, like last-minute soul-shaping, just in case. Some say that faith-knowing is a gift only God Holy Spirit gives, and that it is given in the context of knowing each soul quite well. Sounds good, but how come some people seem to have it, and some don't? It does come more easily to some than to others. I don't know why.
Still, the time of dying is a time when people often worry about having enough faith. For what? Most people die with the personalities they lived with.
My dad wrestled his “demons” to the pillow, accompanied by the chiming of the grandfather clock. He was not in physical pain; he was groaning in travail as if he were waiting to be birthed—like creation. At one point he came briefly out of his dying and boldly asked me: "What's the point?" It was something he often said, almost rhetorically abut many things. I panicked. I thought that I, as a hot-shot seminarian— at Yale (Dad's alma mater) no less— ought to have the right theological answer, the soothing one. I didn't. So I just said, "I don't know, Dad. But when you find out, if you can, find a way to let me know." God, I felt inadequate. I should have said I love you or something personal, but the moment vanished as he sunk back into his dying.
My mother, au contraire, ordered a peanut butter sandwich as her last meal, and told her granddaughter: “This won’t take long, dear.” She was 84, a widow, living in a nursing home; she had some kind of internal bleed and had refused hospitalization. Then she, not in physical pain, turned aside, and onto her side—away from the door to her room, the door to the world—and settled into her dying without a fuss, leaving the sandwich untouched.
Do I think my mother had more faith than me or my dad? Perhaps at a very childish level, yes. She always told me she would put her head in God’s lap, and everything would be all right. (I think she meant her own father’s lap. He died when she was twelve.)
Do I think my dad lacked faith? Not at all. He had esophageal cancer and couldn't eat or drink anything by mouth. He was only 71 and could have lived that way, waiting for medical science to come up with something, but I think he made a choice to die. It took a week. He had things to settle his soul about, and he didn’t talk about these things in death any more than he ever had in life. It is by faith that I "know" he has discovered "the point."
* * * *
My own feeling is that when we come to our death there comes a time of almost uncanny repose. I saw that a lot when I was a hospital chaplain. I don’t know if it is acceptance, although that word works, but it looked and sounded to me like embracing death almost as a friend or setting one's face in a new direction, as Jesus did toward Jerusalem. Or, like Jesus’ remembered sighs on the cross: It is finished. I commend my spirit. To what? To faith, hope and love, but not to certainty. To God, the giver of those seminal spiritual gifts.
Dying is our last life task/accomplishment. We do it with as much grace and faith as we can muster, each according to each one’s way. It is like commendation, not forced or giving up, but free: I will follow; it's time; I'm ready. But after death is God’s business and god keeps it to Herself. Some have returned to tell beautiful stories. They help my faith, not my knowledge. Like a kid for Christmas morning, I will have to wait and see.
Saint Francis called Death a Sister— a term of endearment, not enmity. I wonder if that is why many people die when their anxious grieving loved ones are gone from their bedside, and only a solo chaplain-stranger may stay on in the dark?
Such a strategic attitude and language, I think, would be more helpful to the ways we talk about life-threatening illness, physical and mental. We threaten it back, saying we will battle you, we will fight you, we will reject you, win over you. You are enemy and hateful. We make illness and death sound like condemnation or punishment. What if we, like addicts, befriended disease as a part of our humanity? They speak of being IN recovery, not cured. They will always be addicts.
We must seek treatment and cures, of course, and, at the same time, pray and have faith and courage. Fight FOR life, but don't make whatever we have into our enemy.
I suppose I could say that I hope my death is transition to a new kind of life. I am always IN God, just as I'm always IN recovery from sin, into some form of which I daily fall. But after I die, leave for good, I hope to fall into the soul of Godde more deeply—leave for good, to newer be.
The poet says it best: "we turn not older with years
but newer everyday."
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
2013.12.10 When Tragedy Rends the Heart
When tragedy rends hearts there is little else to do but cry, pray anyway, and love without reserve.
This is Riley. She is six years old, in first grade, the daughter of friends of one of our children. She has brain cancer, a cancer so aggressive and widespread that doctors at Boston Childrens' Hospital have said there is nothing more that can be done. Riley's parents are in shock, their pain almost too much to bear. Their only goal is to keep Riley as free of pain as possible and happy. They love her to death.
People ask religious, spiritual questions at these times. Of course we do. We want to know if there is a God who can help change what has happened. Many conclude that there is no God, only human love. That is true, but then God IS human love. I can say by faith and experience that God's love is limitless and eternal. It is God's power that is limited so we can be fully free. It is not God's love that is limited. In fact the divine heart itself is the first to break open, God's tears the first to fall.
Riley and her family face the likelihood of death. Hope calls for a miracle quite naturally, But whatever happens Riley will not be alone but surrounded by love also, in the words of a hymn:
Love Divine, All Loves Excelling."
This is Riley. She is six years old, in first grade, the daughter of friends of one of our children. She has brain cancer, a cancer so aggressive and widespread that doctors at Boston Childrens' Hospital have said there is nothing more that can be done. Riley's parents are in shock, their pain almost too much to bear. Their only goal is to keep Riley as free of pain as possible and happy. They love her to death.
People ask religious, spiritual questions at these times. Of course we do. We want to know if there is a God who can help change what has happened. Many conclude that there is no God, only human love. That is true, but then God IS human love. I can say by faith and experience that God's love is limitless and eternal. It is God's power that is limited so we can be fully free. It is not God's love that is limited. In fact the divine heart itself is the first to break open, God's tears the first to fall.
Riley and her family face the likelihood of death. Hope calls for a miracle quite naturally, But whatever happens Riley will not be alone but surrounded by love also, in the words of a hymn:
Love Divine, All Loves Excelling."
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