The Best Laid Plans, Part 2

     So, despite everything, Middle and I started out on the Camino on the 22nd.  We walked from Porto to Vila do Conde and already found our journey filled with lessons.  We were walking the Coastal Route, but much of it was closed because they are rebuilding the Boardwalk.  It was really clear they needed to be rebuilding the boardwalk, but it did make an interesting walk for us.  I have to admit, there were times we cheated with cross country walking and even walking on the boardwalk on some places that were supposed to be closed.  Lesson one then: it is the journey, not the route.  Yes, that's a different spin on the saying, but that was an important lesson for me.  We get there how we get there.  There isn't a "right" way, there's just the way we travel.  And along that way we still encountered other walkers, had some wonderful conversations with them and even more with each other.  I had to put aside following the path exactly because it simply couldn't be done, kind of like life.  There's no right path, only the path we find ourselves on.  Learning to be okay with that is a helpful lesson.

    The second lesson was in the kindness of strangers, again.  The very first thing we did on our journey was stop at a cafe to get breakfast. As we got up to leave, I forgot my walking poles.  They were the only thing not actually in my backpack and I just plain forgot them because I have not been used to walking with them.  But we walked maybe three blocks and I became aware of shouting behind me: the cafe worker had run after us to make sure I had my poles!  She didn't need to do that: but she did, for which I was very grateful.  A second lesson: there is kindness to be found everywhere!

    Third lesson: I went with concerns about my ability to do this.  Many of you know I have had knee and toe problems (osteo-arthritis) that have at times made hiking painful.  I'd done what I could ahead of time: I'd received PRP injections in both sites and had been slowly working up to be able to walk the distance, but I was still concerned.  I found I was absolutely fine!  I have a good pack, good shoes, and the poles really helped.  What surprised me was that it was Middle who said, "I think I need to have my stuff schlepped.  It's too heavy and I can't do this."  Granted his pack is twice (at least) as heavy as mine because he will be traveling all summer around Europe and doing different things like climbing the Alps and camping so he needed different equipment and more of it..  But it became clear we were not going to be able to make this work for him if he had to carry all his belongings the whole way.  Still, the soonest we could order the schlepping service was for day 4.  So we would have three days of carrying our own stuff, and we would learn to stop often, to rest, to do what was needed to help us get through.

    All in all, it was truly a marvelous day.  And I found myself as always just truly aware of how blessed I am by the incredible son I have. Our conversations were amazing.  It is a wonderful gift to me that I have a 21 year old son who actually talks to me about philosophy, politics and religion.  It's not that we always agree, but that's part of the joy of the conversation.  We talk, we learn, we grow, sometimes we entrench in our own view points, but we share.  And for that I am grateful.  

    Day two, the 23rd, we walked from Vila do Conde to Esposende.  There were new lessons, some that I already know but had reinforced.  The primary lesson of day two was that I don't function well when I'm hungry, and when I'm active, I can't always recognize my own hunger.  At that point, if I do recognize hunger, I often can't decide where or what I want to eat.  Middle was not in a mood to make decisions either so there were some crabby moments between us when I wondered if we'd be able to make the trip together work.  When we arrived at the hotel (yes, we are staying in hotels: I was not interested in the whole hostel situation as it was described to me), we were both truly exhausted.  Middle had still shlepped all his stuff and according to our tracking records we'd walked about 17 miles that day.  Still, we felt good about making it and had a wonderful dinner to finish the day.

    Then we come to the night of day two.  As you probably remember from my previous post, on the morning of the 21st I went to a dentist our hotel found for me because of extreme pain in a back bottom tooth and all along my jaw.  The dentist didn't really speak English and my Portuguese is minimal, but she told me I had a bad infection in that tooth and had given me a prescription for antibiotics and ibuprofen.  By the evening of the 23rd, then, I had taken three full days of both and the pain was not lessening at all.  Most of the time it was manageable with the ibuprofen.  But if I drank anything (kind of necessary while hiking), or ate anything that was not room temperature (both heat and cold set it off), or laid down (like to go to sleep at night), the pain was still almost unbearable.  At one point we actually met an American endodontist who said that I really needed to get this dealt with and that there would probably be someone in Portugal who could do it, but recovery could prevent me walking a couple days at the least.  Also, I'd be paying out of pocket if I had it done in Portugal.  I told her I had antibiotics, but I only had been given 8 day's worth which meant there would be 4 days walking without it before returning home to have the tooth looked at and taken care of.  She did not think that was a good thing at all. 

    Then, as the night went on, I started to feel... well, not so good.  A bit feverish, I had a headache that was increasing, my skin hurt, I was starting to cough a bit.  I dismissed all of it: after all, I know you can get sun sick. And dealing with a little cold was not going to stop me.  But then David, who had left us on the morning of the 22nd to fly home, texted me around 4:30am to let me know that the cough he'd had for the last two days we'd been together had turned into being truly sick and he'd tested positive for COVID.  Oh great!  We'd been together 24/7 for the previous 3 and a half weeks as we went around the UK.  I did not see how it would be possible that what I was experiencing was anything other than the beginnings of COVID as well. 

    As I thought about all of this, at 4:30am, I thought that if it was one issue or the other: my tooth or being sick, I would figure it out.  But honestly, I did not feel up to dealing with both of these things in another country while trying to hike my way to Santiago.  So, with David's help, I changed my flight to come home on that third day, the 24th. I asked him to also get me an appointment with the dentist for the next day (today). Middle understood, though we were both sad.  He decided he wanted to continue the walk and would do it for the both of us. After all, we had all our reservations laid out....  

    Still, by the time I got to the airport I was starting to feel I had made a truly terrible mistake. In my mind, I had allowed my fears of dental issues and illness to be the decider rather than time with my son and doing this incredible walk with him. The Camino is not supposed to be easy!  But at that point, there was no changing it back. We'd used our travel insurance to change it in the first place with the excuse of the dental emergency and I did not see how they would accept another change. Still, I had a terrible day where I could not stop weeping, yes weeping, much to my embarrassment and that of those around me at the airport and in the plane.  I felt like I was the worst mother on earth and that I had truly made one of the stupidest and unthinking decisions I had ever made by abandoning my son because of fears around tooth issues and illness. 

    You all know the flight situation.  By the time I arrived home, at midnight last night, I had been awake then for 28 hours.  I tried to sleep (in the living room since David has COVID and is isolating in our room), but the tooth pain was a problem again. So this morning, after four hours of sleep, I tested for COVID (negative so far) and then toddled off to the dentist.  I needed a root canal, and immediately.  The Endodontist who did it said I had a severe crack all through the root of my molar as well as the molar itself.  The infection, despite the anti-biotics, was severe.  And this wasn't just a "go in and have it fixed" kind of thing.  I need to go back so he can do a little more work to remove all of the infection and then I will need a crown since the tooth is also cracked.  I can only eat "soft" foods until this is all taken care of, and I'm supposed to rest as much as I can. Okay, then.  So I guess it was the right decision to come home.

    But I am still heartbroken.  Truly heartbroken.  Of all the parts of my sabbatical, as you all may know, this was the part that I was most looking forward to: time with my son to walk the Camino was the main purpose and highlight for me of this time.  

    Still, as always, I feel my job, both professionally and personally is to look for the hope and look for the good.  So the good:

    I did get four important and meaningful days with my son.  Two in Porto and two walking.  I have once again been given the opportunity to learn the lesson of flexibility.  As Middle said it, "Plans aren't important.  Planning is." So we did the planning.  And the universe, or God, or whatever you blame for what interferes with those plans had other ideas. It turns out there are other important reasons to be home: other people who are close to me who are also in need right now.  I want to be here for them as much as I can, which is harder to do from Portugal. I continue to be grateful for my son: for his kindness, his flexibility, and his determination to continue with the Camino despite everything. He's made connections with other folk on the path and he will be fine, as much as a part of me still thinks of him as a little boy.

    And there we are.  The best laid plans often don't mean a thing in this crazy but wondrous journey we call life.  But there are gifts in all of it.  

    That's the update.  And now I'm heading to take more ibuprofen as well as another antibiotic pill, and to get some sleep!

Grasping Life

 Mark 5:21-43, Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

This passage from Mark is one I personally find very moving and very inspiring.   The passage is really two stories put together.  In the first story, a man of some stature approaches Jesus about his little girl.  She is terribly ill, “to the point of death” we are told, and later in the story the man is told that she is dead.  We understand this father.  He is desperate, truly desperate for healing for his daughter.  He is desperate to the point that he doesn’t care that many of the other synagogue leaders and people in power are suspicious of Jesus and even want to have him killed.  He doesn’t care if he makes a fool out of himself in front of people who may be in his temple and may lose some respect for him, possibly making his position as leader in the synagogue difficult.  He doesn’t care because this is his little girl he is concerned about, and she is dying.  So he comes and falls at Jesus’ feet and he begs Jesus.  We are told that he begs Jesus repeatedly.  “Please, I beg you, come and heal my daughter.  Just put your hands on her, please, so that she may live!”

His desperation pushes him beyond caring about anything else except getting healing for his daughter.  His despair pushes him to an act that would otherwise be seen as very courageous, as very bold, maybe even as outrageous.  His love for his daughter caused him to concretely grasp hold of whatever he could to claim LIFE for his daughter.

Jesus is moved by the man’s desperation.  He is moved by the man’s pleas.  And he is moved by the man’s act of faith in approaching Jesus in this way.  We are told that he goes with the man to see his daughter.

At this point the story is interrupted by a second story.  In this second story a woman who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years approaches Jesus.   In those days to be bleeding meant that you were unclean.  She would have been a complete outcast, totally isolated from her community because of her status as diseased and therefore untouchable.  She has done everything that could be done in those days to help herself.  We are told she has spent all she had, every penny, going to doctor after doctor for help.  And all of it has only made her worse.  She too, then, is desperate.  This time not for someone else but for herself.  And she too is motivated by that desperation to be courageous.  She pushes her way through the crowd, “infecting” all those people, since (remember) she was unclean because of her hemorrhage, and she reaches out to touch this holy man, knowing that her touch basically makes him unclean as well, a great affront to a religious person.  “If I can only just touch him, I know I will be well.”   Unlike the father in the first story, she does not ask, she instead “takes” it - reaching out and touching him without speaking to him or asking for healing.

But she gets caught. Jesus feels the touch and asks the crowd about it despite everyone’s confusion since, as his disciples said, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘who touched me?’” And then the women performs another act of great courage: she comes before him trembling, falling down before him in shame and fear: and then she tells him everything, she admits to touching him, she tells the truth.

Jesus is again touched and moved by this woman’s courage and faith.  He is moved by her honesty and by her desperation.  He tells her to go in peace, he tells her that her very trust that he could hear her has made her well.  She was healed because she reached out to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

While Jesus is talking to the woman we are suddenly thrown back to the first story. Some people approach the synagogue leader “even as Jesus is speaking” to tell the father that his daughter has died and that there is no more to be done.  But Jesus calls them to even deeper faith.  He still goes, and he raises her from the dead.  This story is told in Matthew, Mark and Luke and is the first resurrection story in each of those gospels.  The first to be resurrected in the New Testament was this little daughter, this girl child, not someone normally considered important in that time or place.  Yet important enough to God to be the first to be raised from death. 

In each of the three Synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, the two stories of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the hemorrhage are told together.  These stories are told together because they are both part of the same commandment.  Jesus’ second commandment to all of us is to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Mostly in church we focus on how much we need to love our neighbors and care for them as much as we care for ourselves.  But this story invites the reverse as well.  We are also called to love ourselves and take care of ourselves as much as to love our neighbors.  We are called by these stories to reach out for healing, for our loved ones, yes, for our

neighbors that we don’t even know - yes, AND for ourselves: to be courageous, to be bold, to even be outrageous and reach for the things we need to LIVE.  We are called to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT. 

            I want to point out that Jesus asks everyone to be quiet about what he has done.  He declares that the girl was not dead but asleep.  Why?  Well, in part, no doubt because the sooner he drew attention to himself, the less time he would have on earth to heal and proclaim his message.  But I believe there is another reason that is equally important here.  Jesus was restoring this little girl to her community.  Restoring her.  But if she became known as “the girl that was raised from the dead” she would not have been fully restored to the community.  She would have taken on solely that identity.  She might have been used as a political pawn: someone to be scorned by those who did not agree with Jesus: a lesson to be raised up by those who would have made her life difficult.  And an idol for those who followed Jesus.  No, his request to be quiet was for her sake as well.  We are called to live fully, to grasp life fully: and the courage that it takes to do that with integrity and with fullness should not be underestimated. 

I know this can be hard.  It is easier to ask for healing for our children, for example, than for ourselves.  While it might be hard to see how this is true in our own lives, we all know people who complain endlessly about ailments but never take the steps to heal them. At one point in time this stand of enduring problems without fixing them might have been considered self-less.  When my close friends’ aunt died, everyone said at her memorial service how giving and self-less she was.  But what that really meant was that she refused to seek help when she needed it, she refused to take care of herself at all, when things went wrong, she still declined seeking help.  And in the end that wasn’t really self-less at all.  She loved the attention she received because of all her pains and problems.  And she died early, leaving grieving and suffering children behind who would not have been motherless had she attended to her medical problems.  We are called not to live marginally through attention for our problems.  We are called to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

Many of you know the stories of Lance Armstrong, and of people like him, who have

become heroes for facing terrible illness and for fighting back against amazing odds.  In Lance’s case, he was faced with, some estimate, a 3 % chance of surviving his testicular cancer that had spread to brain and lungs and had metastasized.  But he decided to try an aggressive chemotherapy that ended the cancer.  He then took the next step of deciding to enter the cyclist racing world again, a challenge he describes as even greater than the fight back from cancer.  He had lost all his strength in his battle with cancer.  Yet he decided to be cancer free was not enough.  He felt the pull, the call, even, to become strong again, to learn to ride again.  After his battle with cancer he won seven Tour de Frances, the most won by any individual in the history of the race.  Lance chose not only to survive, but truly to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

Not all of us are Lance Armstrong.  Not all of us can find that kind of healing or at least, find the support and the doctors such as were available to Lance.  Sometimes, like the woman with the hemorrhage, we feel we’ve done all we can to heal ourselves.  We’ve spent all the money, we’ve gone to all the doctors.  And still we are no better.  But Jesus calls us even then to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.  That can mean so many different things: it can mean selling what we have and in one final effort joining the peace corps or a mission group and serving with

the little time we have left.  It can mean simply reaching out to help someone who needs it.  It can mean taking the chance to heal a relationship that seems beyond repair: making the hard phone calls, writing the difficult letter.  It can mean leaving a relationship that is not life giving, even though it may involve giving up security, to try to find a life that has safety and meaning and godliness.  It can mean starting a new career, one that is truly following an inner calling.  For someone else, it might mean planting a garden full of beautiful flowers or vegetables and fruits: helping bring forth new life and beauty.  For another it might involve joining or starting a campaign for something that is really meaningful to you, getting more involved in the community.  It can mean trying alternative medicine and healing practices.  It can mean praying in a different way or with more attention and devotion.

The second scripture passage we read today came from the book of Jeremiah.  And in it, despite all signs that Israel and Judah were about to be completely destroyed, Jeremiah is choosing something incredibly hopeful.  He goes and buys a field.  In the midst of the destruction of his country, his community, his faith body, he goes and buys a field in an extraordinary vision of hope.  There are witnesses to this and the deed is put in a clay pot and preserved so that when they are in exile, they know that that field is waiting for their return.  He puts a concrete action into the future: and by doing so makes the statement that the Israelites will be restored to their own land and that it will bear fruit.  By the way, the place where he buys the land, Anathoth – that word means “answer to prayer”. 

Richard Rohr says that the only thing that changes people completely are a combination of great love and great suffering.  We have the great love: God offers that every single day.  But suffering also comes and we have a choice about what we do with what we experience.  How do we walk into the future when the world seems despairing, when our lives feel despairing?  We choose: do we become bitter or do we get better.  John Dewey said, “We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience.” And that is a choice that we make.

While Jesus is not here today, I believe that offer to grasp life applies to us still.  We cannot touch Jesus, but we can touch the hem of his robe.  Our faith tells us that Jesus is with

us, in this very room.  And so, we too are invited to reach out and touch.  We touch the hem of his robe by asking for the support of one another.  We touch the fringe of his cloak by praying together in community.  We see Jesus in one another, we see Jesus in fellowship, in prayer, in worship.  We touch the hem of his robe by believing he is here among and within us and by having the courage to ask for help.  We touch the fringe of his cloak by reaching out to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

Again, I’m not saying that means everyone will be healed from every illness.  What I am saying is that all of us have been offered life, new life, whole life, through our faith.  Whatever that looks like for you, Jesus invites us to reach out, to touch the very hem of his robe, for our loved ones, for our neighbors, for enemies, and even for ourselves: to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

Immortality - All it's cracked up to be?

         One of my family's favorite movies is Stardust.  At one point in the film one of the characters says, "King!  For eternity!"  He is obviously very excited about this prospect, and will do whatever it takes to make that happen.  But while we were watching it the other day for the umpteenth time, one of my kids said, "well, that's horrible!"  To which I said, "Yeah.  The idea of being king forever is not at all something I would want." My child responded, "Oh!  That's not what I meant.  What I meant was that it would hurt everyone else if this person was king, and especially king forever."  Hm.  There are so many stories of people searching for immortality.  But it seems that most of these were written by people who are fairly young, who haven't lived through the many, many changes and challenges and tragedies of life.    

       But my own experience is that life gets harder as we get older in many ways.  There is grief that compounds grief as we lose those we love.  Our bodies present more and more physical challenges and limitations as we age.  The number of changes in society and in the world that we have witnessed and experienced grows, and the challenges to our worldview and thinking become more numerous even as our ability to adjust our thinking and change our ways of interacting with others in the world seems to diminish.  

    I've lived through a lot of hard stuff.  And I've lived through so many changes in our world and in our thinking and in our society.  I know it is only a piece of what I will live through.  I don't believe I am resilient enough that I could continue to handle an infinite number of losses and challenges and changes.  And more, each one is difficult, painful, and tends to reawaken the other crises that I've experienced, compounding them as it will.  

    Additionally, the idea of doing ONE job (being king for example) for all eternity is also an unbelievably unpleasant idea to me.  To do the same things each day, whatever that may be, because your job requires it, your life requires it, forever? A working life of 45-50 years seems plenty to me to spend doing one job.  Additionally, to always have people see you in one way, one role, to always treat you as a person in that one role: no thank you.  Not for me.  

    We think we want to live forever when we are young.  We also tend to think we are indestructible, that we will not die, or certainly not anytime soon.  And this is appropriate.  We have so much to look forward to in life.  But as we get older, there are growing pains, challenges and restrictions.  Yes, there is still much to look forward to.  At the same time, it is far too common in my experience that the people I visit in the elder years of their life just want to know why they are still alive and proclaim regularly that they are ready to go, that it is time.  We spend so much energy focusing on how to live longer, and we forget to focus on how to live more fully, more deeply with the time we have now.

    Immortality is not all it's cracked up to be.  And frankly, a long life that is lived past the time of understanding the world, past the time of enjoying one's body, past the time of really being able to LIVE in whatever way is meaningful to each of us, is not something I would ever wish for myself or for any of my loved ones.  

     I am grateful that medical professionals are now exploring this reality more.  Books such as Atul Gwandi's book Being Mortal are helpful steps towards people really making decisions about what is important to them during life so that they can choose what they are willing to suffer at the end of life as well as the point at which it is time to stop accepting medical interventions and to let go of life.  But I think these steps away from simply postponing death, and instead choosing to live a life that is full and meaningful only for as long as it really is full and meaningful for the one living it - these steps are small and will take time.

     One step towards that may be to stop glorifying the idea of immortality and stop telling fairy tales that idolize the idea of immortality.  It just isn't all that it's cracked up to be.  

The Cycles of Life

         There is much wisdom in those who say that life is not really linear, but rather is more like a spiral: cycling in and around the same issues again and again.  I find this in my own life in many ways: the things that challenge me seem to come back repeatedly until I really get a handle on them and then they stop appearing.  The problems that I've faced repeat until I get them "right".
         I find this fascinating at several levels.  There is a popular song, Breathe, by Anna Nalick with the words,
"'Cause you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable
And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button girl,
So cradle your head in you hands
And breathe, just breathe."

        There have been many times when I have related to those words and find myself wishing, hoping, praying that there were some way I could go back and do things differently.... my son missed his SAT test last week, for example, when I was gone and that is one of those stupid mistakes that has haunted me... "If I'd only remembered to call and wake him up that morning... if I'd only hounded him...."  But I can't fix it and it bothers me.  

         But what is interesting as I reflect on the big picture is that while I cannot go back and fix these instances, fix these mistakes in the specific circumstances, through the course of my life I am coming to see that I will have another opportunity to "get it right" or rather, a situation similar to this will happen again.  It will.  And perhaps I will have learned from the past mistakes and do better.  Anna Nalick wrote the song when she was 17.  She hadn't been given the experience yet of life cycling.  But I have no doubt that if she lives long enough, she will.  We can't go back, but we can go forward, and we will have the chance to learn from those mistakes and respond to similar situations differently in the future.

         But the other way in which I experience this cycling as true is that we also have the opportunities to learn that when something feels similar to a time in the past, it is an invitation to look at it with the eyes of someone who has survived and hopefully thrived through those earlier experiences.  We can then see those situations with the gift of the hindsight that we gained then and apply it to the situation now.

         I've found myself reflecting on a time when my body was telling me that a situation was the same as a nightmare I had experienced a decade before.  It felt the same: I couldn't sleep, wasn't eating right, and had become very sick.  I was anxious all the time.  I couldn't figure out what was going on.  Why did this feel absolutely the same as what I had gone through before?  Why was I in so much pain and wanting desperately to run away just like I had felt before?  But through the wisdom of an amazing person in my life I was able to hear and see that my body was telling me that this was the same situation as what I had gone through before.  Yes, the specifics were very different.  The people involved were different and in very different roles in my life than those who were the players before.  For those on the outside, they would have seen nothing similar at all in the two situations.  But many of the important key stressors were the same: lies, secrets, abuse, a situation that felt completely unsafe in which I did not know where or when the next hit would come; only that it would come.  My body was telling me that I had ridden this ride before.  And as a result, I had the gift of being able to choose what to do with that information.  What worked for me last time to navigate these waters?  What didn't?  How would I choose to move through this in this instance that was not "doing the same thing over and over and insanely expecting different results"?  What built relationships?  What severed relationships?  Which relationships were important to boost up and which ones should I have let go of much, much sooner?  These were all questions that I needed to navigate again as I steered through them the first time.  I didn't like it at the time, but I was given  the gift of the past to help me make better choices, informed choices and to move forward with eyes open this second time.  My body let me know I was back in the cycle, with another chance to learn, to grow and to navigate the waters differently.  

            I would not wish on anyone that we would have to repeat painful things.  I don't like that when we haven't learned all that we need to from a situation we are given the "opportunity" to learn it better a second time round.  But this is the life we've been given.  Each of us has been given opportunities to learn specific lessons.  And we will keep being given these chances until we get the lessons learned.  It's a gift, it's a curse - it's life.  

God in Charge??

         I've written on this before, but it has come up again, so here we are once more.  There are a few very basic and very different theologies that compete with one another around the topic of omnipotence, control or total power.  These theologies do not divide across denominational lines: Christians (and really people of every faith) of every denomination argue on both sides of this issue.  But it comes down to the same thing.  Frederick Buechner (Protestant), Richard Rohr (Catholic), Elie Weisel (Jewish)... they all basically say the same thing: that there are three statements that cannot be reconciled:
God is all-powerful.
God is all-good.
Terrible things happen.
         One of these has to go.
         If God is both all good and all powerful, then even things that we feel are terrible must, ultimately, not be.  But in order to believe this, you have to somehow convince yourself that rape, children being murdered and tortured and kidnapped, people destroying one another - somehow these are not actually bad things.  Somehow God "has a plan" and "has mandated it from the beginning" and "everything happens for a reason."  All I can say here is that if you actually believe that these things are not genuinely evil, and horribly wrong, then either you have never experienced genuine trauma, or your morality is completely different from my own.
          So maybe, instead, you decide that God must not be all good.  Well, this is the only option if God is in control of everything and terrible things really do happen.  What kind of monster-god would allow for children to be separated from their parents, tortured, left to die of dehydration and neglect?  What kind of monster-god would mandate that some people should be born with riches to fill the world while others cannot get enough to eat or drink?  What kind of god feels rape is acceptable?
        No, the above mentioned theologians, as well as many people across denominations and faiths who love God and spend time with God come to the conclusion instead that the "God is all-powerful" statement is the one that must be rejected.  Instead they point out that God wants genuine relationships with us.  And that means that we must be given free will, a free-will that allows people to make choices.  Sometimes that means people make terrible choices that in turn lead, at times, to terrible tragedies.  And because God is committed out of a deep, deep love for each of us, to letting us be who we choose to be: real people (not puppets, not dolls, not micromanaged robots) in real relationships, sometimes we do things that break God's heart.  OFTEN we do things that break God's heart.  And when that happens, God grieves with us as much as we ourselves grieve.  God cries with us, holds us, mourns for and with us.  But God still loves us too much to take away our ability to choose to be who we choose to be.  I believe the stance of not being all powerful is something God has chosen, for the sake of giving us genuine life, for the sake of choosing real relationship with us.
        Sometimes this makes me angry, just as it does for all of those who choose genuine, honest, real relationships with God.  Sometimes I become furious at God for not stepping in, stopping the wars, stopping the torture, stopping death and destruction.  But I also believe in a God who is big enough and loves me fully enough to be able to handle that anger.  Read the Psalms if you aren't sure.  They are full of words of anger at God, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!" the psalmist shouts as he invites us to likewise raise our voices honestly to God.  Jesus echos this from the cross as well, again, giving us permission (as we are called to follow in every way) to likewise express our pain and anger to God.  Does God want you to suppress your feelings?  Does God want you to lie about what you actually feel?  Of course not!  The God who loved us into being is big enough to be able to hear and see and love us for ALL that we are, with all our pain, all our anger, all our pride, and all our misunderstandings.  That is the God who chooses us, chooses relationship with us, chooses to love us, and to stay with us despite what we do, what we say, what we feel and what we grieve.
       Let me be clear that I do not believe that God therefore leaves us alone.  We have been sent the Spirit, the advocate, who offers counsel and guidance.  God is with us to talk to, to listen, to respond.  God works through people, through nature, through scripture, through other writings, to all who are open to God's love, guidance, compassion, movement, encouragement, and wisdom.  But God does not compel our choices in any way.
        My God is big, big enough to love all of us with all of our faults, our mistakes, our tragedies, and our flaws.  My God is all good, love beyond measure, hope beyond despair, and compassion beyond rage.  Terrible things still happen.  And God is not responsible for those terrible things.  They happen, and God cries as her children are crucified again and again.  God cries as his beloveds suffer.  God weeps as we stumble our way through life sometimes hurting one another in awful ways.  AND God laughs with us when we learn, delights in us when we triumph, celebrates with us as we grow and move and expand in our ability to love and care and share and be the people God hopes for us to be.  This is the God I love.  This is the God I know.  This is the God I can count on to love me exactly as who I am, with my anger, and my grief, as well as my gratitude and my joy and my growing.  And for all of that I am, indeed, grateful.

A Reassurance of Life

Revelation 1:4-8

John 20:19-31

            The story of Thomas is a wonderful story about God’s coming to be in relationship with us where we are.  I have preached before on what an amazing gift it is that when Thomas doubts, Jesus does not leave him or abandon him there, but goes to him, brings to Thomas his very self for Thomas to touch, reconnect with and believe in.  But today I want to focus on the other disciples, on what they were doing, what their lives were like following this revelation of Jesus’ resurrection. 

Today’s story from John immediately follows the announcement from Mary to the disciples that Jesus is alive, that she has seen him, that Jesus has sent her to them.  And yet, despite this announcement, where are the disciples?  They are hiding, we are told, from the Jewish authorities.  They are behind locked or closed doors (the Greek word is actually “closed” but I think many of the translators use the word “locked” to indicate that it was a way of shutting others out) out of fear.  Jesus has arisen, which tells us that there is nothing more to fear – everything can be overcome, even death itself.  And yet, even though the disciples have heard this news, they remain terrified to the point of hiding.  It isn’t just Thomas who is doubting because he hasn’t seen.  As a matter of fact, Thomas is an interesting contrast to these other disciples who are hiding.  Because Thomas, we are told, was not hiding with the other disciples.  He was out and about, not in the locked room!  He is the one who has reentered the world, continued living, refused to be trapped behind in fear, while the others, though they have all heard the news, remain in hiding.

            So, Jesus comes and shows himself to the hiding disciples, those who cannot yet believe, those who have heard the good news but remain afraid.  He shows himself and they believe….maybe.  Except that then we are told that eight days later they are still, or maybe again, in the same house, again with the doors closed or locked.  In other words, now after having seen Jesus, they are still hiding!!  And this time Thomas is with them.  Jesus comes again.  And this time when Jesus comes to them, he says something very interesting.  He says, “Do you believe because you see me?”  I think most of us have always heard this phrase to mean – “oh, so now you, Thomas, believe in the resurrection because you see me?”  But I heard this differently this week.  This time, I heard the phrase this way, “Do you actually believe? - because you have seen me.”  And I don’t think it was just aimed at Thomas.  The disciples are not behaving as people who believe.  They are not LIVING into the good news!  They are not so excited about the Good News that Jesus is alive that they are out preaching the word and sharing it!  They are not living as a people filled with joy and released from fear.  So he is asking them, “now that you have seen, NOW do you believe?”  He has come to see them a second time, and yet, they still have not understood the message.  And then he continues, speaking, again, to ALL of the disciples – “Happy are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.”

            As we know, and as we see through all of this, belief is not as simple, even, as seeing.  Even seeing does not guarantee belief, not real belief, in the meaning behind what is being seen.  Many believe who have not seen, and many see who do not believe.  No, it is not seeing that causes belief.  So, what does create belief in us?

I’ve shared with you before what Frederick Buechner has to say about faith.

“…Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession.  It is on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all.  Faith is not being sure where you’re going but going anyway.  A journey without maps.”

            He goes on to say that we can’t test what we believe, like, for example, we can’t test the friendships of our friends, without damaging those very relationships.  But we trust our friendships because we are engaged in them.        

And what this says to me is, again, that faith does not come about through seeing.  Faith, real faith, comes about through our relationships.  We believe in our friends when they ACT like friends.  And we believe in God when we experience a relationship with God. 

            We are called to live in the faith of the Good news.  The Good News, Jesus’ resurrection, tells us that even death will be overcome, that the last enemy has been defeated, and that because of that, we have nothing to fear, and can really live and can be free to work for life for all people, too, without fear of the consequences.  But, I repeat what I said, many who have seen do not yet believe, whereas many who have not seen, do believe and live out their faith.

            I think about the story in Mitch Albom’s book Have a Little Faith, in which we learn that the Rabbi lost his young daughter to illness.  When he returned to the pulpit he shared with the congregation that he’d yelled at God, screamed for an answer.  There was nothing in being a Rabbi that had kept him from the tears and misery of never connecting with his young daughter again.  But he also said that his faith was the only thing that soothed him.  It was a reminder that we are all part of something bigger.  And he believed that he would see her again.  But I also believe from what I read that it was the relationship he had with God that got him through the crisis.  It was a relationship that was strong enough that it allowed him to express his anger at God, and held him in the belief that God’s love was big enough to be able to handle that anger.

The thing is, belief, faith, is an act of will, and not a feeling.  And as much as we would want it to, seeing does not guarantee that belief.  I think about the movie, The Polar Express.  One of my favorite scenes in that movie is when the main character, a young boy who is struggling with faith in Santa Claus, is walking across the top of the moving Polar Express Train, looking for a friend of his whom he believes had also walked across the top of the train.  He finds on the top of the train a man who appears to be a Hobo, playing music next to a fire while he heats coffee and dries his socks over the fire.  And he has an interaction with the man where the man says, “You want to believe but you don’t want to be hoodwinked, bamboozled, scammed!”  We, the viewers of the movie, know that the man, the hobo is a spirit, or a ghost. But what is most interesting to me is that he says to the boy, “you want to believe, but seeing is believing, right?  So just one more question…do you believe in ghosts?”  The kid shakes his head “no” to which the ghost responds, “interesting,” and we are left, again, to ponder the reality that seeing is not always believing.  Even in the Polar Express we experience that the child’s faith (in Santa Clause in this case) comes about through his relationships and his experiences, and not through his seeing.  And we understand that child’s faith, we come to understand his faith change when his relationships with others change. 

            There is another part of Mitch Album’s book Have a Little Faith (p.47) that I want to share with you:

Mitch asks his Rabbi, “How do you not get cynical?” And from the book:

            “There is no room for cynicism in this line of work.”

            But people are so flawed.  They ignore ritual, they ignore faith – they even ignore you.  Don’t you get tired of trying?

            … “let me answer with a story,” he said.  “There’s this salesman, see?  And he knocks on a door. The man who answers says, ‘I don’t need anything today.’

            “The next day the salesman returns.

            “ ‘Stay away,’ he is told.

            “The next day, the salesman is back.

            “The man yells, ‘you again!  I warned you!’ He gets so angry, he spits in the salesman’s face.

            “The salesman smiles, wipes the spit with a handkerchief, then looks to the sky and says, ‘Must be raining.’

            “Mitch, that’s what faith is.  If they spit in your face, you say it must be raining.  But you still come back tomorrow.”

            To me, this story is talking more about what really makes faith happen: and that is, again, relationships.  You stay engaged, just as God will stay engaged with you every single time.  You also step out of your fear and choose to be in the world, no matter what the world is handing back to you.  That is faith.  Choosing to act “as if” even when we can’t feel it.  Faith is a choice.  It is a decision.  It is a way to be in the world that says, “I will not act on my fear.  But I will act on my faith, even when I don’t feel it.  I will choose to believe into seeing even when I cannot believe because of what I see.”

It is easy to be like the disciples, like Albom in his tendency towards cynicism, - seeing and still not believing.  The good news for us is that Jesus keeps coming, again and again, until we really do believe.  That doesn’t mean there aren’t times for all of us of struggle with faith, of doubt about who God is, that the love is really there, that it is enough.  I think about the book Life of Pi.  One of my favorite quotes: “Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love – but sometimes it was so hard to love.  Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up….Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out.  It was a hell beyond expression.  I thank God it always passed…The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart.  I would go on loving.” (p209) 

Jesus didn’t leave the disciples alone.  He didn’t leave Thomas alone.  He showed up again and again and by doing so he rebuilt his relationship with them until their faith was strong enough that he could leave and trust them to live in the Good News.  God does the same for us.  God will show up again and again for us as well, until we, too, finally find that, because of our relationship with God, not because of what we have heard, and not even because of what we have seen, but because of our relationship with God, we, too can have the faith that moves into true belief and therefore into action. Thanks be to God.  Amen.

For My Eyes Have Seen Your Salvation

For My Eyes Have Seen Your Salvation

Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3, Luke 2:22-40

12/30/18

            Simeon was a normal person who, after a long life, was able to see salvation, salvation given, as we are told in Luke, to ALL people.  And that salvation, holding that baby in his arms, finding the peace of knowing that salvation has come to the world and for the world, he now feels he has finished his tasks here on earth, completed what he came to do, and he asks God to then let him go, “you may now dismiss your servant in peace.”   

            As we approach New Year’s eve, I often think about what tasks we have yet to do, what we have yet to see, to learn, or to accomplish here in this life time that will then allow us to go, when it is our time, in peace, work completed, job done, accomplished, finished, a whole life, bookended with a call and a response, created in love and allowed to move forward in peace.  New Years is often a time of reflection.  We reflect on our past year, but we can also use it as a time to reflect on the whole of our lives.  What have been your life lessons?  What has been your life calling?  I think these are often different: some things we are called to accomplish, some things we are called to learn. It usually is not just one thing, but I think God does call each of us to certain tasks in our lives.  I also think there are specific tasks for each life - they are not always the same for every person.  They are not always obvious, not always clear, but each of us has a call, sometimes multiple calls, throughout our lives, reasons to be here. I think we have things we are supposed to learn and things we are supposed to do. Sometimes those reasons are things that carry us through a long life, sometimes it is something that we have to learn over and over again.  And sometimes we may learn and do things early on.

            Do you know what you are being called to do and called to learn in your life?  To help you think through this, let me give you some examples.  I think I’ve had several life lessons, or things that I have found myself called to do and learn.  One of my life lessons, or something that I feel I’ve been called throughout my life to learn has been what I would describe as the call to be an adult.  While others appear called to learn to surrender to God, to let go of their egos and allow God to be the driver, I find that every time I pray for God to tell me what to do, every time I ask God to make the decisions, I hear God calling me in turn in multiple ways and through many different forms, to take some risks and chances and make my own decisions, some of which will be good and others which won’t, which I will just have to learn from.  I hear God telling me to trust that God will be with me in those choices, but that God will not make them for me.  

I’ve had other life lessons as well.  Such as facing my judgments.  Every time I have judged someone, it comes back at me, and I find I have to deal with that, face that, in my own life.   

What are your life lessons?  They usually are not things that come easily, but they are deep calls to us to be the best and most whole we can be, for God, for others and for ourselves.

            As people reach the end of their lives, I am often asked the question, “Why am I still here?  Why haven’t I been able to die?  Has God forgotten me? I feel done here, so why hasn’t God taken me?” My answer is always the same.  “Perhaps there is something still left here for you to do.  Our job then is, with your time left, to figure out what that is.”  Often a person is not able to completely name what that is, what is left undone, what needs still to be done.  But I have walked now with many people at the end of their lives and I find it is very often an amazing time of coming to terms with their lives, of reconciling relationships, of making peace with what has been and with what is. 

            As I reflected on this, I thought of Thornton Wilder’s book, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2014. New York: Harper Perennial).  The book begins with these words, “On Friday noon, July the 20^th, 1714 the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.”  This collapse began an intense search into the “why” of that strange tragedy.  In particular, a monk was convinced that if we were to look at the five lives of those who died, we would see that each life was at a place where something had been concluded, that each life was “done” in some profound way, that God’s hand was in the bigger picture of the collapse because their callings, their purposes, their “jobs” here on earth were concluded and so it was simply time for God to call them home.  It is a question that many ponder.  Does everything happen for a reason?  Or at least, do we die at an appointed time?  Is there a bigger pattern and bigger picture that determines the very hour and even minute at which we will die?  Or does God call us home when our jobs here are done?  When we have finished our “tests” or our tasks and done what we are called to do, learned what we have been asked to learn?  In many ways, the story doesn’t actually answer the question about providence, destiny and fate.  In describing these lives and where they were at their final moment of death, the story causes the readers to explore more fully their own beliefs.  But it does so while leaving more questions than answers.  Towards the beginning of the book, Wilder says this about whether or not their fates, their lives and their deaths are determined, “Some say that we shall never know and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.”

But more to the point of this sermon, the book ends with these words, “But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten.  But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them.  Even memory is not necessary for love.  There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

Under all of our calls, under all of our life lessons, there is a bigger call, a deeper call.  It is to listen and follow God.  It is to follow Love, since that is what God is.  It is to bridge and reconcile and heal all of life with that Love. It is to learn to embody and be and act and live that love out. Thomas Merton put it this way, “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone." 

Sometimes the distinction between loving God for our own happiness and loving God for God is a subtle difference. “God, help me to find what will make my life whole,” is really a question about me.  It is a question that invokes God, but it still is about me.  “God, how can I serve you?  Where would it be most helpful to you for me to be and what would serve you and your people and your world the most for me to do in that place?” is slightly, but profoundly different.  That difference, between turning to God to make our lives whole, and turning to God so that we might serve God and help God make the world whole, that is the difference between asking God to be with us, following us in our journeys, and following God. 

Simeon had seen love incarnate.  He had seen it, recognized it, allowed it into his heart. He followed God in his call.  He had been given a task, and that task was seeing, recognizing and proclaiming who Jesus was.  Anna, too, had that task.  Their proclamations were about love, were about Jesus.  And having finished their work, they were ready to depart.  They came for the one thing that would make each whole and they did it.  And as Simeon declared, he was then made ready to cross that bridge of love and to be dismissed in peace. 

How are you called to follow the way of Love?  How are you called to serve God with eyes of love rather than fear?  As we enter the New Year, my hope for us all would be to move more fully into a commitment to loving God and serving God with our whole beings.  It is the call, the meaning, the resolution that matters most.  Amen.

All Saint's Day: Life and Death

Ezek. 37:1-14

John 11:1-45

The old time pastor was galloping down the road, rushing to get to church on time. Suddenly his horse stumbled and pitched him to the ground.  In the dirt with a broken leg, the pastor called out, “All you saints in Heaven, help me get up on my horse!”

Then, with superhuman effort, he leaped onto the horse’s back and fell off the other side.

Once again on the ground, he called to Heaven, “All right, just half of you this time!”

“Jesus wept.”  The shortest verse in the Bible.  “Jesus wept.”  What does it mean to you that Jesus wept?  What do you think about Jesus weeping?  

Today we celebrate All Saints Day, and while by “all saints,” we include ourselves (because “the saints” are all of those who are communing with God both during and after life), it tends to be a day when we honor, remember, celebrate, and grieve those who have gone on before us. We remember our loved ones who’ve died.  We celebrate the lives they led, and we remember that death is a temporary physical separation from those we’ve loved.  Death is a change in our relationship from one which is material, to one which is purely spiritual.  But while All Saints Day is a day to remember and celebrate, it is also appropriate that those memories would bring up some grief for us as well.  And All Saints Day is a day to honor those feelings as well, to remember that while we can rejoice in lives well lived, while we can celebrate the end of pain, while we can carry forward the legacies of those who led the way forward for us, while we can honor those who’ve passed by leading the best possible lives forward that we can, none the less, there is grief involved for each of us when a relationship changes from one of physical interaction to being simply one of remembering, celebrating, or speaking to our loved ones that have passed without tangible reassurance or promise of an answer.  That grief is a good thing.  It is a sign of the depth of the love we have for the other.  And it is a God-given experience: an opportunity to express the changes that happen within and without when someone we love has passed.

Sometimes people struggle to accept the grief they feel, thinking that in comparison to others, the loss they are experiencing is minor.  Or they feel they shouldn’t grieve as long as they do. Or we feel that we should just be thankful for what we do have and not mourn what we have lost.  I cannot tell you how often people say to me, “I shouldn’t feel this way.  I’ve been so lucky…”  But grieving is not unfaithful.  It is a recognition that we have loved and loved deeply.

“Kierkegaard said, ‘the most painful state of being is remembering the future… particularly the one you can never have.’ ”   I want to say that again, “The most painful state of being is remembering the future…particularly the one you can never have.”  In other words, the deepest grief comes when we realize that the future we envisioned for ourselves, for example, with another person, is no longer a possibility. 

Grief is an invitation to work that through.  When we are able to do that, then we can live lives that honor and celebrate those who have gone on before us.  When we try to stuff the grief, that is when we get into trouble.   

Many years ago, a parishioner died whose husband had spent the last thirty years caring for her.  It was his purpose and his focus in his life to care for her.  And when she died, her husband was left not only with the grief of losing his wife, but also with the feeling of having lost his purpose and his meaning in life.  He could not deal with the pain and he avoided

it by jumping into another relationship almost immediately, interestingly with someone who also needed a great deal of care.  He was remarried within six months of his wife’s death.  But while that whirl-wind romance put off his feelings of grief for awhile, it could not keep them away in the long run.  The result was that he then had to do his grieving within the context of a new marriage.  His new wife, not understanding grief, felt hurt by his pain over his wife who had passed.  She felt that he hadn’t let go or that he didn’t really love his new wife enough.  It made their relationship very difficult as he struggled both to live within his new relationship and to honor his old relationship through the honest and natural process of grieving.  In addition, the woman whom he married, as I mentioned, was also extremely needy and probably not someone he would ever have married had he taken the time to heal from his last relationship.  He jumped in to this relationship, he ran away from his grief into this relationship, not making the best choice for the long term.

That’s not to say that grief has to look the same for everyone or that there is one right way to grieve or even a right time line.  There isn’t one right way and grief looks different for everyone.  While grief specialist Kubler-Ross identifies as normal parts of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance, there is no prescribed order to these feelings and many experience them in different amounts, at different times, and in different ways, sometimes experiencing each of these stages multiple times and again in multiple ways, other times skipping one or more of these stages altogether.  Other grief specialists add “pain and guilt” into their lists of normal feelings associated with grief saying that even in cases in which a person could have done nothing differently, we feel guilty about things not done, about things that might have been done, things that should have been said.  But however one experiences grief, grief is a natural, normal process in life that we can’t avoid as human beings, as real honest people.

I remember a conversation I witnessed in which a parent was trying to protect their child from grief, keeping the loss of their grandmother from the child, not allowing the child to attend the memorial service, telling others not to mention the grandmother around the child, removing the child from any situation in which the grandmother’s name might be mentioned.  The mother thought she was doing what was best for her daughter.  But the daughter in her wisdom, as she grew a little older, finally told her mother, “I have to go through this. By forbidding me to grieve, you are taking away from me something that is extremely important and beautiful.  Please don’t take my grief away from me.”  Unlike her family, she understood the deeper truth that not going through the pain of grief was in some way denying her something important.  There is a gift in that grief.  There is a gift that is hard to see when we are in the midst of deep pain.  But the gift of grief is that it leaves us open and able to see things as they really are.  It leaves us able to move on, to heal, and to be ready for what God will bring in the future.  For Christians, the gift in the celebration of the Saints who have gone on before us is that we are invited once again into a deeper relationship with God, for God is with us in our grief, grieving with us as well.  And God is the God of resurrections, bringing new life out of every loss.  But again, we have to grieve, have to go through the death of the past in order to be open to the new life that God brings.

And that brings us back to today’s verse, “Jesus wept.”  It can feel difficult to understand this verse at some level because Jesus kept saying to all those around him both before and after Lazarus had died, that Lazarus would live.  Jesus knew that Lazarus was not really gone forever.  In light of that, what does it mean that before he raised Lazarus from the dead, that he wept for him?  How could his grief have been sincere when he knew his loss was not long lasting or real?

I belief Jesus’ grief was real.  I think that Jesus realized, and reminds us through his grief, that new life never looks the same as old life.  A resurrected person doesn’t look the same or act the same as a person who has never died.  We are changed by the losses we experience, the deaths we live through.  Roberta Bondi sums it up well in her book “Memories of God” with these words, “Even Jesus was resurrected with his wounds.”  Jesus, too, was not the same after his resurrection and he knew that Lazarus, too, would not be the same.  He grieved the Lazarus that died because the Lazarus who was raised would not be the same.  He would be different, he would be changed by his experience of death.

The reality is that it is hard for us to look at those wounds, the wounds of life, the wounds that have forced us into lives different from what we imagined.  It is hard to accept that even though new life has come, the old life is gone, really gone.  But it is.  Lazarus died.  He truly and actually died.  And while Jesus was able to bring new life to Lazarus, he first had to grieve for the life that had died, the life that was, the life that ended.  That, to me, is the message in that one very important Biblical passage, “Jesus wept.”  Jesus knows that we, too, must grieve for what was, grieve for what has past, for what is over, for what is done.  It is only through grieving and letting go of the past that we can really truly be open to the wonders of the present, to the gifts of the now, to seeing the new life around us.

Those two simple words, “Jesus wept” give us permission to not just live in the Easter celebration of new life, but to grieve the death that preceded it as well.  “Jesus wept” gives us permission to recognize that every change includes grief, and that it is okay to feel that even as we look towards new life.  Jesus wept.  And we can, too.

I want to end by reading you a poem by Washington Irving:

There is a sacredness in tears.

They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.

They speak more eloquently than 10,000 tongues.

They are the messengers of overwhelming grief,

of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.

            So today, I would like to invite you to come forward and put your pictures on the tables that are set up and name the Saints that have meant something to you.  If you would like, tell one good thing about that person.  If you did not bring a picture or a momento, I invite you still to come forward and say the name of someone whom you are remembering this day.  For this is our celebration of the Saints: all those who have blessed our lives, and continue to do so with our memories and celebrations of their lives.

The Frailty of Life

     As I described in an earlier post, my family and I were almost in a full head-on collision with a truck, both vehicles moving around 55 miles an hour towards each other.  That would have been a death sentence.  I returned feeling that I had survived a near miss, but I didn't think too much more about it.  Then later in the week after we returned, I received a phone call about a woman whose adult son (in his late 30s) was scuba diving and something went wrong and he died.  Again, later that same week I heard about a family that we have supported through CCIH and Winter Nights who WAS in a head on collision in which two of the family members were killed: a 13 year old boy and a 20 year old young man. Their mother has been struggling for years, was finally getting their lives together and then this happened.  Her life will never be the same.  The loss is overwhelming.  And I know that, were I in her position, I would wonder what all the struggle to get their lives together, to make something better for all of them had, in the end, been for.
     My kids and I were fine.  My parents, who were driving in the car behind us, were fine.  But I feel like the combination of the near hit, along with the actual horrific and great losses to others call me to remember that life is fragile, that everything can change in the blink of an eye.  All we have, really, is now.  This moment.  This minute in which we live and breathe and write and sing: that we hug our children, and really look into their eyes, that we offer a prayer for someone we love or make that phone call to the friend from way-back-when: these are all that we have, and these are the things that matter.  They are fleeting, they are momentary, they are precious.  We do not know what will happen tomorrow or even later on today.
        Where does that leave us?  Well, it leaves me with two different urgencies.  The first is to pay attention and appreciate each moment that we are given.  We never know when it will be our last.  What in this moment, right now, is beautiful?  Even in the hard moments, what is beautiful and worth gratitude?  There is so much that we have; air to breathe, feet that walk, ears that hear, eyes that see, family, friends, foods, music, art, LIFE.  Taking the time to notice, to send up thanks, to simply BE with what is; this is deeply worth the time and energy it may take. Life goes fast.  Take time to be in your life.
      The second urgency for me is, once again, the question of what mark I want to leave with my life.  We have a very limited time to leave a mark.  What do we want to do?  Who do we want to be?  What legacy do we want to leave?  This isn't about the work I do. I think it used to be: what do I want to have accomplished with my time here?  But it has changed in the last year or so. For me this has now become more about how I want to walk through each day, what I want to do with each encounter, who I want to be with the world, with the universe, with my community and with all I encounter.  I want to walk with kindness, compassion, being fully present with each person who is before me in each moment.  I want to be empowering, encouraging, bridge-building.  I want to exude grace, compassion, empathy.  I want to be with people, even the difficult people, in a way that leaves them feeling better for having that time with me.  I want to help change the world into a more united, loving, caring place.  I don't have forever to do this, so I need to do it now, and with every opportunity I am given.
     The recognition that life goes fast is a gift.  But, as with every gift, it calls for a response.  My response is to choose to be more present in my life: both being more fully who I am and being more grateful for the amazing gift of life.