Recently, I was asked, “If grief was a person, what would that look like?” And my immediate response was an old crone, not a witch but a reclusive wise old woman.
How AI pictures me as a crone.
Everyone has heard of her. Eventually, everyone encounters her. The old crone, Grief.
Out there in the woods. Away from town in her odd little cabin. Folks are afraid of her. They think she’s a witch and a powerful one at that.
But she’s not.
There’s no magic in her. Or in her cabin out there in the woods. There is no great power in her. Only an odd sort of kinship with death that frightens most people.
They say she talks to ghosts out there, alone in the cabin in the woods. Even the woods around her cabin are rumored to be full of ghosts. There are whispers there, soft and low, or it might be just the breeze. Shadows too, glimpsed from the corner of your eye, things more felt than seen.
But those that dare to brave her woods find that her odd little cabin has a cozy spot by the hearth and a warm cup of tea ready. And those that stop to sit awhile soon discover that this gnarled old crone that is so feared and so loathed is actually a great keeper of stories.
She knows them all: tales of ancestors long gone and the loved ones whose graves have just been dug. The great love stories, the terrible rows, the whispered prayers, and the quiet joys. The stories told and retold until they’ve grown into legends.
But more than that, she knows the weight of words unsaid and of the unvoiced wails kept locked away. She knows of the secrets taken to the grave and of the deathbed confessions. Of the apologies never uttered, the promises unkept, the trips not taken, and the things left undone.
She knows of the tears, yes, but also of the wild, raucous laughter of clan and kin. The reels that were danced and the songs that were sung, even now when the music is no more and the voices are lost in the silence.
She is no powerful witch. She is just an old crone who has seen a lot of life. Enough to know that even the harshest winters end in springtime. Even the longest droughts eventually give way to rain.
She’s seen enough of death to borrow some of death’s wisdom. The wisdom that knows it’s not the letting go that hurts so much as the hanging on too tightly. The wisdom to know that everything dies. The wisdom that knows new life follows death. She learned hope through death. The sunflowers gone to seed in her garden were not simply the end but the beginning of a new cycle.
Death catches up with everyone – sooner or later – but still she plants her garden. Maybe she’ll see it come to harvest. Maybe she won’t. But there’s hope in the planting.
Come sit by the fire. Pour a cup of tea. Listen to the stories told by Grief until you can look her in the eyes and recognize this old crone’s true form: Love.
I have a confession to make – this gospel passage always sets my teeth on edge. Why? Because Jesus sounds so out of character. A desperate mother pleads with him for help and he bickers with her. He essentially calls her a dog. Why? Because she’s an outsider. She’s a Canaanite, not an Israelite. That doesn’t sound like the Jesus I know. That sounds like a bully and the Jesus I know is not a bully. I doubt most of us would be sitting here if we believed Jesus was a bully.
So how then do we make sense of this exchange? We have a mom, worried sick about her child. She sees that this teacher, this man she has heard is a holy man, has come to her neighborhood and she chases after him, yelling, “Lord help me!” She doesn’t care that for her community, Jesus is the outsider. She doesn’t care that he’s traveling with an entourage who will look down on her. She is so consumed with love and compassion for her child that she will not take no for an answer, that she will call out and call out and call out until she gets an answer. She will face public ridicule and still she will persist, pleading for help for her child.
And on the other side of this exchange, we have Jesus. Jesus who has so recently shown such compassion for the crowd that gathered when he was trying to get some time alone to grieve the loss of his kinsmen John the Baptist. He wasn’t expecting a crowd but when they all showed up, he healed their sick. Then, as it grew late and the crowd was hungry, Jesus fed them all. So what happened between these moments of great compassion and this moment with this poor desperate mom?
Is Jesus just tired? Is he burnt out? Does he need some time for self care? Maybe he’s hungry and he just needs a Snickers? Caregivers know – compassion fatigue is very real. Jesus is fully divine but he is also fully human. Is this the human side of Jesus showing more than we are used to seeing?
Let’s think about this. Before his encounter with the Canaanite mom, Jesus had been teaching the crowd in another place. He told them that it was not what went into the mouth that defiles a person but what comes out of it. And that rattled some cages. The Pharisees were most upset with him for saying this because it sounded like it was in direct opposition to the ritual purity laws. Even his own disciples didn’t seem to understand what he was saying. Peter asked him for an explanation. “Jesus – can you explain this parable to us? I’m not sure we understand what you’re saying.” And, of course, it doesn’t make sense to them, it sounds like it flies in the face of the traditional religious practices they have grown up with. In Peter’s place, I’d be asking the same question.
Jesus seems a little short with Peter. “Are you still not getting this?” It’s not the careful, ritual hand washing, the ritual purifications, and the cleansing rituals before eating that makes a person clean or unclean. It’s the words they speak that show what lies in their heart. All the proper religious practice in the world does not necessarily make someone a good person. Jesus even gets a little graphic about it – what you eat, what goes in the mouth, goes to the stomach and ends up in the sewer. But what comes out of the mouth – that comes from the heart and that shows what that person is really like.
And then they leave that place and journey to the district of Tyre. I’d be willing to bet some serious money that this discussion of what goes in the mouth and what comes out of the mouth continued as they walked. And now Jesus encounters this mom. He doesn’t even pay attention to her at first but the disciples are bothered by her presence. “Lord send her away. She’s loud and annoying.” Then Jesus answers her. “It’s not fair to take food from the children and throw it to the dogs.”
It’s not fair. Oh boy – we know those words don’t we? From the time we are little kids: It’s not fair – he got more than me! It’s not fair – I was here first, why does she get to go ahead of me? I can’t tell you how many times my kids have cried to me: it’s not fair! And when I finally get exasperated, I told them life’s not fair! Fair is where you get cotton candy! Do you see me holding cotton candy?!
Listen to the debates around a lot public policy questions and you find the grown up version. It’s not fair that I paid off my student loans and someone else might get their loans forgiven! It’s not fair I worked and paid into Social Security all my life and it might not be there by the time I’m old enough to retire! It’s not fair that I had better grades than that guy but he got into that university and got a lower tuition just because his grandfather went there!
Nothing puts all our fears and insecurities and hidden little prejudices on display quite like the words: It’s. Not. Fair. Here we are – doing our best to follow the right religious practices to the best of our ability – going to church, saying grace, saying the Lord’s Prayer, studying the Bible and learning our catechism, and teaching the young ones around us to do the same – but we’ve all got something that pulls us up short when it comes to compassion for others. Something that sees some people more worthy of helping and others less worthy. We have a grading system that ranks people differently – children, elders, the very rich, the very poor, the undocumented, those with different political affiliations, those with different religious affiliations, people who are sleeping on the streets, people struggling with addictions, people newly out of jail, people who work the “good jobs”, people who work for minimum wage, people who are unemployed – we have all of these categories we use to decide who is an insider and who is an outsider, and who we will help and who we will not based on our own judgments.
And the woman said to Jesus, “Yes Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Even me – an outsider, a nobody, a person you would walk by and pretend not to see or hear, even I deserve a little bit, a crumb, of compassion. You have the ability to help me, so see me for who I am. See me as a human being worthy of being treated with dignity, and see that I don’t ask for myself but for my child. My innocent child, who had no choice in the place where she was born or who her parents are or in suffering the demons that are afflicting her.
“Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish.” With those words, Jesus healed her daughter.
Her words came from her heart and her words demonstrated her belief in her own dignity and her faith the Jesus could and would help her. Jesus’s words demonstrate that he recognizes her faith and her worth as a child of God.
But he called her a dog! Yeah, he did. He pointed out her outsider status, he voiced the prejudices that existed against her. One could even say that he gave his disciples a close up view of what he meant when he said it is what comes out of the mouth that matters. That by speaking so entirely and shockingly out of character, he demonstrated for them their own sinfulness, their own prejudices, their own fears and insecurities, their own clinging to the ideas of what is fair and what is not. Because grace and mercy are not fair.
Grace and mercy and compassion and kindness – these are all a part of the Jesus we know and that we follow. Jesus has shown us unfathomable mercy and compassion when others have deemed us as unworthy. Jesus bestows grace and deals kindly with us when others would condemn us. Even as they have said – it’s not fair. Jesus has shown that same unfathomable mercy and compassion on those we deem unworthy. Jesus bestows grace and deals kindly with those we would condemn. Even as we say – it’s not fair.
We, who call ourselves followers of Jesus, are challenged by Jesus himself to hear the words that are coming out of our mouths. When you find yourself saying: it’s not fair – and you will, we all will – that is when we are called to question what prejudices may lie within our hearts. We bear the responsibility to act on behalf of and for the benefit of those who find themselves treated as outsiders. We, who have been shown such unfathomable grace and mercy are called beyond our mere religious practices, beyond these church walls, we are called to speak and act, from the heart, for those whose voices go unheard.
If this gospel story still sets your teeth on edge – it’s okay. Sometimes Jesus has to rattle some cages to set us free. It’s not fair. But grace isn’t fair.
Let’s just recap what Matthew tells us about what Jesus and the disciples have been up to lately. They received word that John the Baptist has been beheaded. Grieving the loss of his kinsman, Jesus and the disciples head off to a private place but on arriving find a large crowd waiting. Jesus feels compassion for them and heals their sick. Seeing that it growing late, instead of dismissing the crowd, he feeds them all with two fish and five loaves of bread. Remember that Jesus still has not had that alone time yet. So, he tells the disciples, “Listen, you guys go on ahead. I’ll catch up.” And, following Jesus’ instructions, they set sail without him. Jesus dismisses the crowd and he finally gets some time to pray and to begin to grieve in private. When he’s ready, he starts walking across the lake to catch up with the boat and cross to the other side.
Now I can’t help but hear the disciples telling this story later. “Picture it: It was a dark and stormy night…”
You see, for the disciples in the boat, they’ve headed off onto the lake late in the evening after a really long, emotional, and tiring day. Before too long, the wind is blowing against them, whipping the waves into choppy whitecaps. It’s already dark and the spray from the waves is making it even harder to see, much less navigate.
Being caught in a squall in the middle of a lake at night is pretty scary, even for experienced fishermen who have spent their lives on the water. And then they see a figure coming towards them, walking on the water, so OF COURSE they think it’s ghost! And OF COURSE they’re completely freaked out. Who wouldn’t be?!
Now, you don’t have to be a boater or even have spent much time out on the water to know what it feels like when the winds of life are blowing against you, when things are getting rough, when you’re in the dark, when it’s hard to see which way to go. It could be you’re facing financial difficulties – the rent went up, the property taxes jumped, the utility bill doubled – AGAIN, the air conditioner quit working, the transmission in the car went, an illness has hit home, a loss has hit home. At some point in life, you will all face these things that are entirely beyond your control and when that happens, you’re just along for the ride and that can be pretty darn scary.
Whatever your particular dark and stormy night looks like, one thing is for certain: This was NOT what you expected when you got in the boat and started sailing away from the shore. This is NOT how you pictured your life would be at this particular point in time. So, when you’re feeling beat down, and you’re scared, and you think maybe you see something off in the distance, some little glimmer of light, it’s no big surprise if your first reaction is: Oh – now what?! Is that the light at that end of the tunnel or an oncoming train coming to finish me off?!
Imagine how the disciples are feeling at this point. They’re already terrified of the boat getting swamped or of being knocked overboard – and with good reason – and now they think they’re seeing a ghost. Jesus has compassion for them. He recognizes their terror and he doesn’t leave them wondering. He calls out to them. “Hey guys – don’t be afraid. It’s okay. It’s me!” But they are so caught up in their fear, they’re still not sure. And who can blame them? So, Peter, (being Peter) calls out, “Well then Jesus if it’s really you, tell me to come to you.”
Notice, Jesus is not testing Peter, nor is he testing anyone else in the boat. Jesus sees their fear and he’s trying to reassure them. “Hey guys – it’s me. Don’t be afraid.” Peter is the one testing Jesus. And Jesus goes along with this. “Okay Peter, come here.”
Now if you’re one of the disciples sitting in the boat in the middle of a lake, in the middle of a squall, in the middle of the night, what Peter does next is either incredibly brave or unbelievably stupid. Going against everything these experienced fishermen know to be safe and logical, Peter gets out of the boat. And he starts to walk to Jesus. The wind is whipping his hair and his clothes. The spray from the waves was bad in the boat but now it’s even worse without the little bit of shelter that the boat offered. The combined roar of the wind and the waves is almost deafening.
Then Peter has that moment when everything going on around him is suddenly TOO MUCH and he starts to panic, he falters, and he starts to sink. As he’s going under, he calls out, “Lord, save me!”
Immediately, Jesus grabs his hand and pulls him up. Immediately. Jesus doesn’t let him go. “You of little faith. Why did you doubt?” Then they walk together to the boat and join the others.
This poor terrified group on the boat has just witnessed something they could not have ever imagined possible. Now as Jesus and a very soggy, and probably very shaky, Peter climb aboard the boat, the wind stops and the waves die down. They recognize Jesus as the Son of God.
We don’t get to hear the tone of voice Jesus used. “Why did you doubt?” could just as easily be “Did you think I’d let you drown, my friend?” And we don’t get to hear Peter’s response but I’m willing to bet the discussion on that boat as they all continued across the lake to the far side was a good one.
It’s the kind of conversation you have with that person who loves you enough to see beyond your words when your voice says “I’m fine” but your eyes say otherwise. The kind of conversation where you feel truly seen and heard and cared for.
So, my dear friends in Christ, when you find yourself caught in the storms of life, don’t be afraid to call out. Don’t be afraid to ask, “Lord, is that you?” And if all you can do is hang on to that boat for dear life, know this – you will not be in that boat alone. And if you feel that call – come to me, come this way – have the courage to step out of what has been safe thus far, don’t be afraid to step right out into the midst of the winds and waves of that storm.
You might start to panic. You might falter. You might start to doubt. You might even start to sink. But don’t ever… Ever… EVER… be afraid to call out when you’re afraid and you’re full of doubt and you feel like you’re going under: “Lord, save me!”
Because I promise you, Christ will grab your hand and pull you up. You may be in that storm for awhile, it might be a long while, but you will never be in it alone.
When the roar of the storm gets loud, listen … listen… and hear the voice of Christ say to you, “Why do you doubt? My dear friend, I will never let you drown.”
Every summer for the past 17 years, I have planned my summer around the Week of Guided Prayer. And, without fail, that retreat week has been either the hottest or the stormiest week of the summer. Sometimes, just for fun, it’s both. So I suppose I should’ve known God was up to something when the weather forecast was absolutely gorgeous: sunny, warm, not hot, not humid for the entire week. Oh sure, very funny, wait until I move into a house with central air and then dial it down twenty degrees.
I went into the week feeling nothing short of chaotic. Grief is maddening like that. The first year, everything is new and shocking – an empty chair, a favorite dish not cooked, a text not sent, a call not made, a laugh that dies in your throat when they aren’t there to share it – and eventually I end up numb, stunned, and silent. Multiply by three. Now going into a second year and a third year, it’s not the Right Now that gets to me anymore. It’s the big, long future ahead without them at my side that hurts like hell. It’s realizing the parts of myself that only they knew will go unseen, unspoken of, and unknown. It’s not that those parts of me died with them. There might have been some peace in that. Rather, it’s like those pieces have been suddenly and haphazardly tossed into a dark, dusty storage closet that reeks of mothballs and a dead mouse or two or three. And as I’m moving into a transition that will take me out of the classroom and put me into new pastoral settings, I can’t help but feel like those pieces of me might have been good to have. Or at very least, it would have been nice to not feel like a huge chunk of myself is locked away somewhere I can’t get to. It’s infuriating and heartbreaking.
Scream. Sob. Repeat.
It’s not uncommon for me to find myself especially drawn to music during the retreat week. Some years I have actually ended up with entire playlists that captured the things I didn’t quite have the words for myself. This time was different. Two songs – only two – stuck in my head all week: Kid Rock’s Bawitdaba and Christina Perri’s A Thousand Years. Two songs that couldn’t be more different in tone, in volume, in sentiment. A loud screaming rant. A tender love song.
Scream. Sob. Repeat.
A week of scripture passages and journal entries that came down to the same theme over and over and over again. My grief and need from some sense of control and some sense of certainty about the road ahead was loud.
Scream.
God’s response was anything but. My chaos was met with calm. My scream was met with a whisper. Day after day after day for a weekthe same calm filtered through my noise. Chris, I know you. I know the parts of you that you keep hidden. I know that parts of you that you think are lost. I know parts of you that you don’t even know about yet. I don’t just know the things you’ve done, I know the reasons why you’ve done them. I know every scar, every hurt, every tear, every victory, every joy, every hope, every fear. And I’m not going anywhere.
Sob.
It’s a rare thing for me to be home alone and after a Week of Guided Prayer that could be euphemistically described as Emotionally Messy, I was grateful for the empty house on Saturday. A day home alone offers so many possibilities: to spend hours crocheting my blanket in shades of North Atlantic blues or lost in a good novel with a cup of Scottish Breakfast tea close at hand or to sit quietly on the stoop speaking peace to the bunny who lives under the enormous rhododendron in my front yard.
But another possibility also presented itself: one that involved a hammer, nails, a step ladder, and a stack of artwork from my parents’ house that had been languishing next to my kitchen table for months now. And my boys wouldn’t be around watching me climb a ladder holding nails in my lips while they say things like: Are you sure this is wise? [No. Not really.] and This looks like a dumb idea. [Yeah. Probably is.] and my personal favorite: I am NOT explaining this to the emergency room. [Nobody asked you to.]
It felt really good to put on loud music and hit something, not to destroy but to renew. A cross-stitch sampler I’d made in high school now hangs in my kitchen. A pastel sketch of my beloved dog Ginger – aka Dammit The Wonder Pup – also hangs in the kitchen. My father’s plank owner certificate from the Navy took its place of pride in the hall opposite the soft-colored lighthouse I’d cross-stitched for my mother. The little prints of an English village that have hung in the living room of every house I lived in with my parents now claimed a spot in mine. And a colorful copy of a map of the known world from the 1600’s that had hung in my father’s office now occupies the space over my television. I can’t help but notice how much is inaccurate or even missing from that map. I suppose the map I think I might have of my journey ahead is most likely also lacking spaces that I simply don’t know about yet.
A few hours of banging constructive little holes in the walls seems to have sapped the energy from my inner chaos – for now anyway. Having pieces of my history surrounding me in every room in the house helps in ways I can’t quite name yet.
The screaming has stopped. The sobs are gentler tears. I don’t need the loud screaming rant anymore. But the love song… yeah… the love song… that one can stay.
Darling, don’t be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years. I’ll love you for a thousand more.
Nine years. Between earning my bachelors in theology from Sacred Heart University and working towards my masters of divinity at United Lutheran Seminary. I have been in school nine long, crazy, maddening, tedious, fulfilling and wonder-filled years. As the spring semester winds down, I can’t help but glance back to see how far I’ve come. In August 2014, I began to earnestly follow my call down a road I could not see to a place I did not know.
This past semester, I took a class in Christology and spent thirteen weeks reading and discussing the dual nature of Christ. What does it mean to be fully human and fully divine and how does Christ show up in the world? From the earliest church writers to modern ones, everybody had their definitions and delineations, as though we can ever begin understand such a sublime mystery. My margin notes typically were as follows: Huh? Where did that come from? Who gets to say what is fitting for God?
I’ve done a lot of papers and projects over the last nine years: everything from an ethnographic study of 17th Century Highland Scots to crafting a prayer service for caretakers. But I dreaded what the final might be in this Christology class because if it’s one thing I’ve learned over the last nine years it’s that “They just made that shit up,” does not make for a great thesis statement.
You can imagine my relief when the final assignment was this: write a prayer. That’s it. As simple and as complicated as that. And somehow, all the definitions and delineations came together to create something new: a dialogue – or, at least, the start of one.
Who are you Lord, really? Do I know you?
You asked your disciples: Who do they say that I am? Who do you say that I am?
And churchy people have been trying to figure that out ever since.
They’ve created boxes and insisted that you would only operate within those boxes.
They’ve argued and fought that you’re more God than human or more human than God.
They say you’re the sacrifice necessary to appease an angry God and they say you’re the loving bridge to open the way for reconciliation with our Creator.
They say you’re the Mother God, loving her children with great tenderness.
They say you’re the Mighty Lord, who will not tolerate any slight, intended or unintended.
They say you’re the Christ, who comes to us, covers us, and fills us with grace beyond our ken, freeing us from the bonds of sin and the chains of works righteousness.
They say you’re the Liberator, the hope of oppressed, the enslaved, the mistreated, the impoverished, the starving, the terrified.
They say you’re the One who works at the margins, bringing love and healing to those beyond the walls of the church, outside the boundaries of a so-called ‘polite society’ that has been defined by whites, straight, cisgender middle class men. They say you’re the One working at the intersections and all along the spectrums.
They say you were a good Jewish man who grew up learning his Torah and became a great teacher.
They say you angered the empire, and that’s why they killed you, to get rid of you and your dangerous ideas about love, freedom, and grace.
Me? I think you are all of those things and probably a bunch more we haven’t defined yet. I think you are the flawless, beautifully faceted diamond, covered in the dust and grime that comes from being wrapped up tightly in 2000 years’ worth of fading ink and moldering paper that was meant to protect and define you, the One who needs no protection and is beyond definition.
What I do know is you are the one who calls me forward and makes a way where I do not see one. You are the one who walks beside me and calls me Beloved Friend.
But still, I wonder, as we walk – who are you, Lord, really? Do I know you?
It was the newest of books. It was the oldest of books. Or some kind of good Dickensian prose like that.
March is always a tough month for me. My birthday is coming up. And that’s also the day I lost my Dad. So celebrating my 50 years on earth this year whilst also mourning the 36 of them without Dad. And now a year and then some without Mom. It’s so very weird being an orphan around birthdays and holidays.
Anyway, a wise priest told me years ago to learn to celebrate my birthday the way Dad would have. And I figure the same advice applies for Mom too. So I decided a trip to the bookstore was in order. After all, neither of my parents ever passed up a bookstore. This trip, I came across a beautiful copy of A Tale of Two Cities. Gorgeous cover. Gilded edges on thick glossy pages. Nice heft to it. A little pricier than I’d normally drop for a book but I felt drawn to it, so I got myself a lovely early birthday gift.
A Tale of Two Cities was one of Mom’s favorite novels. She read it every year. As she got older and her eyesight started to fail, I offered to see if I could find a large print copy or to download a copy to her Nook. But she said no. She liked her copy. She could manage with a magnifying glass. Honestly, I don’t think she really could but it didn’t matter much because she’d read it so many times she knew what it said.
I figured reading this story would be like having her reading it with me. By the way, she was horrible person to read a book with – always dropping spoilers like a toddler dropping Cheerios. I either had to read a book in it’s entirety before she ever started it or avoid being in the same room with her until I’d finished it. Unless of course I wanted to know how the love triangle ended up or who the murderer was or every other major plot twist that was waiting 50-100 pages ahead of wherever I was in the book.
I don’t know what made me pull her old copy off my bookshelf but somehow, before I started reading mine, I wanted to glance through her book. Suddenly, I understood why she only wanted her copy.
Clearly this was a book she’d read for the first time in school. On the edges of the worn pages: Gene + Lou. All throughout the book were doodles: little hearts with her and dad’s initials, Marylou loves Eugene, Mr. and Mrs. T.E. Pelfrey. And inside the front cover? A love poem from Dad. In the back pages in a place to review the book – “Climax (point where interest is the highest): [in Dad’s writing] On The Flyleaves. Judging from the other one word notes in her writing and his, she was more of a fan of this novel than he was. I can just picture them sitting together and passing the book back and forth.
Did I mention they were junior high and high school sweethearts? Yeah. Young teenagers in love is all over this worn little book and it’s just the cutest damn thing. For a little bit, it felt like they were sitting right here in the room with me. I think that was the birthday gift I was meant to receive: a reminder of the love that brought me into this world.
“Oh Sweetie, feelings aren’t real! Silly girl!” John took a sip of his drink, his eyes sparkling with mischief as he tried to lure me into yet another intellectual debate on the subject. It was one of our favorite topics to spar over. Pretty funny coming from the guy who once explained the odd organization of my CD collection to a mutual friend. “It’s simple,” he announced as he triumphantly pointed out each break, “Good Mood, Bad Mood, Bitch, Psycho Bitch From Hell. After that, it’s just alphabetical by artist.” It was so damn infuriating that he knew me that well and yet it’s the same thing I miss most. That and his ability to drag me into a debate simply but staking out and defending the one position he knew I would never concede. “Feelings. Ha! Not real. Nope. Don’t exist.”
“What do you mean feelings aren’t real?! Don’t give me that crap. The average kindergartner can tell you that their whole day was ruined because their friend broke their favorite crayon, even if they don’t have the vocabulary to name sadness, anger, betrayal, and frustration.” I’d fire back at him and then we’d be off and running on that topic for hours.
It’s funny now how those late nights of debating came back to me. I made the annual Week of Guided Prayer retreat roughly three weeks ago. I’d missed it last year, yet another of the many losses of 2020. It threw the whole year out of whack – or more precisely, even more out of whack – which is saying something considering the year I had. I went into it this year saying I needed a reset. I was a mess and I knew it. I’d known since my retreat in January that I had been left shattered by the accumulation of losses. I’d managed to drag myself back to my feet but I was punch-drunk. I rarely wrote. My once daily journal entries were now months apart. Seminary papers and assignments that should have come easily to me were a struggle. At times, I felt like had to fight for every sentence and I was getting tired of fighting.
God and I? Well, that was every bit like being stuck in a car on a cross-country trip with someone I didn’t feel much like talking to. And yet… I decided to make this retreat. Why? Because I’m an idiot. Because I couldn’t stand the silence anymore.
A lot of seemingly disconnected things came up during the course of the week. And yet, as disconnected as I wanted to think they were, there was a common thread: grief. And the messy feelings that come along with it. Oh Sweetie, feelings aren’t real! Damn it all. Feelings are very real and some of them are pretty ugly. There was no way around, only through the muck, exactly the way I really didn’t want to go. I asked God for a reset. What I got was a lesson in ‘be careful what you pray for.’ If you’ve ever had to reset your phone or computer, you know it takes time and patience and you don’t always know if everything you had is going to still be there when you’re done.
What started out as a week of sparsely worded journal entries from the Week has gone back to daily entries and at least some of them have to do with more than a run down of the things I need to accomplish in the days ahead or the annoyances of the previous day. I realized I was annoyed with myself for struggling. Not exactly an uncommon thing for me. When I had to spend four months on crutches, I threw them across the room more times than I care to remember. And had I not walked around on a fractured heel spur for two weeks before going to the doctor, I might not have needed the crutches for quite so long. But I digress…
I was able to start writing. Cool. But I’m definitely getting down on myself. Not cool. So being too lazy (sulky) to drag the box of journals out from under my bed and pick through them, I read back through my blog posts. I started with the posts of the past retreat weeks. Surprise! This is hardly the first time I’ve had a rough week. I read The Gremlin story again, which reminded me that it’s been a long time since I’ve taken a long ride by myself with the windows down and the radio up. It also reminded me that I hadn’t listened to the song Coma by Guns ‘N’ Roses or the album it came from in its entirety in years. A few days later, I found myself with an unexpectedly free afternoon and I took a long ride up the shoreline with the heavy metal of my youth blasting away. I’d forgotten how cathartic metal music can be when I’m mad at the whole world, life in general, my dead friends, God. Especially Metallica’s black album with tracks like Through the Never, Sad but True, Nothing Else Matters, and The God That Failed. Songs I haven’t listened to in years but still know every chord, every drumbeat, every word, and every wail by heart. I came home from that drive rather hoarse but just a little less ragey. I’ve had a few more drives since. The soundtrack has shifted a bit. Heavy metal gave way to Tina Turner (Better Be Good to Me) , Aretha Franklin (Think, Chain of Fools, Respect), and Janis Joplin (Piece of My Heart, Me and Bobby McGee). My ladies gave way to the more melancholic sounds of The Smiths (Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now) and The Cure (Lovesong – I Will Always Love You).
John points to the breaks – Pyscho Bitch From Hell. Bitch. Bad Mood.
Yeah okay. I own that. God and I? Still riding in the car. I still didn’t have much to say but I might not smack him for singing along with me.
I decided last night that I could use a good cry of a movie. I stayed up late watching Robin Williams in What Dreams May Come. One of my friends has declared that movie traumatic. I love it. When the wife dies by suicide after some unspeakable losses, her soulmate of a husband leaves the joy of heaven and goes to find her, right down into the depths of the hell of her own making. And when she can’t see any way out, he chooses to stay with her rather than to abandon her in that hell of her shattered dreams. That ends up being the redemption of both of them. (I’m sure it’s no surprise that my favorite icon is one of the harrowing of Hell, with Jesus pulling Adam and Eve up from their graves.)
While I’ve struggled to write much of substance these last few months, some stuff still trickled through. I made a margin note in a book about Mary Magdalene: Jesus didn’t come because we’re bad. He came because we’re good and we’ve forgotten.
I’ve forgotten. I’ve forgotten it’s okay to be human, to have feelings, even the big, ugly, messy ones. I’ve forgotten that God can withstand my furious silences and angry accusations. I’ve forgotten that God isn’t waiting for me to find my own way out of the hell of my grief. I’ve forgotten that God has sat with me in hell before and God is sitting here with me now. I’ve forgotten that I’m not really stuck here, that there is another side to this, one that isn’t quite so dark or quite so broken or quite so terrifying.
2020 was a year of losses. A much needed and highly anticipated trip to Cape Cod and Boston was cancelled. My long-awaited college commencement was postponed until May 2021, and is still not set in stone as the pandemic continues to rage unabated. I started the first semester of my master’s program while trying to juggle being a full-time student, a part-time office manager, and run the household during a pandemic which has eliminated nearly all of my favorite downtime activities. Remember movies? I miss the movie theater with the cushy chairs and overpriced snacks. I long for a good night out at the pub with the girls for a good steak and better bourbon. And most of all church. What I wouldn’t give to spend a Sunday morning in my parish for worship and coffee hour with all my lovely church friends. I miss our monthly craft circle spent chatting and working in the sanctuary.
But there were other, far bigger losses too. By the time the year was over, I had lost an older sister and two of my dearest friends in April, May, and then October. It felt like no sooner had I found my footing then I got knocked down again. The last one broke me. I found myself existing in survival mode, getting through each day in manageable blocks of time. If I just make it through the work day, through my reading for class, through making dinner, through this three-hour Zoom class, then I could go to bed. And get up the next day and do it again. I spent the last few months of 2020 feeling stretched and disconnected. I was not whole but a messy pile of parts that were somehow loosely related to each other. My body was in one space, my mind was over there, and my soul was way over yonder somewhere. Something had to give.
I managed to book myself a nine-day private, silent retreat at Ender’s Island in Mystic. I brought my needlework with me. I hadn’t touched it since October. I’d put it down to pick up a call from Roy, only to have his sister calling me from his phone to say she’d found him not breathing. For the next few hours, as I waited for word from the hospital, I stitched and I prayed. After he died, I couldn’t look at that half-finished yellow rose without crying. As I ran my hand over the rows of tiny stitches, over those 800 tiny little prayers, I could still feel his chest rising under the force of the ventilator that was keeping him alive. To pick it up again meant facing life without him and I wasn’t so sure I was ready to do that.
My private retreat ended up being exactly that. I was the only retreatant on the island. It was an unexpected pleasure to have the large dining room all to myself for meals. Other than staff, the retreat house was deserted. I spent the cold January mornings sitting by the water with my tea, with the sun on my face. I watched the gulls playing in the wind and the ducks paddling idly by. I watched a Norther Harrier hunting along the rocks then turning to glide inches above the ground and finally swooping up into a tree without ever making a sound. I spent my afternoons writing or stitching in my room. After a week, three months to the day after I answered that awful phone call, I started to work on the other half of the yellow rose. I started on the bottom edge of it, the darker side, and worked my way back towards the middle. Little by little, I filled in the empty space as hundreds of new tiny little prayers, ones that I could find a way to feel whole again, reached out and merged with the older ones.
Now it is nearly time to head home again. Back to crush of everyday activities and new classes on the horizon. It will take a lot longer than nine days to heal the heartaches of the past year. But taking the time to let my body, mind, and soul come back together to occupy the same space again is a step in the right direction. I will miss the wind moaning through the trees and the waves crashing outside my windows at night. They have proven to be a very soothing lullaby these last few days and they too have become a part of these roses I am stitching, one tiny prayer at a time. I hope now as I run hands across the stitches, I can feel the comfort that I’ve found here too.
Sunday, September 27th, I had a reservation for drive-in church. It would be the first time in months that I’d received Communion. It was one of those private little moments of joy that I shared with my friend, Roy, knowing he would appreciate the oddity of making reservations for church. Without fail, he immediately cracked the joke, “Jesus … party of two…” But he also appreciated the specialness of it and early that Sunday morning, he texted me, “Hope you enjoy your reservation with Jesus. I know I keep him busy. Tell him I said hi.”
I responded later with a photo of the individual Communion chalice I was given and the message, “He says hi back.”
I never dreamed that the next time I would be at a drive-in church service, only a few weeks later, Roy would be gone.
Today, on All Saints Day, for the first time since late February, I walked into my parish church for a Sunday service. There were many modifications made to maintain safety protocols, including continuing the use of individual Communion chalices. As I held it in my hands during the Words of Institution, it suddenly hit me that Roy was now the one with the reserved seat at the table and I swear I heard him whisper in my ear, “I’ll tell him you said hi.”
Over the years, Roy and I shared many a deep conversation and equally as many moments of laughter and silliness. But what I treasured most were times of comfortable shared silences. It is a rare gift to find a friend who was so comfortable with stillness. This year has been a year of losses and sadness and, yet, Roy always managed to find a way to make me smile. While my phone no longer pings at random times with check-in messages or funny memes to brighten my day, those shared silences are still there.
As I pray the office every morning, I sense Roy’s presence. I often told him I envied him because I didn’t have his discipline and he would always smile a knowing little smile and say, “Oh don’t worry. You will.” And now, when prayer is quite literally the only thing keeping me afloat, I can hear him saying, “See? I told you so. Be still. Listen.”
So as I celebrate this All Saints Day and remember those I’ve lost this year, I am reminded that those bonds of friendship and love are not broken by death. Rather, I know that those I loved, who have joined the great cloud of witnesses, continue to walk with me, pray with me, and guide me.
This is the sermon I wasn’t ready to write for the service I wasn’t ready to lead to honor the friend I wasn’t ready to lose.
For John
We’ve come together today united in our love for John, to share in our grief, and to find comfort in the presence of each other. I’m not going to sugar coat this, grief sucks. Grief is like a form of arthritis. Somedays, it hurts so bad, you can hardly stand it. And other days, it’s not so bad. But there’s always a level of aching that never quite goes away. Some days are harder than others. Some seasons are harder than others. But over time, we will gradually heal. Our fond memories will be good medicine as the days and months and years go by. The love and light and laughter that John brought into our lives has left us forever changed.
Let us find solace in love. When I say love today, I’m not talking about some sweet, sentimental, frilly, foofy kind of love. And I’m not talking about some high-minded, ornate, abstract theological frippery kind of love. I’m talking love at work. Love that is messy. Love with some dirt on its hands. Because that is the kind of love that John shared with all of us. John lived love as a verb. His religion was praxis over proclamation, action over spoken creeds. What do I mean by that?
John and I were in New Haven one night. We’d gone to an AA meeting and were walking towards a restaurant for dinner when a young homeless guy came up to us and asked us for money. John immediately said, ‘Yeah, hang on a sec.’ He fumbled around in his coat pockets digging for his wallet and in the process, pulls out a full pack of of cigarettes and hands them to me to hold. He then pulls out his wallet and hands the guy $20. The guy saw the cigarettes and asked if he could also bum a smoke. John smiled that big, disarming smile or his and took the pack from me, lit two cigarettes, kept one in his mouth and passed one to me, as he so often did, and then handed the guy a nearly full pack of cigarettes and then gave him the lighter besides. John wished him a good night like he was an old friend. It didn’t matter that it was dark. It didn’t matter that there weren’t a lot of people around. It didn’t matter that this guy could easily have intended to mug us both. It didn’t matter how he was going to spend that money. John saw another human being in need and responded with kindness, with generosity, with compassion and without hesitation and without judgement. He said to me over dinner, ‘I’ve been that guy. I know how it feels to be on the other side of that interaction and, Sweetie, let me tell you, it’s not fun.’
And that, my friends, is the kind of love that I’m talking about. That is love at work in this world. Even in the midst of our pain, even in the midst of our struggles, to act with compassion towards others and to recognize their full dignity as fellow human beings, that is the kind of love that will bring us solace and comfort. That is the kind of love that is light in the darkness. That is the kind of love that sets prisoners free. That is the kind of love that should come to mind when we hear that God is love. God’s love is specifically love at work.
God loves each and every one of us. God knows the secret things we struggle with, the things we don’t talk about, the things we manage to cover and still get through our days. And God is at work in those struggles. In the economy of God’s Grace, nothing, absolutely nothing, is wasted. Not one day is unimportant. Not one moment goes unnoticed.
As many of us experienced in our relationships with John, John had a gift for seeing the good in us even when we couldn’t see it in ourselves. John learned each one of our soul songs and he would sing it back to us even when we’d forgotten the tune. And he did that even at times when he couldn’t see the good in himself. That is love at work. That is the love of God shining through this beloved child of God.
When we act out of compassion, out of kindness, and with generosity of spirit towards others in the world – even when we may have our own struggles – we allow God to work through us. We allow God who is love, God who is love at work, to work through us. And as that love moves through us, it not only changes the world around us, it changes us as well.
Some churches don’t have much tolerance for a gay man. Society certainly doesn’t have much tolerance for an addict. But what we saw in John was so, so much more than who he loved or what disease he wrestled with. What we witnessed in John was an everyday kind of holiness. What we witnessed in John was what Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber would call an accidental saint – a paradoxical person who doesn’t fit the typical rigid religious stereotype of a holy person but nevertheless, is indeed a holy person doing the work of God who is love.
John is no longer here with us. His work here is done. Now it’s up to us to carry on. John saw something uniquely good and wonderful in each one of you. As you sit with your memories of John, remember what he saw in you. Know that what John saw only in glimpses, God sees with perfect clarity the truth of your goodness. I would challenge you to live out of that goodness in whatever way you can. Be love at work in the world. Get your hands dirty bringing the love of God into this world. God knows this world need it.
My Morning Coffee With My God 