Praying Our Goodbyes

Easter Christians in a Good Friday World - November 2008

Let's pray together:

Help us, Lord, to receive and understand your gospel, so that we may find light in this darkness, faith in our doubts, and comfort for one another in your saving words. Amen.

 -- THE PROMISE OF HIS GLORY: SERVICES AND PRAYERS FOR THE SEASON FROM ALL SAINTS TO CANDLEMAS: Church Publishing House and Mowbray, 1991.

Please be seated.

Just a few words of greeting and a few thoughts about why we're here tonight before we return to the liturgy and the music.

A warm welcome to all and especially to those of you who are not parishioners here at St. Michael & All Angels and who came to enjoy the very special form of Anglican worship that the Rev'd Norm Freeman and his group bring us. This is also the second of seven concerts this year in the Saint Michael’s Friends of Music "First Sunday at Five" series that our Minister of Music Tim Getz has arranged for us, and if you enjoy it, I hope that you will come back for the others in the months that follow.

***

Conductor Leonard Slatkin said at a concert in London on the Saturday following 9/11, "We use music tonight to express all the emotions we feel", and then conducted Samuel Barber's familiar and haunting "Adagio for Strings" as a tribute to the dead and injured in the U.S.

Many grieving people find comfort in music. Sometimes, a certain song can remind us of the person who died and provides memories. Or a lyric may sum up what we are feeling better than any words we try to verbalize. For some, music can be a form of meditation or relaxation as we try to deal with our grief. And for others, music is a form of escape from the pain.

Memories are important in the healing process, and if music can help capture moments of better times or images of those we love, then we should cherish the words and melodies, as I expect many of you are doing tonight.

A bit of background about the service:  Our worship community here at St. Michael & All Angels has recognized that difficult memories and associations will often diminish the joy of the approaching holiday season for those still dealing with the pain of loss.

And so we now offer this service each year at this time so that we can pray and meditate about the losses in our lives as we anticipate through Advent the birth of our Lord and Savior.

For some, these are raw, recent losses; for others, more distant ones; but for all there is still that gnawing feeling that something, no matter how far removed it is, is still missing.

One of the characters in Robert Wilson's 1999 novel "A Small Death in Lisbon" said it this way:

"Loss is like a shrapnel wound ...where the piece of metal's got stuck in a place where the surgeons daren't go, so they decide to leave it. It's painful at first, horribly painful, so that you wonder whether you can live with it. But then the body grows around it until it doesn't hurt anymore. Not like it used to. But every now and again there are these twinges when you're not ready for them and you realize it's still there and it's always going to be there. It's a part of you. A still, hard point inside."

In recent years, we've scheduled this remembrance service on or close to All Souls Day, The Feast of All Faithful Departed (1),the day in the our Church when we come together to remember all those who have gone before us.

All Souls is traditionally celebrated on November 2 (November 3rd if the 2nd falls on a Sunday as it does this year), and on this day we remember all those who in some way contributed to the life we live and the world we live in.

The name of the service, "Praying Our Goodbyes", comes from a book by a Cervite Sister, Joyce Rupp. In it she describes a spiritual approach to coping with the inevitable goodbyes that we all must face in our journey through life.

"We say goodbye,” she writes, “to parents, spouses, children and friends, sometimes for just a day or a year, and sometimes until we meet them on the other side of this life.

"We leave familiar places and secure homes. We bid farewell to strong, healthy bodies, burden-free spirits or minds. We change teachers, schools, parishes and managers, sometimes spouses or religions.

"We place parents in nursing homes, allow children to experience risk-taking and growth, say no to love relationships that would be inappropriate or possibly harmful to us or to others."

These and many other similar situations that we all must face from time to time, involve some kind of painful leave-taking and create for us a “goodbye”. It is all these goodbyes and the profound personal grief that they engender, that we consider tonight.

Many of us have found Sister Rupp’s book especially valuable in dealing with our grief.

She describes how through prayer, mediation and spiritual exercise we can not just say our goodbyes but pray them, and grow in our relationship with a loving, comforting God who does not want us to suffer and who will lead us to what Sr. Rupp calls the “new hellos" of personal resurrection and growth.

Our offering from this service will again go through the Anglican Communion’s Compass Rose Society to the Aids Project at St. Dunstan’s Cathedral in Johannesburg. There, they use these funds to purchase inexpensive coffins for AIDS victims whose families cannot afford them. Offering baskets are at the rear of the sanctuary.

With this year's offering we remember the life and ministry of our friend, Anglican Bishop of the Highveld the Rt. Rev. David Beetge, who founded the AIDS program  at St. Dunstan's, and who died this past September.

The badge I’m wearing symbolizes our parish’s support for this ministry at St. Dustan’s, and you’re most welcome to take one for yourself from the basket in the back on your way out. A parishioner has donated them.

And as in the past, the service bulletin lists those who are committed or remembered in our memorial garden. If you'd like more information about it, please contact the rector.

***

I'd like to close tonight, by recalling for you this year's Easter message by our rector in our March parish newsletter. It contains a wonderful story that offers us the strength we need tonight.

Peter wrote:

Easter is God’s promise that He is always with us, ready to roll back the stone from the doors of tombs so that we can live hopefully in a hopeless world. God is always with us.

Last Easter, I told the story of going up Pacific View Drive with a parishioner to visit the grave of her beloved. While there we saw a woman kneeling before two gravestones and heard her praying aloud.

When we, and she, finished, that woman got up, looked at us, and volunteered: "I come here all the time. You see, my husband and son are buried here. I spend time with God, and, in a sense, with them, too. I don’t want ever to forget them or them to forget me. I know that they are with the Lord. I read in the Bible that ‘as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.’ (1 Cor. 15:22). And I believe that to be true. When I see them: my Lord and my God, and my husband, and my son, ...we sure won’t be strangers."

As we walked away, my friend, our parishioner, said to me, "I’m sorry, Peter, but that’s the best sermon I have ever heard!"

Anyone who goes to the cemetery to visit their child, Peter continued, like Mary in the Easter Gospel and that wonderful woman at Pacific View, lives in a "Good Friday world".

 But just up our street, that woman allowed God to break through her grief and comfort her.

She knows that Christ is risen. She lives as an Easter Christian in a Good Friday world. She understands that there is life beyond our body-boundness. She shares the love of her husband and son across that boundary and looks forward to "the stone" being rolled away one more time.

This Easter, wrote Peter and I add to that, "this night," I hope that God will plant in your heart remembrance of the empty tomb and the hope of the open tomb, and that God will help you to live as an Easter Christian, surprised by joy.

Thank you so much for that gift, Peter, to those of us who pray our goodbyes tonight.

The communion hymn this evening will be Duke Ellington's Come Sunday. Its lyrics  are my closing prayer.

Let us pray:

Lord, dear Lord above, God almighty,
God of love, Please look down and see my people through.

I believe that God put sun and moon up in the sky.
I don't mind the gray skies 'cause they're just clouds passing by.

Heaven is a goodness time. A brighter light on high.
Do unto others as you would have them do to you, and have a brighter by and by.

Lord, dear Lord above, God almighty,
God of love, Please look down and see my people through.

I believe God is now, was then and always will be.
With God's blessing we can make it through eternity.

Lord, dear Lord above, God almighty,
God of love, Please look down and see my people through.

Amen.

(1) The Feast of All Faithful Departed (also known as All Souls Day, November 2) From Episcopal News Service Online 10/29/2004

"In the New Testament, the word 'saints' is used to describe the entire membership of the Christian community, and in the Collect for All Saints' Day the word 'elect' is used in a similar sense. From very early times, however, the word 'saint' came to be applied primarily to persons of heroic sanctity, whose deeds were recalled with gratitude by later generations.

 "Beginning in the 10th century, it became customary to set aside another day -- as a sort of extension of All Saints -- on which the Church remembered that vast body of the faithful who, thought no less members of the company of the redeemed, are unknown in the wider fellowship of the Church. It was also a day for particular remembrance of family members and friends

 "Though the observance of the day was abolished at the Reformation because of abuses connected with Masses for the dead, a renewed understanding of its meaning has led to a widespread acceptance of this commemoration among Anglicans, and to its inclusion as an optional observance on the calendar of the Episcopal Church."

DEATH'S GIFT - November 2007

Help us, Lord, to receive and understand your gospel, so that we may find light in this darkness, faith in our doubts, and comfort for one another in your saving words. Amen.

Once again we gather here around All Soul’s Day and an approaching holiday season that is too often filled for many of us with difficult memories to pray and meditate about the losses in our lives.

For some, these will be raw, recent losses; for others, more distant ones with that gnawing feeling that something, no matter how far removed it is, is still missing.

“Grief”, says the writer Joan Didion in her memoir of her husband’s death, “The Year of Magical Thinking”, “turns out to be a place none of us know until we get there;” adding that, “nor can we know ahead of the fact… the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaningless itself.”

As we pray our goodbyes again tonight, we look to the life-giving mystery of the Eucharist to help us regain that lost meaning.

Once again our service is shared with the Saint Michael’s Friends of Music First Sunday at Five November program, and we thank Tim Getz and his wonderful musicians for their continuing participation and support.

As always, Tim’s selection of music for the service is most appropriate: Purcell’s “Funeral Music for Queen Mary” and William Byrd’s “O quam gloriosum.”

Our offering from this service will again go through the Anglican Communion’s Compass Rose Society to the Aids Project at St. Dunstan’s Cathedral in Johannesburg. There, they use these funds to purchase coffins for AIDS victims whose families cannot afford them.

The badge I’m wearing symbolizes our parish’s support of this ministry at St. Dustan’s, and you’re most welcome to take one for yourself from the basket in the back on your way out. A parishioner has donated them.

And I’d like to remind you that our parish is very fortunate to have a beautiful memorial garden—the Garden of the Good Shepherd—which is located behind the wall on your left as you walk out to the parking lot from the church. To date, there are 72 memorials there. If you’d like to visit the garden tonight, the candles will indicate the way, and if you’d like more information about it, please contact our rector, The Rev’d Peter Haynes.

***

My text for this evening is taken from the third chapter of the Book of Wisdom:

"But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
and no torment will ever touch them.
²In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died,
and their departure was thought to be a disaster,
³and their going from us to be their destruction;
but they are at peace.

“Those who trust in him will understand truth,
and the faithful will abide with him in love,
because grace and mercy are upon his holy ones,
and he watches over his elect.” (Wisdom 3, 1-3, 9)^*

We even named our dog – she was fittingly, perhaps, a spirited, golden haired sheltie – “Lady Diana”.

For short, we’d call her just “Diana” or, when we were being silly, “Di-Di”.

That’s how much the outwardly glamorous life of the Princess of Wales had suffused our household during her brief fling with royalty: from the gala wedding in St. Paul’s Cathedral that we watched on a rented television at a friend’s condo in Sun Valley, to the sad sight of Prince William and Prince Harry, heads bowed, walking behind her coffin on its way to the altar in Westminster Abbey following her death in the Alma auto-tunnel near the Seine.

That was August of 1997 – 10 years ago.

Little did I know then, as we watched the funeral and wept together, that Susan, my own dear  princess, would herself be dead in 9 months.

I’m not sure quite how I will mark this upcoming milestone anniversary even though it seems that memorial celebrations are quite common these days and take many different forms.

Certainly there won’t be best selling books and TV specials about Sue as there have been about Diana. While my wife was quite remarkable in many notable ways, only a relative few will know this.

Nor will I issue a commemorative coin as the British Virgin Islands and the Falklands have done for Diana’s tenth, nor even organize a conference as St. Vincent College in Pennsylvania did in recognition of Mother Teresa’s tenth this past September.

Certainly I won’t put on rally as some did ten years on  to remember Jill Philips, an animal rights activist who some think was murdered at an anti-veal protest in Great Britain.

Sue loved her horses, but I’m certain that she’d find that a bit over the top.

It goes on and on: Last July 15 a special ballet was presented in Milan to honor the late fashion designer Gianni Versace on the 10th anniversary of his death. NPR prominently noted the murder of rapper Tupak Shakur 10 years after his death and there were widely broadcast ceremonies in Israel to mark the 10 years since the assassination if Yitzhak Rabin. And then there was that vigil in Memphis last August – Elvis died 30 years ago.

Writing this past September, Ruth Gledhill, the religion correspondent for London’s newspaper the Times noted:

“Memorial services have become one of the churches’ biggest growth areas. For public figures the services get bigger and more frequent, with death anniversaries being marked as well as the original death. But memorial services are increasingly following and sometimes even supplanting funerals for private individuals as well.”

Gledhill quoted one Church of England expert who speculated on the reason for this trend: “'They have taken the place of funerals in many cases. When memorial services first started, they were for the great and the good. Now everybody has one, and why not?”

He said that the past few years had seen a 'desertion' of the funeral format. 'People do not like funerals,’ he noted, ‘I think because of momento mori. People do not like to be that near death. A memorial service does concentrate tremendously on a person’s life. That has become more acceptable than dwelling on the fact of death.'

Sister Joyce Rupp, the author of “Praying our Goodbyes”, the book from which we take the name of tonight’s service asks in this regard:

“Do we ever get used to saying goodbye? Or should we? Saying goodbye helps us experience the depth of our human condition. It leads us to a much deeper understanding of what it means to live in its mystery and its wholeness.”

This perhaps, is one of the best reasons that we should, every so often, recall and memorialize our losses and I think that this service offers us a way to do that here in our own parish.

But while recalling publicly the life and the contributions of someone we deem exceptional may have value in providing closure or a belated, less emotional recognition, I personally still prefer more private tributes.

Our Jewish friends, for example, have a brief, sober service called Yizkor – literally “May God Remember”—a ten minute prayer for the dead in which the loved ones to be remembered are named. It’s a personal time to reflect on one’s relationship to a loved one. Some congregations even have a separate Yizkor service which must be a bit like this one, but in their own worship tradition.

I suspect that my memorial to Susan on June 3, 2008 will involve simply a visit to her grave along with a few family members and close friends, her favorite yellow rose and some readings that I’ve put together from the “The Book of Common Prayer” and the Bible.

I think I’ll start by reading the passage from the fourth chapter of the Song of Solomon that begins; “How beautiful you are my love, how very beautiful…” Song of Solomon 4:1*

***

For the past six years we have been holding these “Praying Our Goodbyes” services now on the occasion of All Soul’s Day and in anticipation of the upcoming holiday season when, as Elvis himself reminded us, there can be a “Blue Christmas without You”.

Many of us have found Sister Rupp’s book especially valuable. In it, she describes how we can approach our losses and all our leave-takings spiritually, not just saying our goodbyes but praying them, thus growing in our relationship with a loving, comforting God who does not want us to suffer.

This is a God who will be with us through all of our goodbyes and who will lead us to what she calls “new hellos" in a persistent cycle that we encounter throughout our lives – the many “goodbye – hello” pairings that punctuate our experience – everything from the death of a loved one and its subsequent resolution to the loss of a job and the finding of a new one or to sending the kids off to college and reclaiming some personal time for ourselves.

Here are several of Sister Rupp’s observations which I find worthy of our rehearsal:

"The word goodbye – originally 'God be with ye' or 'Go with God' – was a recognition that God was a significant part of the going. When you dreaded or feared the journey, there was strength in remembering that the One who gave and cherished life would be there to protect and console. Goodbye was a blessing of love, proclaiming the belief that if God went with you, you would never be alone…To the traveler it meant: 'We cannot keep you from this journey. We hurt deeply…you have made your home in our heart. Yet we know your leaving is essential to your growth. So go, go with God…'"

But she also warns us that,

“Grief has a way of plundering our prayer life leaving us feeling empty and immobile. At the time we need most to experience the compassion of God, we very often feel a distance in that relationship; the feeling of presence is gone and it may take time for it to come back.”

At these difficult times, we need to remember that God understands us and accepts us in our sadness which, along with loss, is a part of the human condition.

She also notes that,

“We ought not be afraid of the partings that life asks of us. Nor ought we hold back in giving ourselves to love, to the wonderful growth opportunities of investing ourselves in people and events."

This is much harder, but it is the heart of her message.

It means letting go and moving on, and she encourages us to use our suffering creatively to "…peer inside our own tombs of unfinishedness or incompleteness [to] discover… resiliency, vitality, fidelity, love and endurance."

Joan Didion commented on this, too. She said this:

“I also know that if we are to live ourselves, there comes a point we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.

“Let them become the photograph on the table.

“Let them become the name on the trust accounts…”

But, she concluded,

“Knowing this does not make it any easier to let go of him…”  And she’s certainly right about that.

We are, I think during this vulnerable time of bereavement, always in danger of what the narrator in Andrew Holleran’s newest novel “Grief” tells us: “…some people cling to grief because it’s all they have left of the person who’s gone. ‘As long as you have that, you’re not alone — you have them…’

Where can we look for help? The roots of our faith, not surprisingly, can offer some relief.

In his well-regarded study of death and bereavement, “Death’s Gift”, originally published in 1978 and recently re-released in a new edition in the UK, Nicholas Peter Harvey, a Roman Catholic lay theologian, offers some new insights on bereavement, drawing parallels between what happened to the disciples after the death of Jesus and to bereavement as a growth opportunity.

In what was a truly startling thought to me, Harvey reminds us that the very foundation of the Church is the testimony of a group of bereaved disciples: the authoritative witness to Christ as the manifestation of God comes from a group of people who, like all of us were, are alone hapless, confused and fearful following the death of a loved one.  Their bereavement showed them the way forward into the meaning and power of Jesus as Savior.

According to Harvey, death and bereavement in our own lives when touched by the resurrection can yield a new, richer relationship to the person who has died and, as Sister Rupp also notes, provide the opportunity for personal growth in those who survive.

The idea that Jesus’ death set humankind free, as reflected by what happened to the disciples after the crucifixion, finds resonance in our own bereavements.

In Jesus’ resurrection appearances, Thomas touched the risen Lord, Mary Magdalene clung to him and some of the disciples ate and drank with him. All these events helped the disciples see that the person they had loved was now alive in a timeless reality.

The following somewhat mystical quote from Harvey’s friend Anglican Bishop Stephen Verney after the bishop’s wife died captures what he means:

“Things which belong in time and things which belong outside of time, are trying to express themselves through the same events. They happen in clock time, but they are also timeless.”

Bishop Verney finds echoes of the resurrection appearances in the relationship between the bereaved and the deceased, and says that by exploring the resurrection as metaphor, wider perspectives can open for the bereaved as they did for the disciples.

“When someone you love has died the barrier between “in time” and “outside of time” grows very thin and a new pattern of events is set free to happen around us,” Verney wrote. These appearances “have to give way to something more important still, which is the experience that we too can come alive and be with the deceased now in that same reality beyond time.”

Maybe you too have found the special “thin places”, between “in time” and “outside of time”, the spots where Celtic spirituality tells us that this world and the realm of the spirit come close together. Maybe you too have “crossed over” once or twice and found some companionship and comfort.

In sum, Harvey contends that the death of a loved one is at its root a growing point, with all the pain and struggle which that suggests.

It is a genuinely critical, creative moment in a person’s development, not simply just something to be got over -- a stoical return to normalcy. 

He stresses that it is an opportunity for growth, not a guaranteed process, which is best assured by having the bereaved, as Didion alluded to, letting the deceased die, freeing them from the danger of imprisonment in a moment in the past.

And echoing Andrew Holleran’s narrator in “Grief”,  Harvey offers what for me is a profound insight for us to consider about all this: the successful bereavement process involves letting go of that which is in ourselves which seeks to continue to cling to the beloved as a focus of false security.

Harvey calls the distresses involved in being freed from this type of security seeking “growing pains”. Ten years on, I still have a few growing pains, as I suspect you do to, wherever you are in your journey through grief.

May our resurrected Lord lead you through these and help you find many new glorious hellos. For “Grace and mercy are on his holy ones, and he watches over his elect.”

Let us pray:

O god, who brought us to birth,

And in whose arms we die,

In our grief and shock,

Contain and comfort us,

Embrace us with your love,

Give us hope in our confusion

And grace to let go into new life,

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

(By Janet Morley, 1951- )

                                                                                                                                                  Norris Battin -- November 2007 *From The Song of Solomon:

How beautiful you are, my love,
   how very beautiful!
Your eyes are doves
   behind your veil.
Your hair is like a flock of goats,
   moving down the slopes of Gilead.
Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes
   that have come up from the washing,
all of which bear twins,
   and not one among them is bereaved.
Your lips are like a crimson thread,
   and your mouth is lovely.
Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate
   behind your veil.
Your neck is like the tower of David,
   built in courses;
on it hang a thousand bucklers,
   all of them shields of warriors.
Your two breasts are like two fawns,
   twins of a gazelle,
   that feed among the lilies.
Until the day breathes
   and the shadows flee,
I will hasten to the mountain of myrrh
   and the hill of frankincense.
You are altogether beautiful, my love;
   there is no flaw in you.
Come with me from Lebanon, my bride;
   come with me from Lebanon.
Depart^* from the peak of Amana,
   from the peak of Senir and Hermon,
from the dens of lions,
   from the mountains of leopards.

PEACE PLANS - November 2006

Help us, Lord, to receive and understand your gospel, so that we may find light in this darkness, faith in our doubts, and comfort for one another in your saving words. Amen.

For the second year, we are holding this Praying Our Goodbyes service close to All Saint and All Souls Day rather than on its previous mid- December date hoping, along with other more practical concerns about the holidays, to have it become part of a heightened intentional practice of how we deal with death and loss as a parish family.

Last year following the service, we took another step in this intentionality by re-dedicating our refurbished memorial garden, The Garden of the Good Shepherd, hoping that it would become more visible as a resource for the parish. Father Haynes would be happy to discuss the garden with you, should you want to know more, and there is information about it in the back of your worship leaflet. And if you have a chance, visit there, in the candle light, after the service on your way to the refreshments’ that will be served in Michael’s Room.

At the same time, we continue to offer this worship service to serve its original purpose: to provide hope to those who have suffered a recent loss of someone or something that has given their lives meaning and value as they face, at the end of the upcoming Advent season, the possibility of a “Blue Christmas”, one that will exclude them from the joy that most share at this time of year.

Once this year we’ve combined the Praying our Goodbyes worship service with the second program in our 2006/2007 Friends of Music “First Sundays at 5” series as we hear tonight choral music of Puccini, Brahms, Schubert and Rutter performed by our parish choir and guest soloists under the direction of our minister of music, Tim Getz. We thank them all for joining us in this ministry.

Last year, the Praying Our Goodbyes offering was dedicated to the victims of hurricane Katrina who had lost so much. This year we will return to previous practice and dedicate the offering to the AIDS ministry at St. Dunstan’s Cathedral in Johannesburg where it will help fund the purchase of simple wooden caskets for AIDS victims whose families cannot afford them.

The badge I’m wearing symbolizes our parish’s support of this ministry at St. Dustan’s, and you’re most welcome to take one for yourself from the basket in the back on your way out. A parishioner has donated them.

###

My text tonight is from the 29^th chapter of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 29:11):

I know the plans I have in mind for you, says the Lord, plans for peace, not disaster, reserving a future full of hope for you.

As I began to prepare this homily, I thought a lot about a coincidence that I discovered only this summer, one that, although I didn’t know it at the time, eventually led me to join St. Mike’s and then to participate in our Praying Our Goodbyes ministry.

It’s about my wife Susan’s death, and I had to ask myself if I should (or indeed if I wanted to), once again get in touch with and share with you some of what happened during those days and nights eight and a half years ago, a time that is now somewhat murky and musty with age, but a time that I will never completely forget.

I am somewhat reluctant, and yet because this recently revealed confluence of events joins my loss to the mysteries of our faith, I’d like to ask you to come along with me in your mind’s eye for a few minutes to a well known place in our local community where we can begin to pray our goodbyes together this year.

Let me explain:

On June 2nd, 1998, the day before Sue died at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, I had had what Peter once referred to in a sermon here as a “God spotting experience”, an event that I reported here  several years ago.

I truly believe that I saw God our Father up in the corner of her room in intensive care, and I bargained with him like Moses did, and I argued with him like Job did and I wrestled with him like Jacob did over why he was taking this lovely young woman away from us. Later, I realized that he was really not there to take her, but had come to share our suffering: to comfort my family and me as we faced the inevitable.

Our parish learned together that the second person of the Trinity was also at Hoag that spring from Peter’s homily here on his 60^th birthday in July.

Peter told us that while he was recovering at Hoag from a near fatal infection during Lent and Holy week of 1998, that he had had a prayerful declaration of mutual love with Jesus, the son of the God that I had so recently struggled with in the same hospital.

As Peter talked that Sunday, I realized that this must have been just a month or so before Susan died and just before I met him.

And at the end, Sue, the children and I all experienced at Hoag the grace of the Holy Spirit through a priest I had just met, so recently recovered from his own life threatening illness and fresh from his meeting with Jesus, as he gently led all four of us together through the end of Sue’s pilgrimage here on earth and the celebration of her life.

In recalling and reliving these three coincidental events, I find that in a most unusual and mysterious way, the persons of the Trinity have, long after my loss, helped bring me faith, gratitude and humility, pushing away the residual pain, anger and self-pity I still experience from time to time.

This may be what the British New Testament scholar Nicholas King means, in part, in his recent translation of the Beatitudes when he offers “Congratulations to those who are mourning” instead of the more traditional “Blessed are they…” version that Martha read to us this morning, hinting, perhaps, that we should welcome loss for the insights and new directions that it will surely bring us once the pain has subsided.

I found a similar sense of faith, gratitude, humility and new direction earlier this year as I re-read “Praying Our Goodbyes”, the book by Cervite Sister Joyce Rupp that is the namesake of this service.

Sister Rupp wants us to learn how to approach our losses and leave-takings spiritually, not just saying our goodbyes but praying them, by growing in our relationship with a loving, comforting God who does not want us to suffer, a God who will be with us through all our goodbyes and who will lead us to what she calls new “hellos”.

I think that this time through the book, I really “got it”, as they say, after several earlier, somewhat superficial readings hurriedly looking for quick summaries of her narrative, like the one I just gave you, that I could incorporate into my reflections for this service over the past five years.

Not that these summaries don’t serve us well, they certainly do, but, as I re-read “Praying Our Goodbyes” it seems I had missed a few things along the way.

For instance, this from her Introduction:

“The word goodbye – originally ‘God be with ye’ or ‘Go with God’ – was a recognition that God was a significant part of the going. When you dreaded or feared the journey, there was strength in remembering that the One who gave and cherished life would be there to protect and console. Goodbye was a blessing of love, proclaiming the belief that if God went with you, you would never be alone…To the traveler it meant: ‘We cannot keep you from this journey. We hurt deeply…you have made your home in our heart. Yet we know your leaving is essential to your growth. So go, go with God…’”

So it must be, as we pray our goodbyes tonight to what we’ve lost.

And this:

She writes,” Do we ever get used to saying goodbye? Or should we? I think not. Saying goodbye helps us experience the depth of our human condition. It leads us to a much deeper understanding of what it means to live in its mystery and its wholeness. We ought not be afraid of the partings that life asks of us. Nor ought we hold back in giving ourselves to love, to the wonderful growth opportunities of investing ourselves in people and events.”

This is much harder. It means letting go and moving on, and we’re encouraged to use our suffering creatively to find a resurrection, to …“peer inside our own tombs of unfinishedness or incompleteness [to] discover… resiliency, vitality, fidelity, love and endurance.”

“Congratulations to those that mourn.”

John 12:24 says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

1 Peter (1:6-7) leads us to the possibility of purification through suffering to an inner transformation that Sister Rupp calls “creative suffering.” It says:

“Even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith – being more precious than gold, though perishable, is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

A transformation like this can be a model for others who see us being wiser and perhaps more tender as a result of experiencing a traumatic goodbye and moving on to a new Hello through the strength of the risen Jesus.

“Congratulations to those who are mourning.”

A second new insight I learned from my re-reading of “Praying Our Goodbyes” is Sister Rupp’s concept of a life-long pilgrimage of the heart: her belief that we are all on a relentless, never-ending journey homeward as we search for a deep center of peace while we live in the present, dealing with our aching spirit as we face loss and brokenness through out our lives.

How does our pilgrim’s heart carry us through the difficult times of our lives? First, with the knowledge that our short lives are not ours, but are on loan – a gift of love that we must be thankful for and treat responsibly; second, with the courage to take risks that lead to growth, third, with the ability to cope with the demons we meet along the way and fourth, by recognizing the often disguised messengers from God who encourage us and guide us on our journey.

For Sister Rupp, the Exodus story of the Israelites journey from captivity to freedom is a model of the homeward journey of our pilgrim heart–and the faithful, caring presence of God with those who traveled through the wilderness.

“We all have an Egypt that needs a goodbye”, she says in a pithy one-liner that for me sums up a lot about our lives.

And she makes two other points worth noting about the Exodus.

First, that the Israelites journey was not the most direct:

“When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was nearer, for God thought, ‘If the people face war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt’. So, God led the people by the roundabout way through the wilderness to the Red Sea.” (Exodus: 13:17)

Detours, she reminds us, often happen on our journeys from Goodbye to Hello.

And second, that God constantly reassures the Israelites of his strengthening and protective presence on their journey:

“I shall be with you …I have visited you …

I will free you of the burden.

I will release you from slavery…

I will adopt you as my own people and I will be your God” (Exodus 3:12, 16; 6:6-7)

A final point that I discovered on re-reading “Praying Our Goodbyes” was what Sister Rupp has to say about loss and prayer.

She notes that grief has a way of plundering our prayer life leaving us feeling empty and immobile. At the time we need most to experience the compassion of God, we very often feel a distance in that relationship; the feeling of presence is gone and it may take time for it to come back.

When loss and grief are weighing on our hearts bringing us the knowledge, again from Exodus, that “Yahweh kept vigil to bring them out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12-42) can be comforting even if we seem estranged from God.

Saying some short verses of scripture can also be helpful:

I have loved you with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3).

There is nothing I cannot master with the help of the One who gives me strength (Philippians 4:13)

“Let not let your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1)

At these difficult times, we need to remember that God understands us and accepts us in our sadness which, along with loss, is a part of the human condition.

As to just how to pray our goodbyes Sister Rupp gives us several steps to follow: first we recognize and name the loss we have experienced, next, we reflect about it, giving the hurt of the loss our full attention, and finally, find a way to ritualize it.

In reflecting on it, we need not be “too nice” with God. We need to let God hear our anger and confusion, our frustrations and our disorientations – he knows them anyway – and our wishes that things would change or that things were different.

Many honest cries of grief and anguish like this are in the psalms. Psalm 13, for example, says,

“How much longer must I endure grief in my soul, and sorrow in my heart by day and night?” (Psalm 13:2).

And as we reflect, we listen for God’s comforting reply as we find ways to ritualize our goodbye – lighting a candle to dispel our inner darkness or writing a letter in a lonely time as a reminder of connections of love that we still have, or feeling the healing power of the embrace of another human who recognizes our loss. Through all this, we will gradually reorient our lives with renewed direction and energy.

We all know that this is a difficult process.

In closing, I’d like to take a few minutes and use Sister Rupp’s model to pray our goodbyes together using a short meditation she wrote in which we pray and reflect about our losses and ask for the trust that God will see us through them. Then, as we move on to our Eucharist of Remembrance, we will find there the comfort of its ritual for our goodbyes tonight.

The Lord be with you.

R. And also with you.

Let us pray:

God of mystery, we turn our hearts to you. We come before you in need of peace, grateful for the mystery of life and ever keenly aware of your promises of guidance and protection. We want to place our trust in you but our hearts grows fearful and anxious. We forget so easily that you will be with us in all that we experience. Teach us to be patient with the transformation of our lives and to be open to the changes which we are now going through.

…and please listen to this reflection:

God says to us, “Look at the geese of the sky: they neither worry nor are anxious about the winter warnings of their lives, for they know within their deepest selves that their journey will take them to a place of shelter, of comfort, of nourishment, a place where winter harshness cannot reach them. See how they fly, winging homeward with sureness, with trust in their hearts’ instincts. If these geese, who have not the faith and grace of human hearts, can follow the mystery and secrets of their deepest selves, cannot you, my loved and chosen ones, you whom I care for as my very own, cannot you be in touch with the mysteries of your own hearts? Cannot you trust in me to guide you on your journey of life? For I have promised to give you rest in seasons of tiredness, comfort in seasons of sorrow, peace in seasons of distress, strength in seasons of great weakness. Trust in me. Do not be afraid. I am with you and I will be your peace.”

…and from the Gospel of John:

“Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give to you, a peace the world cannot give, this is my gift to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid (John 14:27).

Now. Place your hands on your lap, palms up. Open them, ready to give and receive from God. Sit quietly for several minutes in this posture of openness and trust. Recognize your loss, reflect on it and pray for the gift of trust in God as you go through the experience of loss.

Let us pray:

God, in whom we trust, there is a part of us that is dying and a part of us that is coming to life. We want to have open hands to you and tour lives, but it is such a struggle to do so. Remind us often of the peace which you extend to us. We thank you for your beloved son who suffered and gave us an example of trusting in you. Renew us day by day. Encourage us so that we may always be faithful to your call deep within our hearts. We open ourselves to the mystery of life and to your love. Amen.

                                                                                                               Norris Battin -- November 2006

 

 

FOR MARIANNE - November 2005

Help us, Lord, to receive and understand your gospel, so that we may find light in this darkness, faith in our doubts, and comfort for one another in your saving words. Amen.

This year, the fifth year we’ve offered this worship service, we’ve scheduled Praying Our Goodbyes just one day short of “All Hollow’s Eve” – better known to us here in the United States as Halloween.

The first day of November, a time in the northern hemisphere when nature itself has begun to die, is a traditional time to remember the spirits of the dead.

Halloween, quite disconnected from religious ceremony, is a vestige of early Celtic observations which defended against the coming dark with bonfires blazing into the night. According to the book Geography and Religion published by National Geographic, Roman conquers extended the holy day to two days, combining respect for the dead with a harvest festival in honor of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and trees.

But as Christians gained control in the British Isles, they reinterpreted the pagan holidays by calling November 1 All Saints’ Day, honoring the saints and martyrs of their religion, followed by All Souls day, the commemoration of all faithful departed.

Similarly, people in Mexico and Central America observe the Day of the Dead, el Dia de los Muertos. Believing that at this time of the year the spirits of the dead return to their households, families set out lavish altars with candles, wreaths, flowers and an array of food prepared only for this holiday, especially pan de muertos. In our parish, we will formally commemorate All Saints Day and All Souls Day next Sunday.

We have moved Praying Our Goodbyes closer to these remembrances from its previous December date hoping, along with other more practical concerns about the holidays, to have it become part of a heightened intentional practice of how we deal with death and loss as a parish family, as well as continuing to offer hope to those who have suffered a recent loss as they face, at the end of Advent, the possibility, in the face of this loss, of a “Blue Christmas.”

To that end, tonight not only will we celebrate a Eucharist in remembrance of our losses suffered during the year, but we will [have] read this year’s parish necrology, and following the service, conduct a short re-commemoration of the parish memorial garden – The Memorial Garden of The Good Shepherd – after its recent refurbishment. Refreshments will follow in Michael’s Room.

Another change that you’ve already noticed is that we’ve combined the Praying our Goodbyes worship service with the second program in our 2005 Friends of Music series using Gabriel Faure’s Requiem as the context of our liturgy, a fitting background for our worship tonight.

And I’d like to announce that tonight’s offering will benefit the victims of the recent hurricanes and earthquakes through Episcopal Relief and Development as well as the Friends of Music. The offering baskets are at the back of the church.

A final announcement: we still have a few of the African badges that symbolize the Praying Our Goodbyes ministry that supports the AIDS programs at St. Dustan’s Cathedral in Johannesburg, and you’re most welcome to take one on your way out. A parishioner has donated them.

***

My text this evening comes from II Samuel:

And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went thus he said, ‘O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! Would to God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!’ – II Samuel 18:33

The title of this worship service, “Praying Our Goodbyes,” is taken, as some of you already know, from a book by Cervite Sister Joyce Rupp. In it she describes a spiritual approach to coping with the inevitable goodbyes that we all must face in our journey through life.

"We say goodbye,” she writes, “to parents, spouses, children and friends, sometimes for just a day or a year, and sometimes until we meet them on the other side of this life.

"We leave familiar places and secure homes. We bid farewell to strong, healthy bodies, burden-free spirits or minds. We change teachers, schools, parishes and managers, sometimes spouses or religions.

"We change our ideas, our values, our self-image and our way of interpreting life's situations.

"We place parents in nursing homes, allow children to experience risk-taking and growth, say no to love relationships that would be inappropriate or possibly harmful to us or to others."

These and many other similar situations that we all must face from time to time, involve some kind of painful leave-taking and create for us a “goodbye”, and it is these goodbyes and the profound personal grief that they engender, that we consider tonight.

In the year since our last Praying Our Goodbye worship service, not only have many of us experienced highly personal and private losses, but also, it seems to me, we have all been exposed to an unprecedented number of more public losses: the tsunami last December, the death of Pope John Paul II, hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, the death of our chief justice, the earthquakes in Pakistan, the loss of military and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, the death of Rosa Parks and this weekend, the bombing in India. These are just a few of the more visible losses so far this year.

The grief these losses generate can be intense, even from afar.

For example, here’s a glimpse of contemporary grief from Iraq. These are captions from a series of photos in a news magazine after the recent collapse of what came to be called, “the pilgrim’s bridge” where over 600 people died.

“Iraqis searching Thursday for relatives missing, after a deadly stampede of pilgrims, scanned the collage of postmortem pictures … praying that they would find a familiar face -- and yet praying that they would not.

A second:

“On Thursday, mosques ran short of wooden coffins. Gravediggers in the holy city of Najaf, a preferred burial site for Iraq's Shiites, worked without breaks. Suppliers of traditional mourning tents were inundated with requests in Sadr City, the Shiite neighborhood in the capital where many of the victims lived. Every major street in the slum was dotted with tunnel-shaped tents, where mourners gathered to pray, to listen to recordings of Koranic verses and to sip coffee.

And a third:

“Grieving relatives scoured the capital for funeral supplies, at times taking their search to outlying cities. ‘We had to get a [tent cloth] from Baqubah,’ said an unemployed ironworker whose neighbor's son died on the bridge. ‘We're still waiting for it to arrive.’”

Recent reports like this and the ancient biblical description of King David agonizing over the loss of his estranged son give us notice that grief is a universal human phenomenon, one that, most likely, we will all experience many times throughout our lives.

As the late Episcopal priest Fr. John Claypool says in Tracks of a Fellow Struggler, his meditation on the death of his young daughter from cancer,

“no one can live on this earth very long without being initiated into the fraternity of the bereaved.”

He calls us “persons of sorrow acquainted with grief.”

C.S Lewis is well known for noting in A Grief Observed that,

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear,”

but in a less well known quote from this journal of the time immediately following his wife Joy’s death, he went on to report on grief’s pervasiveness:

“Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.”

In today’s vernacular, for many of us, I’m sure, “Been there, done that.”

The Bible deals extensively with grief. These verses from Psalm 88 describe it well:

O Lord, my God, my Savior, *

               by day and night I cry to you.

2              Let my prayer enter into your presence; *

               incline your ear to my lamentation.

3              For I am full of trouble; *

               my life is at the brink of the grave.

4              I am counted among those who go down to the Pit; *

               I have become like one who has no strength;

***

7              You have laid me in the depths of the Pit, *

               in dark places, and in the abyss.

8              Your anger weighs upon me heavily, *

               and all your great waves overwhelm me.

                                                                                                ***

19                                                                                           My friend and my neighbor you have put away from me,

20                                                                                                          and darkness is my only companion.

We hear of grief’s self-centeredness in Lamentations 1 and its highly individualized affect in Genesis 37:

First from Lamentations:

Is this nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Look and see!
Is there any pain like mine,
which was dealt out to me,
which the Lord made [me] suffer
on the day of His burning anger? (Lamentations 1 1:12)

And then from Genesis when Joseph is taken to Egypt:

Then Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth on his loins, and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and daughters sought to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted and said, "No I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning." (Genesis 37 - 35)

And we hear grief’s poignancy in the New Testament, in John 11:35, that shortest of verses, after the death of Lazarus,

“Jesus wept.”

Many of you have experienced these complex feelings, and it seems, everyone must, like Jacob, find their own unique way to grieve.

In their book titled On Grief and Grieving by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler, published this year following Kubler-Ross’s death in August 2004, the authors note,

“Your loss and the grief that accompanies it are very personal, different from anyone else’s. Others may share the experience of these losses. They may try to console you in the only way they know. But your loss stands alone in its meaning to you, in its painful uniqueness.”

How then, should we deal with our grief? And how can we help others deal with theirs?

American Public Radio has a most worthwhile weekly program called Speaking of Faith hosted by a woman named Christa Tippett that covers many aspect of contemporary religion. Recently she interviewed Doctor Rachael Naomi Remen, a physician at UC
San Francisco who has been working with the grieving process for many years.

On that program Dr. Remen offered us some fresh insights into managing loss and grief:

“The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily and not be touched by it is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet. This sort of denial is no small matter. The way we deal with loss shapes our capacity to be present to life more than anything else. The way we protect ourselves from loss may be the way in which we distance ourselves from life. We burn out, not because we don't care, but because we don't grieve. We burn out because we have allowed our hearts to become so filled with loss that we have no room left to care.”

Answering another of Christa’s question Dr. Remen said,

“No one is comfortable with loss. Being that we're a technological culture … our first response to loss is to try and fix it. When we are in the presence of a loss that cannot be fixed, which is a great many losses, we feel helpless and uncomfortable and we have a tendency to run away, either emotionally or actually distance ourselves.”

Her therapeutic approach to grief is simple but powerful. Describing a project where she trains medical students to help with grieving families, Dr. Remen reported,

“We teach them the power of their presence, of just being there and listening and witnessing another person and caring about another person's loss, letting it matter. … [we ask them] to remember a story of loss from their own lives — a time when things didn't go their way, when they were disappointed, when they lost a dream or a relationship or even a family member, a death…”

And she continued,

“…they spend six hours in small groups talking about their loss. And the group has one instruction: Listen generously. [At the end] we make a big list.

"What are all the things that helped?

”Listened to me for as long as I needed to talk. Talked to me in the same way after my loss as they did before my loss." "Sat with me." "Touched me." "Brought me food."

”What were the things that didn't help?

"Gave me advice without knowing the full story." "Made me feel that the loss was my fault."

“So,” Dr. Remen says,

“We gather up the wisdom about what helps loss to heal from a group of about a hundred students and faculty, and it's all very simple stuff.

“And the only instruction is: listen generously.”

She added,

“Most people try to hold on to the thing that is no longer part of their lives, and they stop themselves in their lives in that way. I have come to see loss as a stage in a process. It's not the bottom line. It's not the end of the story. … This is a starting place, but over time things evolve and change. At the very least, people who have lost a great deal can recognize that they are not victims, they are survivors.

“[And through this] most people haven't even noticed their strength. They're completely focused on their pain.”

As Christians, we know that God’s comfort can and will be a strength in our times of grief.

In John 14:18 Jesus says,

“I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you”

and we learn very early in our Christian education from the Sermon on the Mount that,

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted (Matthew 5:4).

We can gain strength from Christ.

“Grief gives us an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice, the reality of sin and the broken state of our world. We lament and wail but we also have hope in Christ and in a new beginning. These emotions live together in a Christian’s heart.”

Peggy Eastman, who wrote this in an essay in The Living Church in July 2004, went on to say,

“It is hard to discern God’s hand in premature snuffing out of productive lives. The Church can’t answer “why” questions, just as God did not answer Job’s question when he cried out to Him for succor. But what the Church can do is offer hope – the promise that Christ will defeat the darkness of intruder grief, even when the mourner’s heart is pounded by the blunt trauma of death. The Church shines the light of Jesus into what can seem to the griever as terminal illness.”

Listen to another story from Speaking of Faith. This time Christa’s guest is Marianne Pearl who she introduces this way:

“My guest today is Marianne Pearl who was married to The Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl who was kidnapped and murdered by Islamic extremists four months after 9/11. He was targeted in part because he was Jewish. Today you'll hear Marianne Pearl, a Buddhist, on making sense of her husband's murder and her spiritual battle on what she calls the front lines of the war on terror.”

As she concludes this spellbinding interview, Marianne Pearl talks about the expiation of her grief.

“There is something I must do before the baby is born,” she begins. “I have to face what Danny faced. I have to confront the truth, because it is like an enemy: If you turn your face from it, then you are crushed by it.

“On May 25, two days before the baby is due, I take the phone off the hook, lie down alone, and imagine everything that happened to Danny. That doesn't take a great act of imagination … by this point I have a lot of details. But I force myself to see it all. And I make myself think about what Danny thought, and to know when he was most afraid.

“For two days I live through this. They are the craziest days of my life, but I have to do this, and I have to do it alone. When it is over, I know nothing can happen anymore that I don't have the courage to fight within.”

Who of us would have the strength to endure such an agonizing confrontation with their grief?

In Praying Our Goodbyes, Sister Rupp offers us this prayer to help us do it:

I give you praise, God of my journey,

for the power of love, the discovery of friends, the truth of beauty…

I give you thanks, God of my journey

for all I have learned from the life of Jesus of how to say goodbye…

I ask forgiveness, God of my journey

for holding too tightly

for refusing to be open to a new life

for fighting off the dying that’s essential for growing

for insisting that I must be secure and serene…

I beg assistance, God of my journey

to accept that all of life is only on loan to me

to believe beyond this moment

to accept your courage when mine fails

to recognize the pilgrim part of my heart …

Through prayers like this, we may at last be able to say to those who have left us, as Marianne seems to have said to Danny, "Go, God be with you. I entrust you to God,” And with this, we can, at last, let go and be free to move on, returning ourselves once again to fellowship with the world.

The American poet Robert Lowell said it best, perhaps,

“Darkness honestly lived through is a place of wonder and life.”

So as we approach All Saints Day and All Souls Day, I’d like to offer a few concluding thoughts about remembering those who’ve gone before us:

Here’s a remembrance from one of the many letters that Marianne Pearl received after Danny’s death. It was from a Pakistani Muslim.

"Dear Mrs. Pearl and family,

I would like to offer my condolences on the untimely death of Mr. Pearl. May he rest in peace. … I have no words to say how sorry I am for what happened to Danny. My heart goes out for your family. Danny died for a great cause, and he is a martyr. I had hope for him all along and now console myself knowing he is happy up there with his creator and looking down and smiling and longing to see his beautiful unborn son. He will be your guardian angel. People like Danny make this world worth living in. May he rest in peace, and God give you the strength you need.”

And almost as if it was a summary of Mary Ann Pearl’s experience, the Anglican theologian, N.T. Wright offers us a most striking description of grief and remembrance:

“Grief could almost be defined as the form love takes when the object of loss has been removed; it is love embracing empty spaces; love kissing this air and feeling the pain of that nothingness.

“But,” he adds,

“There is no reason at all why love should discontinue the practice of holding the beloved in prayer before God.”

N. T. Wright: For All The Saints: Remembering the Christian Departed page74. 

The late Roman Catholic theologian Henri Nouwen echoes this:

“As we grow older we have more and more people to remember, people who have died before us. It is very important to remember those who have loved us and those we have loved. Remembering them means letting their spirits inspire us in our daily lives. They can become part of our spiritual communities and gently help us as we make decisions on our journeys. Parents, spouses, children and friends can become true spiritual companions after they die. Sometimes they can become even more intimate to us after death than when they were with us in life.”

Remembering the dead is choosing their ongoing companionship.”

Henri Nouwen: Bread for The Journey, August 29

I pray that God gives YOU the strength YOU need and the grace of a guardian angel looking down. I know that I have mine, and I am most thankful for her guidance.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13)

Amen.

MOVING TOWARD THE LIGHT - December 2004

May I speak in the name of one God who created us, who redeemed us, and who comforts us. Amen.

Ihave two texts tonight that inform my remarks.

The first is the traditional opening prayer from the Christmas Eve Liturgy at King’s College, Cambridge:

"Let us also remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore and in a greater light, that multitude which none can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh: And let us pray that we may be counted among that communion of saints."

…and the second, a reading from the first letter of John (1 John 1:5):

"… God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; ⁷but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another…”

We pray our goodbyes tonight to those we “…love but see no longer” or to those parts of our life that have now forever changed. And we do it at a dark time of the year when many of us find that we cannot celebrate the upcoming holidays with the hearty spirit that others do. For many of us, it will be another Blue Christmas.

In these words from First John, we hear that the way out of our darkness back to fellowship with the world is through the light of God. But we also learn another lesson: that we can easily deceive ourselves by saying that we are walking in this light when, if we were honest, we are not yet really doing so.

How hard it is to find that light; how hard it is to really let go of our losses. …

++++

Light in the darkness is a prominent motif and metaphor throughout the literature of our faith.

Genesis tells us that in the beginning, darkness was upon the face of the deep.

Some equate this darkness with chaos, like the chaos we found early in our experiences of loss.

But then God said, “Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.”

This season of Advent is another example: During Advent, we wait for the Son of God who is called the “Light of The World.” And later in the liturgical year, at the Great Vigil of Easter, we echo this as we chant, “The Light of Christ” and then respond, “Thanks be to God.”

Psalm 18:28 says, “For You will light my lamp; The LORD my God will enlighten my darkness.”

In Isaiah 9:2-3 we read, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness -- on them light has shined.”

And John’s gospel says: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."

As I continue my own personal search for light in the darkness of loss – for I still often wonder if I am “…truly in the light …” or if I am deceiving myself and “…walking in darkness” – I remember a question posed by Fr. Brad Karelius, now the rector of The Church of the Messiah in Santa Ana, in a homily he gave at an All Saints Day service when he was serving at St. Mary’s in Laguna Beach.

Brad asked us to consider, “Who are the Saints of your life—the lights of your world?” He suggested that in understanding, thanksgiving and acceptance of the gifts they gave us, we can, from our darkness, recognize a brighter future for ourselves.

Brad is one among many Episcopal priests who over the years have turned me in the direction of God’s light. He married my late wife Susan and me, and later counseled us.

Our rector here at Saint Michael & All Angels, Peter Haynes, is a second. He supported me and my children, Mike and Sara, through Susan’s last days, gave her last rites and conducted the celebration of her life six years ago. Those of you here tonight who have experienced Peter’s compassion at a time of loss will understand.

Another priest who’s touched my life during these last six years is also a good friend of Peter’s: Canon John Peterson, the retiring director general of the Anglican Communion. I vividly recall how in the midst of a small social gathering at a Bishop’s home in South Africa, John deftly slipped from his role as a church administrator leading a Compass Rose Society mission trip into that of a compassionate pastor.

We’d only met a few days before, but during a short conversation, he acknowledged my grief, and with a few more thoughtful words, helped me, again, move me toward God’s light.

In Jerusalem this past October, John led a group of us down the Via Dolorosa through the fourteen Stations of the Cross. At the 12^th station, inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he turned to me—knowingly, I believe—and asked me to read from his book A Walk in Jerusalem the prayers written for the station “Where Jesus Died on the Cross”. These said, in part,

“Let us pray:

For all persons who have died, whoever they may be;

That they may know Jesus and share His risen and eternal life.”

And lastly on my list tonight of personal saints, is a priest I’ve never met but have always greatly admired: The Rev. John Danforth.

An Episcopal priest, a former U.S. Senator and until just recently our ambassador to the United Nations, Father Danforth officiated at the funeral service for former President Ronald Reagan at the Washington National Cathedral this past June.

In his homily, Fr. Danforth talked about darkness and light.

As if speaking directly to us grieving our still raw, persistent or impending losses, he said to those assembled, “You and I know the meaning of darkness. Darkness is real, and it can be terrifying. Sometimes it seems to be everywhere.”

But “Creating light in darkness is God's work,” Danforth reminded us.

And in telling us what to do when we are surrounded by darkness, Father Danforth pointed to St. Paul’s answer in his Letter to the Ephesians, where Paul said that we must, with God’s help, again become children of light.

Paul says, “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light—for the fruit of the light are found in all that is good and right and true.” (Ephesians 5:8-10)

Paul is asking us to search deeply within ourselves and seek the strength to once again, as Jesus directs us in Matthew’s gospel, “let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works” (Matt 5:16), in other words, we must, in this, our bluest season, meditate and pray that we might now find the light that God is always offering us.

In other words, St. Paul is asking us, as we do here tonight, to pray our goodbyes.

The title, “Praying Our Goodbyes,” is taken from a book by Cervite Sister Joyce Rupp. In it she describes a faith-based approach to coping with the inevitable goodbyes that we all must face in our journey through life.

I’d like us to remember some of her words:

"We say goodbye,” she writes with great insight, “to parents, spouses, children and friends, sometimes for just a day or a year, and sometimes until we meet them on the other side of this life.

"We leave familiar places and secure homes. We bid farewell to strong, healthy bodies, burden-free spirits or minds. We change teachers, schools, parishes and managers, sometimes spouses or religions.

"We change our ideas, our values, our self-image and our way of interpreting life's situations.

"We place parents in nursing homes, allow children to experience risk-taking and growth, say no to love relationships that would be inappropriate or possibly harmful to us or to others."

All of these, and many other situations that we face from time to time, involve some kind of painful leave-taking and create for us a “goodbye.”

But in response to these, Sister Rupp offers us a message of hope.

She wants us to learn how to approach our leave-takings spiritually, not just saying our goodbyes but praying our goodbyes, by growing in our relationship with a loving, comforting God who does not want us to suffer, a God who will be with us through our goodbyes and who will lead us to what she calls new “hellos”.

Her book, which I recommend to all of you, provides the process, the prayers and the meditations to help us do this.

Here are a few lines from a prayer she wrote for someone trying to move on from loss:

I give you praise, God of my journey,

for the power of love, the discovery of friends, the truth of beauty…

I give you thanks, God of my journey

for all I have learned from the life of Jesus of how to say goodbye…

I ask forgiveness, God of my journey

for holding too tightly

for refusing to be open to a new life

for fighting off the dying that’s essential for growing

for insisting that I must be secure and serene…

I beg assistance, God of my journey

to accept that all of life is only on loan to me

to believe beyond this moment

to accept your courage when mine fails

to recognize the pilgrim part of my heart …

Through prayers and meditations like this, we may at last be able to say to those who have left us, "Go, God be with you. I entrust you to God,” And with this, we can, at last, let go and be free to move on. To finally and without deceiving ourselves “…walk in the light …” returning ourselves once again to fellowship with the world.

That, I think, would be a perfect place to end this homily; a place to say, “Amen.”

But that would leave my thoughts about a blue Christmas this year somewhat incomplete, so if you’ll forgive an indulgence, I’d like to offer a second ending.

I want to return, for just a moment, to that list of priests who are among “the Saints of my life” and say just a few words about another one –one, like Fr. Danforth, that I have never met, and, sadly, never will.

When I was in London this summer, I went on a Sunday morning to visit St. George’s Hanover Square, only a few blocks from my hotel. I didn’t know much about this historic church: that for example, it was the church, where, in his day, George Frederick Handel was a parishioner and often played the organ. It was simply the closest church.

Nor did I know, until later in the next week, that the rector of this church, Fr. John Slater, had died on the day I had attended services there. Coincidentally, I learned this from Peter’s and my friend The Rev. Canon John Peterson at dinner the following Thursday, in a conversation following my answer to John’s question, “Did you visit a church in London last Sunday?” It seems that John and his wife Kirsten and Father Slater were the closest of friends.

But the coincidence is just part of the story. On June 13^th, Father Slater gave what was to be his final homily at St. George’s Hanover Square.

The Bishop of London, in his sermon at Fr. Slater’s funeral noted that, “It was courage and determination which brought him into this church the Sunday before he died to preach from his chair… . He sat at the door and greeted the congregation. He went home and on Monday wrote two more sermons for delivery on ensuing Sundays. He died on the following Sunday, the festival of the Resurrection, having received the final anointing and while a friend was praying the Lord’s Prayer.”

In that final sermon which he had titled “The Heirs of the Kingdom”, Fr. Slater said this:

“And so the resurrection is not only something that happened in history, it is something that we experience daily. There must be a resurrection in our own life. I don’t have to tell you that there must also be a crucifixion. In a strange way, Christians expect to bear the cross – are even glad to bear it; but how many of us really know the joy of the resurrection and live in that joy day by day?”

Here was a man who knew that, “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all …,” and one who to the end,” walked in the light as he himself is in the light.”

I would very much have liked to have known him. I know that he too would have helped me find the light of God.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus,

Master of both the light and the darkness, send your Holy Spirit upon our preparations for Christmas.

We who have so much to do, seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day.

We who are anxious over many things look forward to your coming among us.

We who are blessed in so many ways, long for the complete joy of your kingdom.

We whose hearts are heavy seek the joy of your presence.

We are your people, walking in darkness, yet seeking the light.

To you we say, "Come Lord Jesus!"

Amen.

(Advent Prayer by Henri J.M. Nouwen)

And now, again as in previous years, a short postscript.

As some of you know, the offering for the “Praying Our Goodbyes” service goes to support the HIV/AIDS ministry in the Diocese of the Highveld in the Province of South Africa. It's used to help purchase coffins for those who succumb to AIDS and can not afford even the basics of a simple burial.

I want to thank all of you who have given so generously to this mission in the past and ask once again tonight for your continuing support. At St. Dunstan’s cathedral in Johannesburg, they are most grateful for our contributions.

We also support this mission by selling pins made by women in Cape Town who are infected with HIV/AIDS, to help support themselves. This year, a parishioner has purchased and donated a badge for each of us attending the service tonight, and if you’d like one, they are available at the back of the church. Please take one on your way out.

RETURNING TO JERUSALEM - December 2003

May the Lord now be in all our hearts and upon my lips, that every thought and word may be wholly for the honor and glory of His name.

My text this evening is from St. Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians:

"We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope." 1Th 4:13

And as a modern subtext, this remarkable piece of reportage from the November 24th edition of the London newspaper, the Telegraph:

“It was to be expected that Victoria Short would have time only for herself and her children when she attended the service held yesterday in memory of her husband and staff killed in the bombing of the British consulate in Istanbul. But as she left Christ Church, a small Anglican enclave hidden in the steep and winding back streets of Turkey's largest city, the widow of Roger Short, the consul general who died at his desk, greeted all those she knew with a smile and a word. Even in grief, she was the perfect diplomat's wife. Only when she emerged into the autumn sunlight did she for a moment surrender to her sense of loss. ‘For everybody else each day is going to get better, but for me every day is going to get worse,’ she said.”

I’ve watched a lot of people just shake it off. They loose a job; they’re back to work six months later – often at a higher pay grade. They put down the cat at the vet and they pick up a kitty at the pound on the way home. Relationship ended?? In today’s vernacular, “Not a problem.” The serial monogamy merry-go-round quickly propels them into the next one.

Others can’t shake off a loss as easily. Often depressed, they refuse to reconnect, preferring to keep themselves turned inward, trying with quiet, lonely desperation to understand what happened, why, and where God was.

No value judgments here: just some observations about how people deal differently with their grief.

So as I mark the 5-year anniversary of my wife’s death with a “milestone-date” retrospective of my recovery process, I find myself raising two sets of questions. First, do a lot of us today skip mourning our losses? If so what have we missed and what’s the ultimate cost to us? ... And have I skipped it?

On the other hand, do some of us grieve too long, remaining immobilized and unable to move on? ...And am I stuck?

I suspect that most of us don’t find our grief such an either or proposition. Sometimes we haven’t grieved enough. At other times we’ve grieved too much. Finding a balance in which to live on productively is often difficult.

Last year after this service a good friend of mine who was suffering grievously through the loss of a relationship asked me somewhat cynically, “Is that – meaning the service we’d just completed – supposed to fix it?”

And around the anniversary this year of the death of a spouse another friend asked, “Do we have to go through this every year?”

Which of them had grieved too much? Which had not grieved enough?

To quote the English poet Samuel Butler, “Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule.”

In truth, there is no simple measure of how much grief is enough, or when it should stop.

I guess for myself I must ambiguously answer “yes” to both questions, having observed some of both kinds of behavior in myself over the past 5 years. While I know I didn’t just shake it off, there have been times when I’ve cavalierly dismissed an anniversary or a birthday or the memory of a special time together wanting to find new mementoes for those times.

And yet there are still times that I can’t shake it off. Just last month, revisiting Brown’s Hotel in London after a 10 year absence, the memories were paralyzing. If I’m truthful with my self, then, I have to say that I’m much more stuck than I am dismissive.

So recently, I’ve begun to appreciate more and more the idea of what I’ve come to call “the value in adversity” as we work our way through grief. This began when I read some commentaries on Ecclesiastics written in 1982 by the late Ray C. Steadman, the long-time pastor of the Peninsula Baptist Church in Palo Alto.

I was easily able to identify with the “grief wisdom” of the Searcher, as the voice of the book is often called, and who Steadman says was King Solomon. In Chapter 7 there is a series of proverbs that list the good things that can happen in affliction.

Verse 2 says: It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting; for this is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to heart. {Eccl 7:2 RSV} That is, says Steadman, when you are confronted with death or loss you are no longer dealing with side issues, you are dealing at last with realities. Death and loss lead to realism. Though they will bring sorrow, grief and mourning; you set aside the shallow, ephemeral aspects of life and start to deal with the facts. Who won or lost yesterday’s “big game” told to you six months, a year or even longer after a major personal loss is hardly important, and it’s tempting to unfairly put down those not suffering who can still find it so.

Secondly, the Searcher says, sorrow, paradoxically, can lead to gladness. Verse 3 says: Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of countenance the heart is made glad. {Eccl 7:3 RSV} And not only to gladness, but also to knowledge. Here’s verse 4: The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. {Eccl 7:4 RSV} How can that be? How can sorrow, grief and pain lead to gladness and wisdom?

A recent book by Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister helps us understand. It’s a short but powerful book called Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope. In it she compares the struggles and hopes surrounding a major loss in her life to the story of Jacob wrestling with God as told in Genesis.

With our losses, we struggle, she says, against the furies. I’m sure many of you here tonight will recognize these: the furies of change, of isolation, of darkness, of fear, of powerlessness, of vulnerability, of exhaustion, and of scarring. While these struggles sometimes seem insurmountable, we can, Sister Joan assures us, emerge from them with a set of gifts: gifts of conversion, of detachment, of faith, of courage, of surrender, of limitations, of endurance, of transformation, and –perhaps most important –the gift of hope.

She describes her book as, “an anatomy of struggle and an account of the way hope grows in us, despite our moments of darkness, regardless of our regular bouts of depression. It is an invitation to look again at the struggles of life in order that we might remember how to recognize new life in our souls the next time our hearts turn again to clay.”

I found it very helpful. I particularly liked some of her comments about hope and despair: “Hope and despair are not opposites. They are cut from the very same cloth, made from the very same material, shaped from the very same circumstances. Every life finds it self forced to choose one from the other, one day at a time, once circumstance after another. The sunflower, that plant which in shadow turns it head relentlessly toward the sun, is the patron saint of those in despair.”

And this one: “Despair colors the way we look at things, makes us suspicious of the future, makes us negative about the present. Most of all, despair leads us to ignore the very possibilities that could save us, or worse, leads us to want to hurt as we have been hurt ourselves. “Hope, on the other hand, takes life on its own terms, knows that whatever happens God lives in it, and expects that, whatever it twists and turns, it will ultimately yield its good to those who live it continuously, to those who live it to the hilt.”

I was struck by how Sister Joan’s book echoed another expression of “the value in adversity”idea; Sister Joyce Rupp’s book Praying Our Goodbyes, the namesake of this service that we’ve held during Advent for three years now.

It’s worth briefly revisiting some of what Sister Joyce has to say. She suggests that partings—all the Goodbyes throughout our lives—are essential parts of how God has made life and that we need to incorporate these into our faith.

I think that’s so insightful: all the Goodbyes throughout our lives—are essential parts of how God has made life and we need to incorporate these into our faith.

Goodbyes are both small and large: the kids going to school, going on a vacation, changing jobs, getting married, getting divorced, moving to a new community, a child going away to college or job, getting downsized, the prostate gland that was removed, going bankrupt or the last shovel of dirt on the grave.

It is important, she says, for us to recognize and process these goodbyes in ways that express our faith in God and our conviction that Jesus is with us in all our goodbyes. Too often the reality of goodbyes are denied, or internalized in ways that are destructive to our relationships with God and each other—perhaps that’s what happens to us when we “just shake them off”—and she describes a process of recovering from our goodbyes where we can emerge on the other side of the hurt and once again integrate our inner and outer worlds.

Yes, we still carry scars, as did our Resurrected Lord, but they are no longer festering scars, they are healed scars. The first followers of Jesus, she notes, finally did let go and return to Jerusalem. In time they experienced a powerful healing which they characterized as the coming of the Holy Spirit upon them. Metaphorically, that’s what we’ve got to do to recover, let go and return to our own personal Jerusalems.

Dr. Karson began our service this evening with “Prelude on Gibbons’ Lighten the Darkness.” It echoes the fifth verse at the beginning of The Gospel of John which tells us, “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

In this Advent season, we remember that there is hope in light. The Advent candles we light each week symbolize Christ’s approach and birth as the light of the world. For some of us, these candles of joy and hope may not be easy to light, this year. For some, our own Advent season may take much, much longer.

But there is hope. “Hope,” concludes Sister Joan, “is the last great gift to rise out of the grave of despair.” Soon, the days begin to get longer, and the light begins to grow, and the dark begins to recede. With the birth of Jesus, we find a light, a beacon in the darkness. God has not abandoned us in our time of darkness; God has heard our prayers and sent to earth a son.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, Master of both the light and the darkness, send your Holy Spirit upon our preparations for Christmas. We who have so much to do seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day. We who are anxious over many things look forward to your coming among us. We who are blessed in so many ways long for the complete joy of your kingdom. We whose hearts are heavy seek the joy of your presence. We are your people, walking in darkness, yet seeking the light. To you we say, "Come Lord Jesus!" Amen. Advent Prayer by Henri J.M. Nouwen

And now, I’d like to add a short postscript. As some of you know, the offering for the “Praying Our Goodbyes” service goes to support the AIDS ministry in the Diocese of the Highveld in the Province of South Africa. It’s used to help purchase caskets for those who succumb to AIDS and can not afford even the basics of a simple burial. Just last week, I receive this email of thanks from Bishop Davis Beetge who heads the Diocese of the Highveld and I’d like to share it with you.

Dear Friends, You all know of or have supported the HIV/AIDS work in this Diocese, some of you over many years, and I write to let you know how much I thought of you and gave thanks for you at a service this morning.

My service on this the 6th of December was in the Parish of St Andrew’s Kwa-Thema in Springs some 20 kilometres from where I live in Benoni. The service had been planned to include the Sunday Eucharist, a Confirmation and AIDS day.

In the congregation of some 600 people there were 40 young people to be confirmed and about 5 adults. There were also a group of 40 children all with bright yellow T-shirts on, all orphans and all HIV positive. During there service the Church was filled with candlelight as each one held a candle in prayer. And on the one hand there was the joy of those being confirmed and on the other the deep unbearable sadness of those orphans who delighted to be with us joining in the singing and rushing forward to receive a blessing from me after the distribution of Communion.

And as I gave them a blessing I was conscious of a different sort of communion ¬ one which Christ has with the sick and with those who live on the edge of society. But for Christ what we call the edge is really the centre ¬ the centre of his broken, sacred heart. I knew, as imperfect as my words of blessing were, that is where they were being held. And the mystery of the cosmic Christ who holds together the whole of this creation became, for a moment, that much more visible. The tears I shed within and without were tears of joy, of sadness and of the mystery of that incarnate love of Christ. Thank you for the support you have given this Diocese and for the prayers you continually offer up to us.

With my love and prayers,

+David

I want to thank all of you who have given so generously to this mission in the past and ask once again tonight for your continuing support.

ONE SUNDAY IN AUGUST - December 2002

May the Lord now be in all our hearts and upon my lips, that every thought and word may be wholly for the honor and glory of His name.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? (Romans 8:35) A question to us from St. Paul in his letter to the Romans.

I think I’m a familiar breed of parishioner to many clergy these days: the “Cradle Episcopalian” who after many years of off and on church going has found, in his sixties, a new reason to bring faith back into his life, but one who still has the occasional doubt.

Our rector, Peter Haynes, is fond of quoting Frederick Beuchner who says in his book Wishful Thinking that, “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving,” and I must say I agree with that.

And I suspect that many of us here tonight have encountered a bout of doubt in the midst of our recent losses. The Roman Catholic philosopher and writer Peter Kreeft put this another way, perhaps a bit more hopefully, in his book Making Sense out of Suffering: He said, “Doubt is glorious. Only one who can doubt can believe…” and he added, in another message to those of us who grieve, “…just as only one who can despair can hope….”

So putting my doubt aside one Sunday morning this past August, I was sitting in Steve Felder’s adult education class here at St. Mike’s, and I found myself wanting badly to answer the question Steve was posing to the group, “Does anyone want to share an experience where he or she knew that God was really present and intervening in his life?” asked Steve.

Just the week before, Father Haynes had talked to us in his homily about “God Spotting”, persuading us that God was present, not hidden, and that we must be open and receptive to the possibility that God is among us.

Now Steve’s discussion of the Bible readings for the day was illuminating Peter’s remarks. I had had an experience like that, and I wanted badly to tell my story. But I was reluctant to do so, not only because I’d told it privately to some and didn’t remember to exactly who, but also because I didn’t want such a personal narrative to intrude abruptly on a group of fellow parishioners and perhaps ruin their Sunday.

I don’t have that reluctance with you tonight. My story is about a loss I’ve had, and we’re here together this evening because we share in common the experience of a major loss in our life. We all know what it’s like. And it’s at this time of the year when others are sharing instead in the joy of the holiday season, when our losses can be especially intense and painful for us.

Many have written about how the pain of loss intensifies during the holiday season: the heartache that’s often called a “Blue Christmas.” They say it’s because Christmas is our most important family holiday, often with reunions of loved ones filled with warm memories of happy times. The collision of Christmas memories with a recent numbing loss can generate despair and depression brought about by shock, fear, guilt and loneliness.

I suspect that all of you who have come to this special service this evening have some feelings like this, as the season approaches that usually brings happiness to so many others. Whether you’ve lost a spouse, a relative, a relationship, a job, a dream, a home, your health or a special pet, you’ve said “Goodbye” to something important and right now are feeling the ache of that loss perhaps more acutely than ever.

Our service tonight is designed to help us recognize this special pain and to look to God for the courage and strength to “pray our goodbyes” to these losses and move our lives beyond them.

So I hope that this personal reminiscence of a “God Spotting” that I had now some four years ago will help open your hearts to the possibility of spotting God in your own life, particularly at this most difficult season for you. And if you’ve heard the story before, I hope you’ll think that it ages well.

It happened like this: Two days before my wife Susan died, Father Haynes talked quietly with me and my son and daughter – Sue’s stepchildren for twenty-two years – outside the ICU at Hoag Hospital where she lay unconscious.

We discussed our lives together and Susan’s faith. Later, at her bedside, we joined hands with her and prayed as Peter gave her last rights. And this I know: God was there with us in that room..

I’ve no doubt about it. None at all. I felt God’s presence as surely as I feel the presence of all of you here tonight. In Peter’s terms, I had spotted Him. And if you asked me where God was, I’d answer promptly, “High up in the far left corner of the room.”

I’d normally be unwilling to share this last detail lest you’d think I was hallucinating, but, again thanks to Steve Felder’s adult education class, I’ve been introduced to Marcus Borg, a contemporary theologian well known for his interpretations of the life of Jesus, and reading Borg has made me feel better about what I know I experienced.

In his book The God We Never Knew, Borg discusses a variety of experiences of the sacred that people have had, and he includes several in which people report an awareness of God’s presence.

In a footnote, he reports that 80 percent of participants in one of his workshops could identify such an experience and were eager to talk about it. He calls this the “dailiness of God” which seems to match quite nicely with what Peter was saying in his homily about God Spotting.

But I must admit to being both shaken and a perplexed during this experience. “Why are You here?” I wondered to myself. And I was so very angry. “How can You let this happen? She’s so young.” “Fix it!” I screamed silently.

There I was at sixty years of age pleading with the deus ex machina God of my youth, the God who made things good things happen if we prayed for them, and yet of whom we always wondered, without much of an answer, “Why does God let bad things happen?”

Peter Kreeft’s imagery from Making Sense out of Suffering captures me perfectly at that moment.

“To question God’s goodness is not just an intellectual experiment,” Kreeft points out. “It is rebellion or tears. It is a little child with tears in his eyes looking up at Daddy and weeping, ‘Why’?” The hurt child, Kreeft explains, needs not so much an explanation as reassurance.

And reassurance is what we get, he tells us, the reassurance of the Father in the person of Jesus, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” Kreeft writes quoting John 14:9. And, understanding this now, I know something that I didn’t know then.

In that hospital room we were not with a God who was there to answer our “Whys”, but with the “com-passionate” God that our rector described in his summer homily, a God suffering together with us, as we feared for the future.

At the time, so overwhelmed with grief, I didn’t understand that. He was there to give us the reassurance that Kreeft describes, but I missed it. I wasn’t open to it, so distracted was I by my personal Whys of Sue’s death.

Now, while still curious about the Whys of suffering, I’m quite willing to leave further explorations to the theologians and the philosophers. Certainly these remains important questions, but if I recognize instead my personal need for reassurance in my immediate grief, I can find an answer to my question about Why God was in the room, and I can, even today, take great comfort from it.

I hope that in your loss, by turning to God you will find a measure of this comfort, this com-passion, this reassurance, now, here in the present. There’s plenty of time later for you to consider the larger Whys should you choose to.

In August, Peter said, “Those who love God, those called according to God’s purpose, learn new ways to find the good, even in the midst of pain.” Saint Paul’s familiar answer to his own rhetorical question in Romans Chapter 8 gives us the confirmation that Peter is right:

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” “For I am convinced,” responds Paul, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

In short, nothing will separate us from the love, and the comfort, of Christ.

Marcus Borg has observed that the decision of fourth century Christians to celebrate Jesus’ birth at the time of the winter solstice is a message that Jesus is a light in our darkness. For those of us experiencing a Blue Christmas this night, the light of our Savior’s birth is magnified by the promise of his never ending comfort and love. It’s a most glorious brightness that illuminates our solemn Christmas darkness.

Let us pray:

God of mystery, we turn our hearts to you. We come before you in need of peace, grateful for the mystery of life and keenly aware of your promises of guidance and protection. We want to place our trust in you, but our hearts grow fearful and anxious. We forget so easily that you will be with us in all we experience. Teach us to be patient with the transformation of our life and to be open to the changes which we are now experiencing. (From Praying Our Goodbyes, page 146.)

Amen.

PRAYING OUR GOODBYES - December 2001

May the Lord now be in all our hearts and upon my lips, that every thought and word may be wholly for the honor and glory of His name.

Afew weeks ago I was browsing through the New York Times and came across the obituary of a Virginia State Senator named Emily Couric. Wondering if she was related to TV’s Katie, I read on and yes, it was Katie’s sister, who had died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 54.

My eyes jumped quickly to the last paragraph and, yes, “…survived by her husband George, her parents and three siblings.”

I silently said a prayer for all of them, and then as I often do these days, came quickly in touch with the agony that, as a widower, George must presently be enduring, and what the near future would most likely hold for him. While each loss is uniquely personal, I know that George and I still have a lot in common: ironically, as my son and daughter both quickly remembered when I told them I was giving these remarks tonight, my late wife Susan, gone now for almost four years, would have been 56 years old today had she lived.

Last year about this time, I wrote a poem called simply, Christmas.

It begins:

On the third Christmas without you

The tears are still much more than snowflakes:

Melting memories mingling with a persistent present where misery’s still covered with a thin veneer of purpose that turns too often to a vacant stare.

I suspect that all of you who have come to this special service this evening have some feelings like this, as the season approaches that usually brings joy and light to so many others.

Whether you’ve lost a relative, a relationship, a job, a dream, a home, your health or a special pet, you’ve said “Goodbye” to something important in your life and right now are feeling the ache of that loss perhaps more acutely than ever.

Many writers have told us how the pain of loss intensifies during the holiday season: the phenomenon that they call a “Blue Christmas.” The popular song of the same name, incidentally, was written in 1948, and by the end of 1998, was number 14 on ASCAP’s list of the top 75 Christmas Songs of the Century –showing, I think, just how widely felt this seasonal reaction to loss is in our culture.

Experts say it’s because Christmas is our most important family holiday: often featuring reunions of loved ones filled with warm memories of happy times. The collision of Christmas memories with a recent numbing loss can generate dark despair and disconsolate depression brought about by shock, fear, guilt and loneliness.

Christmas 2001 will be especially “blue” for many in our nation. We still grieve for an indescribable human tragedy, and also for the loss of our country’s innocence that only a few, who no one listened to, could imagine would ever happen.

For me, September 11 created the “Blue Christmas Effect” three months early. You may have experienced this too. Most of the gains I had made during the year dealing with my own personal losses were instantly crushed under the weight of falling debris and suffocated in the stench from Ground Zero.

My grief became again, briefly, disabling.

So tonight, we who know this Blue Christmas pain come together to gain comfort and strength through our liturgy and through our community, and from a special resource that I’d like to share with you in the hope that you too may find it valuable.

We took the title of this service, Praying Our Goodbyes, from a book by Cervite Sister Joyce Rupp in which she describes a faith-based approach to coping with the inevitable goodbyes we all must face in our journey through life.

She tells us that a goodbye is “an empty place in us” and introduces the idea of the “goodbye—hello—goodbye” cycle, a process that we will repeat many, many times, as we move from leave-taking to engagement to leave-taking, again and again in many areas of our lives.

She describes it this way:

“We say goodbye to parents, spouses, children and friends, sometimes for just a day or a year, and sometimes until we meet them on the other side of this life.

“We leave familiar places and secure homes. We bid farewell to strong, healthy bodies, burden-free spirits or minds. We change teachers, schools, parishes and managers, sometimes spouses or religions.

“We change our ideas, our values, our self-image and our way of interpreting life’s situations.

“We place parents in nursing homes, allow children to experience risk-taking and growth, say no to love relationships that would be inappropriate or possible harmful to us or to others.”

All of these, and many other situations we face regularly, involve some kind of painful leave-taking and create for us a goodbye. Sister Rupp has a hopeful message. She wants to teach us how to approach our leave-takings spiritually, not just saying our goodbyes but praying our goodbyes, as we learn to grow in our relationship with a loving, comforting God who does not want us to suffer, a God who will be with us through our goodbyes and who will lead us to new hellos.

When we learn to do this, we can say, “Go, God be with you. I entrust you to God. The God of strength, courage, comfort, hope and love is with you. The God who promises to wipe away all tears will hold you close and will fill your emptiness.”

With this too, we can let go and be free to move on. In the goodbye—hello—goodbye cycle Sr. Rupp find two Biblical parallels. First, she tells us to stand strong in the Resurrection, remembering that Jesus risen is a proclamation of hello after an agonizing goodbye and second, to think about the Exodus as a metaphor for our stretches of inner wilderness of discouragement and doubt, just as the Israelites slowly moved out of their land of slavery to a place of true freedom.

And finally, she gives us a way to pray our Goodbyes, four steps where we recognize, reflect and ritualize our losses and then reorient ourselves to accept a new future. As time is short, I’ll let you explore these for yourself by reading and meditating on her book, which I commend to all of you and which is referenced on the back of your service leaflet.

Let me conclude with a few thoughts about that most difficult part of all: letting go. Sister Rupp says that to let go is to allow something or someone to be left behind in such a way that we are free to continue toward a new country that is waiting to be revealed to us.

She challenges us to recognize that we need to let go, to accept the wisdom of doing it and to take action to leave the grief of loss behind us. Most of us know intuitively that this is right, but also, just how hard it is to do. Here, she offers no magic, no shortcuts and no timetable.

Gently, she lets us know that letting go requires surrender to God, an appreciation of nature and a close kinship with our families and communities. In the end, she reminds us that the human spirit is astounding in its resiliency and its ability to recover hope.

That is what the resurrection proclaims: the possibility of transformation, the belief that we can be filled with new life and that the future will bless us.

In John 16, we read:

A women in childbirth suffers Because her time has come; But when she has given birth to the child she forgets the suffering In her joy that (a child) has been born into the world. So it is with you: you are sad now, but I shall see you again, and your Hearts will be full of joy, And that joy no one shall take from you. --John 16:21-22

That is the joy I pray will come to all of us here tonight as we await in this Advent season the one whose birth will be our next hello.

Amen