Chaplains for the world

It’s been hard to know how to share with you all the wonderful, awful, exhausting, inspiring work that is chaplaincy—partly because it is a fearsome and impossible thing to express, partly out of concerns about privacy. This summer I served as a hospital chaplain and am still wrapping my mind and heart around how it changed me, and what it means to listen, love, and care for strangers.

Photo by Andrew Parnell

After my first overnight shift at the hospital this summer—after twenty-four hours, seventeen calls, eight deaths, $21.50 worth of cafeteria food, and four hours of sleep—I handed the clipboard to the Sunday chaplain, exhaled heavily, and hopped on my bike, speeding hastily away from the clinical halls and towards my church. I knew I needed hymns, prayer and the Communion meal. And then, most definitely, a long nap.

What I did not expect was that they were coming with me, as I pedaled up and down the hills. The one who lost her husband, and the one who’d lost her fiance before the marriage license came in. The one who wanted to tearfully tell her sister’s story, and one who just wanted to know the best donut place in town because it was one am and tomorrow would be even more exhausting than today. Young and old, religious and nonreligious, emotional and stoic, prepared and unprepared, planning to cremate and planning to bury.

They were coming with me. I imagined them now, waking up alone with dogs in an empty house, or spending an anniversary making funeral arrangements, or stopping at Monuts before making the long drive home. I prayed for them, hurt for them, longed to be with them. In moments, they are with me still.

*

The job of a chaplain is rather amorphous and vague. “Spiritual care” can mean a lot of things: compassionate listening, empathy, talking through tough decisions, validation of feelings, prayer or Scripture or rituals, a non-medical advocate, a hand to hold at end of life. When we introduced ourselves as chaplains, some people immediately asked for prayer. Some people cleaned up their language; others told us all their quibbles with God. Some clammed up completely and asked us to leave; others asked us to pull up a chair so they could start at the beginning.

It turned out that first overnight shift was one of my most intense days of the summer. After that, there were a lot fewer deaths. More often, at least on the cardiology floor, there were prayers with old ladies and smiles with old men. There were conversations about new treatment regimens. There were teary confessions of loneliness. There were cheery follow-ups after surgery.

And there was lots that was surprising. That people allowed a stranger into their rooms to listen to their life stories. That people wanted to talk twice as much about their gratitude as about their worries. That today I could feel I was becoming such a great chaplain, just in time to be completely stumped by a situation tomorrow. That the ducks in Duke gardens could bring me such comfort on the days when I needed a lunchtime walk to help me breathe again.

But most of all what surprised me was how many people’s concerns were completely unrelated to their hospital stay. A sick dog. A loss from ten years ago that still stings. A separation. A history of abuse. A distant child. A regret. A complicated and unresolved religious journey.

These people were carrying with them the burdens and bruises that come from living in the world, the kind of burdens and bruises we all carry, the kind that make us human, and make us need each other. And from some I got the sense that this surprise visit from the chaplain was one of the rarer moments in their lives, one of the moments they felt cared about, able to talk about all that was weighing them down.

And maybe it was just the vulnerability of being in the hospital that got them to the place of sharing, and maybe most of the time the tears are forced back down. But they have been carrying these burdens through all their house renovations and business deals, their lonely or sleepless nights at home and their Western movie marathons.

*

The morning after that first overnight shift, as I tried to bike away from it all, I needed a chaplain. Though I was not a hospital patient, though I was not sick, I needed someone to care for my spirit, to listen, to affirm, to care. I’m lucky that I had nine other chaplains as colleagues to care for me over the summer, to care for me still when I pass them in the hallways between classes. I have been carrying the pain of so many beautiful people, and carrying so much hope for them and for me.

But then, aren’t we all? In the grocery stores and on the highways and in class or precept or at work. And though it’s easier for all of us to pretend we have it all together when we’re not lying vulnerable and stripped of agency in a hospital bed, we never really do.

I’m intrigued by this idea that has been with me since the end of my time as a chaplain--the idea that there is a deep need for chaplains in the world, chaplains on every street and in every building. I don’t know what that means. I’m not generally in the practice of putting a hand on the shoulder of the person at the next table in the coffee shop and saying, “Hey, I noticed you’re staring into space, is everything okay?” Some people can do that; I don’t think I can. But I do think I, and all of us, can pay a little more attention, speak a little more gently, and maybe even, when the spirit prods, offer a kind hello. I do think we can imagine that the grocery clerk who’s bagging slowly might have something on her mind, and give her a smile. I do think we can invite the classmate who keeps to himself to sit at our table.

Several years back, stressed and overworked, I had a co-worker whom I saw primarily as a means to sharing my workload, as a means to accomplishing the task at hand. I would become frustrated with him when the task was not accomplished, or when I felt overwhelmed. One night, I had a melodramatic and wildly untrue dream--that he had experienced the tragic death of his soul mate and true love. From that day on I never saw him the same way again. From that day on, I felt the same aching empathy for him that characterized the mood of the dream. In a strange way I suddenly learned to love him.

I am sitting in the library now, rolling my eyes at the always-exasperated woman who seems to have such a sense of entitlement about using the computers here, even though she is a guest of the university, and I am the one paying for these services with my tuition dollars. But who is she, and why does she come here so often, and what is she carrying that makes her so easily frustrated? Could you or I offer her some kindness and compassion? There is always so much more to each of us, beneath the surface.

On our first day as chaplains, we were shown this lovely video. Watch it, and then imagine the stories of all the people around you, and then be kind. You may be needed to be a chaplain in the world.

A grain of wheat

My last couple blog entries, I noticed as I pondered a title for today’s post, have been about mourning, grieving. Apparently, in addition to being a summer of sunny walks and delightfully simple bike commuting and silent retreats and deeply intentional ministry, this is also a summer of grieving, if I will let it be. Based on my experience of God, I can only suspect this means that new life is just around the corner.

Photo by Capture Queen

It's been a year since we lived in Cherokee, but John and I visited a couple weeks ago. It was a perfect sunny day in late spring. We drove past blue ridges and walked small-town streets. While he worked, I went to see elk in the park and ran on my favorite trail by a rolling brook.

Over a pensive cup of hot chocolate, I thought: this is quite possibly the most beautiful place I have ever lived, maybe even will ever live. I thought: And I never loved it.

Perhaps this is why a guard goes up when I hear the word Cherokee. To say Cherokee conjures up disappointment, not with the town and the lovely people there, not even with John for having brought me to a place where it was hard to find outlet for my gifts, not even with God for the loneliness I experienced there. To say Cherokee conjures up disappointment with myself for being unable to live into the gifts and beauty that were before me.

So I missed out. And in an attempt to rebuild and find new community in Durham and move into bright futures of real careers and family and community, in wanting to leave the past behind, I have not let myself mourn for what might have been, for the beauty that eluded me.

*

This summer in Washington DC feels like a homecoming. Biking along the familiar streets—having instant familiarity with the neighborhoods and networks of half the people I meet because of the smallness of this city—running into old friends on the street or at the park—all of these things have made my first two weeks here rich and lovely.

All of these things remind me, too, of what I lost when we moved away from here.

Even if we moved back, the area around the metro has been built up and gentrified, the grocery store gutted and redone, the church that was my primary community disbanded, friends have moved away. Maybe most importantly, I am no longer a single twenty-something with other twenty-something friends who spend hours eating and laughing and sharing on Friday nights.

Marriage, it turns out, is a kind of loss. You have to release one thing to cling to another.

*

For a school assignment, I ask my internship supervisor for a verse from Scripture that captures the spirit of the Church of the Saviour. She thinks for a moment, then shares a saying of Jesus.

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. (John 12:24)

The Church of the Saviour movement, she explains, believes that wholeness—both inner wholeness and the growth of a healthy community—is only possible through the steady work of dying to our egos, letting ourselves break open for others. 

Am I ready for this? Am I ready to walk through the grieving process towards wholeness?

In church Sunday, a man spoke about the void he had felt for the past two years, since his father died of cancer. There was a dullness, an emptiness, like a banner over his every step, and he was constantly aware of his desire for it to go away, to let him get back to clarity in his work and family life. And then in a flash of intuition he realized that God was in that nothingness. The very feeling he wanted to purge was the place where God and joy and love could meet him.

I’m a nodder, and as he told this story, I nearly bobbled my head right off of my shoulders. I felt I knew exactly what he was talking about.

When my grandma died, there was a dullness to life for about a year, that same strip of void traveling along above me wherever I went. In some ways I miss it, because in that aching hole she was always with me. I also knew without a doubt that God was in that place, in that death, in that grief, slowly cultivating something that would spring forth anew.

What I had not thought until Sunday was to relate that experience to the past few years that have felt so spiritually vapid. What if God’s presence is in the very dullness I’ve tried to avoid? What if I have to lean into that disappointment for a moment to meet God in the place God has been presenting Godself to me? What if I need to accept gravity, become dead weight for a fraction of a moment, and fall to the ground like a grain of wheat pregnant with fruit and beauty?

What I'd give for a cup of coffee

Photo by Chichacha

I visit Grandma in the nursing home where she is rehabbing from pneumonia. It is a lovely, mild summer day, and I wheel her out into the garden. We sit on a bench and talk. She asks about my job situation, and I launch into it all. I am renewing my contract to teach adult literacy and I enjoy it and it is stressful and not forever and it is good experience and helps my resume and I am learning and I love working with low-income and marginalized people and I am somehow not using all my gifts and I want to work in an area more basic and physical and human.

“You think very deeply about your career,” she says when I finally stop to take a breath. “I’ve never been so deep and thoughtful as you.” I start to protest but she keeps going. “I am sure you will be wonderful at whatever you do.”

*

We are standing around her bed in the ICU. We have just made the decision to pull the feeding tube and the oxygen, because we have all, in the last week, slowly come to terms with the fact that this stroke was fatal, that even if she were to wake up she would not be herself, that this is not another cancer she is going to fight off or another bout with pneumonia that she will come through. This is the time to say goodbye.

The doctors say after they pull the oxygen, it will be a matter of hours. We gather and call in her pastor, and we begin to pray and sing hymns. Our family is founded on music, so in four-part harmony, we sing her favorite songs from the Presbyterian hymnal. The words to the hymns have never meant so much. This is grief, this is letting go, this is worship. The pastor brings our singing to a close with a liturgy for the dying. We unclasp our hands, touch our faces to her still-warm body, and exhale, surrendering to the blips on the monitor.

At one a.m. we are still sitting there, blinking to stay awake, alternating laughs and tears, waiting for her to go. We are her children, all, and this grief has brought us together, and we have never been so certain of our calling as this moment, in which are called to be with her, to be a family, to fill this room with love.

On Friday afternoon when it is finally over, I go home and write three poems for her and then I cry and fall asleep.

*

I write a thank you note to her pastor, enclosing the generous donation of my friends. I say, You will probably never know how meaningful your presence was, how life-changing those days were for me, learning to lean into the loss and celebrate the life and release her into resurrection. I think, what meaningful work it is to be a pastor, to be with people in those crucial moments, to offer a prayer and a liturgy in which they can pour out their goodbye in the presence of God. I think, I would love a job where I could be with people in that basic, human way.

*

Now, four years have passed, and I have enrolled in seminary, and this summer as a pastoral intern in the country, I visit lovely old ladies in homes and nursing homes and hospitals. There is one ninety-something firecracker who is organizing a Fourth-of-July parade; she shows me the archives of photos for the last eight parades. There is another ninety-something who is thoughtful and kind and wants to hear about my life even though her hearing impairment prevents understanding most of it.

There is a little bit of Grandma in both of these women, and I think of her often this summer.

*

I am waiting in an airport when the desire hits me strong—for just a cup of coffee and a couple hours to catch up.

I would tell her about my new path, seminary, the road to becoming a pastor or chaplain or minister of some sort. She would ask me how I came to this path, and whether I mind public speaking. The idea of me as a minister would make her happy, I think, and over it she would speak a word of encouragement and acceptance and love. 

Life her own way

The first tears I shed after John proposed to me came about an hour later, as we started to dream of our wedding day, at the thought that Grandma wouldn’t be there. I had so wanted her to be there for that shining moment, to hold my hand for a photo, to give me a kiss as I waited to walk down the aisle, to make a wisecrack about our awkward first dance, to enjoy the company.

Better than her being there, though, were all the jokes and glances and secrets and dessert we shared over the years.

Better still was the impact of her life on mine, and that in the end we both knew how very much we loved each other.

*

Grandma’s life story is one of quietly defying conventions, and succeeding at almost everything by her wit and grace. She grew up in the Midwest during the twenties and the Great Depression. She was a precocious child and her mother was ready to get her out of the house, so she was sent to school a year early. She skipped another grade later and graduated from high school before her sixteenth birthday.

Apparently her only options in college (as a woman) were to study Home Economics or Sciences. Like my mother and me, she was really more of an arts-and-humanities kind of gal, but there was no way she was going to college for Home Ec, so bacteriology it was.

I will say that if she had majored in Home Ec, she would have completely dominated it, as she had the magic touch in home décor and in the kitchen. Her homemade spaghetti sauce was our Christmas Eve staple, and her Easter dinners of roast beef and twice-baked potatoes and jello were always flavorful and served in china and crystal. When I was a child, I admit that an overnight at Grandma’s excited me as much for the twenty-one types of cereal I would get to pick from as for the perfectly-timed dinners, but gradually I began to see the virtues of her more refined recipes. Now, I wish I had spent more time as an apprentice in her kitchen.

After college, Grandma moved to Washington and worked at NIH for several years before starting a family.  She met my grandpa through his sister, who was a friend in the local alumni sorority group, but the story goes that she continued dating other men until the day he asked her to marry him. When he asked, she said yes, and then added, “But I’m still planning to go on this date I have planned for Saturday.”

They must have worked through that, because they were happily and lovingly married for 49 years until he died in 1997.

Later on, when her kids were grown, she got a real estate license and worked thirty years as an agent, helping each person she worked with find a good home, insisting that all people, regardless of race or background, should be able to buy a home in a decent neighborhood, treating all her clients with thoughtfulness and care. She never retired. She sold her last house at age 86, two years before she died.

*

These are the outlines of her life, the facts that make it in an overview, a humorous summary. But there is so much more nuance inside the lines. Some of the details, the depths, the fullness of her person, I discovered in her dying, and in her death.

Grandma carried her sharp wit, intelligence and competence with her even into her final weeks, when her body was beginning to go, racked with pneumonia and too weak to walk without assistance. Even then, when she wasn’t loopy on meds or low on oxygen from the pneumonia, her mind was with us 100%, and for that I will be forever grateful.

For ten months, she was in and out of hospitals and rehab and then home with my mom or my uncle until she fell or caught pneumonia again. I knew it was a gift when I went to visit her every week, when I lay next to her in a hospital bed watching Jeopardy or took her outside for a walk, when she asked me to share my latest thoughts on career and life plans and then listened intently and thoughtfully as I spit out confused thoughts on jobs and relationships. I knew it was a gift that last Saturday we spent in the bright living room at my mother’s house, plunking out favorites from the Presbyterian hymnal and flipping through a book of Chopin preludes.

Grandma was a devout Presbyterian, one of the founding members of her church. After she died, my mother found a document she had written for church, describing her faith. In lovely prose, she wrote of her almost constant conversation with God throughout every day, and of the peace her faith had given her when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in her fifties.

The perpetual spiritual awareness was a part of her life she hadn’t talked about much. And yet I had always known by the way she lived.

We gathered for her funeral and the sympathy cards poured in, and one cousin wrote, The summer I spent at Aunt Ariel’s house is the summer I learned about acceptance. Others remembered her frequently opening her home for dinner parties or bridge games. My mom recalled her love of hosting foreign exchange students.

I thought of the way she was always reaching out to people—her interest in the life story of her Latina cleaning lady or the new Ethiopian woman at church; her insistence that we walk around the nursing home with the apple pie I had just brought, giving pieces to her new friends; her mission to get me to play the piano in the nursing home dining room—though she could barely hear by then—because she knew it would please old Mr. Baer, who never smiled.

I know that she made me feel adored, with her valentines and attendance at all my concerts and chats over coffee. She didn’t always have to say it—like her faith it was bubbling up under the surface in the way she looked at me and pried about my love interests and begrudged me to spoon feed her at the end when she wasn’t eating. I always knew that I was one of her most special people.

And she will always be one of mine.

This post is a part of my Women’s History Month project, “Honoring Women’s Stories.” You can read more about the project and see other women’s stories here.

Waiting for the light

It is December 14 and for the second time in three weeks, I am trying to make the nine-hour drive home for the holidays. For the second time in three weeks, there is bad weather. Last time I decided to drive overnight to beat the snow, and I was miserably tired, taking naps in truck stops and force-feeding myself eggs at 4 am with one cheek resting on the table at Cracker Barrel. All night, I was waiting desperately for the morning, for rejuvenation from the sun. But I swore I’d never drive overnight again, and so during this week’s “wintry mix” I drive by day, taking the eastern route to avoid the mountains and the snow.

I turn on the radio. On NPR, everything is about Sandy Hook, because it is the anniversary of the Newtown shooting. My eyes are brimming with tears as I hear one story of little Ana who was so full of life until her life was taken, as I hear of how her mother has been trying to transcend the tragedy and build a world of more compassion. I think of the slideshow of all those children, how unjust that their beauty should be cut short. I think how even worse is that there are many youth killed every week in our cities, and we haven’t properly grieved them. The news switches to Syria, and I start thinking about the hundreds of Syrian children who have died in the civil war, for whom we have no slide shows to look at. Most of the time I put all of this out of my mind, but today I don’t avoid it.

Vigil from VA Tech, 2007.  Photo by Ben Townsend

It feels dark, this time of year, this time in the world. It feels like there is the possibility of something more, but that we are always bogged down and still waiting for what it could be. What we could be.

The season of Advent, this time of waiting for the light of Christ, has always been one of my favorite times of the year. I need this time of year—I think because it resembles how life is. We are stuck in the brokenness of it all, but we are longing and trusting and knowing that hope is coming. Even when days are short and the air is cold. Even when the radio is heavy with the deaths of children in Connecticut and New Orleans and Syria.

I read these words of Johann Christoph Arnold in an Advent devotional: The only way to truly overcome our fear of death is to live life in such a way that its meaning cannot be taken away by death.

As we wait, the real challenge is to wait well, to wait with meaning, with a hope deeper than cookies and carols. It is, of course, much easier to slog through the days. My brother, who has this waiting thing down better than me, calls and asks if I want to help him with a “generosity project” for church. I say yes. We spend a couple hours on December 16 biking around downtown Baltimore, bringing salami sandwiches and fritos and hot coffee to guys standing on street corners. It is a small thing. They need a lot more than a cup of hot coffee. But although I wouldn’t have done it on my own, it feels like the right thing to do in Advent, while we are waiting for the light, waiting for healing and justice to come in a bigger way.

If only I could learn to do one small thing like this each day. I think of a three people who died this year, three people who lived in such a way that death could not extinguish their legacy—Nelson Mandela, and my Grandfather, and Gordon Cosby. Their lives were marked mostly small things, the daily resolution to forgive, to be thankful, to pray, to be open to love. They did not give an answer to injustice or fear or death. But they waited and watched productively, hopefully. And by their love they drew others along with them into the hope of something better.

Which is why Advent is a communal experience. We don’t wait alone. So sometimes—like on December 14 when I finally arrive in Maryland just before dark—we find ourselves among friends and warmth and laughter, and we are deeply thankful. And then for a moment, we catch a glimpse of the love and light that is what we were made for, the love and light that is coming our way again this season, through Christ the babe.

Cigarettes and chocolate chips

Three of my four grandparents died in the fall. This year, my first without any of them present, it seems an appropriate time to remember each of them and their gifts to my life. My piece about Papa was posted earlier this week. Today, I remember my Grandmother.

Photo credit

My memories of Grandmother are few. She was generous and fashionable and bought me my favorite dresses. Her Jacksonville drawl I did not much understand. When she visited us in Maryland, she would take frequent smoke breaks; when we visited her, she would watch TV in her den, cigarettes in hand. I came home from fourth grade one afternoon to find that my father was on his way to North Carolina because she had been taken by an acute form of leukemia and was not expected to live out the month. I did not cry then, nor when she died, nor at the funeral. We scattered her ashes in the garden at her church. The photos from that day are gray with strained faces, for her death was early and sudden.

I have learned, in the years since Grandmother died, to celebrate the connections I have to her. She left me some small things: my thick, curly hair and a pearl necklace and the small diamonds that now sit in my engagement ring.

Also, a painting. Grandmother was an artist and recently (after Grandfather died), I got to choose one of her paintings to hang in my apartment. I picked a beautiful oil still-life of cut flowers. The painting is bright with yellow and green and hope and light. Her life was not much these colors. Grandmother battled depression most of her life. Though I have never been clinically depressed, when I hear these stories I feel connected to her. I am certainly more like her than I am like my Grandfather, with his winning charm and his calm, loving approach to every situation. I have been broken and angry and sometimes wondered if I could dig myself out from darkness and apathy.

*

I was thirteen and summer whiled away. Camp and swim team were over and I was home in my room, writing in my journal. And in the August humidity I came upon the meaninglessness of life: how alone we are in our thoughts and desires, how futile the day-to-day can be. I wrote through it, hoping it would go away when school started, when I saw my friends again. But hugs were scarce and the Backstreet Boys could not give the right words to define my thoughts. There was a hurricane and I was at home in the gloomy dark in my room and the rain and the thunder and the tasks of life were gray and heavy on me. Homework, check, piano, check, soccer, cancelled. And no one to explain it to, and no way to explain it.

I was twenty and my head was swirling with images of small huts and banana trees and beautiful brown-skinned children; my head was swirling with the philosophy and science and scholarship that seemed to tear down my faith; my heart swirling with first love and first heartbreak and jealousy and anger and fear of the future. I collapsed into it, and for a year I was lost and alone and tearful, staying in on the weekends and skipping meals and sitting idly in front of the computer.

I was twenty-six and married and in a new place and I felt like I had left everything behind and I was alone on a couch with a subscription to Netflix and bags and bags of chocolate chips.

*

I don’t know the details about Grandmother’s depression, when it began, how bad it got, if it was precipitated by specific experiences. And I don't really compare myself to her. I have been graced to escape the brunt of darkness—for me there has always been sun and laughter. My strand of melancholy has probably just been about average. It gives me a little empathy, and a little extra passion to play deep melodies on the piano and write things raw when I can. 

But since I was nine when she died, that connection is what I have, along with the ring on my finger that reminds me of how Grandfather never stopped loving her, never lost respect for her, even with all she went through, even though he couldn’t understand it.

For Papa

Three of my four grandparents died in the fall. This year, my first without any of them present, it seems an appropriate time to remember each of them and their gifts to my life. Today’s post is one I wrote about three years ago, for Howard Biggs.

I’m twenty-four now and I’ve never learned to play Clair de Lune properly. I’ve mostly dropped piano, but I played through Debussy’s lullaby today thinking of you. There in your living room, “resting your eyes” as I played Bach and Mozart, were you listening? I was so young, I never knew what was beneath those eyes. At the end you’d always ask “Have you learned Clair de Lune?”
 

At eighty you were still strong enough to mow the church lawn; at eighty-five you kept the smile on your warm face, jovial and generous as Santa Claus. After all, it was your handwriting every year: Dear Katie and Michael, Thank you for the milk and cookies. Ho ho ho. You sat in your chair holding your “King of the Remote” pillow and patted us our heads when we performed our original plays for you. Michael was your little buddy; I, your soccer star.

I didn’t miss you so much, being too young to know you. I read from Matthew at your memorial service and watched them place your ashes in a box in the sanctuary wall, to remain in God’s house. Eleven years old, I joined in extolling with the multitudes your faithfulness to God and community. Then Michael and I fashioned Halloween costumes from your closet (“old man” and “old woman”) and went trick-or-treating in your neighborhood.

The next summer at camp, my friend Kim’s grandma died, and everyone started crying about their own losses. I lay in my bed for an hour at rest period, working myself into tears over you because I wanted to be part of the crowd, to be comforted. After rest period one girl came and asked me what was wrong. I’m sorry I used you.

Grandma tells me stories over sandwiches at Panera now, stories of college during World War II or the racial sentiments in 1920s small-town Nebraska. I’d like to eat a sandwich with you, to learn what was beneath your accepting smile. I’d like to know more about the faith at the source of the prayer you always spoke before Grandma’s roast beef dinner--“Bless these gifts to us and us to Thy service, and may we ever be mindful of the blessings Thou has bestowed upon us.” Most of all, I’d like to play for you a little Debussy.

Resurrection day

Gordon Cosby, who was minister of a church  in Washington DC called Church of the Savior, died this spring, just before Easter. A few days ago, I started watching a DVD of Gordon's memorial service. One story, told by Killian Noe, stuck with me: When Gordon was an army chaplain in World War II, he saw many die. One day he found himself staring down at the dead body of his best friend, Tom. Gordon recounted, "At first I was overcome with despair and the senseless waste of my friend's life. Suddenly something exhilarating broke into that darkness and the atmosphere around us seemed charged with life. I felt excitement and sensed limitlessness. I knew I had touched that eternal realm of divine love into which my friend had fully entered, and in that moment I envied him."

The first time I heard a Gordon Cosby sermon, his voice reminded me a little of my grandfather's. Like Gordon, Grandfather grew up in the south. Grandfather's faith, too, was shaped by the war. Grandfather never seemed to worry or carry anxiety, but in my experience lived in a constant state of gratitude, joy, and trust. He was the most generous person I've ever met. He reveled in the good things in life, singing and dancing and playing tennis and walking until near the end. He had no fear of death, no desire to prolong his life past when it was time to go.

After a few months of sickness and a general slowing down, last week it became clear to us that Grandfather was nearing his end. He passed in and out of consciousness and after Tuesday evening, he could not eat. His heart and kidneys were failing and he was in some pain.

This morning I woke up at 9:30am. I felt that I needed to pray for Grandfather to go and be with God. Around 10 am I sat down and prayed for several minutes. Then I went on to church with John. I was giving the children's sermon, based on "rejoicing in the Lord." "Even when sad things happen to us," I told the kids, "there are always good things from God, reasons to rejoice." We practiced naming good gifts. I almost said, "for example, my grandfather is very sick right now, and it is sad. but I am so joyful and thankful for his life, and that he will soon get to be with God." I decided against it, thinking maybe it was too heavy for a 3-minute children's moment. When I returned to my seat, I checked my phone. I had one voice mail. I was pretty sure I knew what it was. I left the service to listen to the message, which was from my dad. Grandfather had died just before 11:00am. I returned to the service feeling a fullness--it was fitting that he should go right at the time of day he had always gone to worship the Lord on Sundays.

The church service went on and at the end, we shared communion together. Honestly, communion is this weird thing that I've never really understood, where Christians eat bread and drink wine and somehow mystically share in the body and blood of Jesus, which he gave up for us to have life. It is also a symbol of unity, because as we eat and drink we are united in the body of Christ with all believers past and present and future. Today as I took my bread and wine I knew I was sharing in the love of God with Grandfather, Grandma, and so many others who have gone before. We were all celebrating together, in that realm of divine love. It moved me to tears, and people came to comfort me. But they were tears of joy.

A change in perspective

Sometimes it is a gift. Sometimes it is a discipline, of counting items for gratitude, or praying to see the good. Sometimes it comes from the vulnerability of others, helping us open a chord inside ourselves.

Three years ago, I taught adult literacy through Americorps. I complained the whole year about the commute, the frustrating nonprofit bureaucracy, the lack of support, the lack of income, the "unorganized" (or just non type-A!) people I worked with. In May, I had a dream, about my co-workers going through tough times. I really had to be there with them. There was a strange intimacy and compassion to the dream. It had no basis in reality, but I woke up feeling the urgency of loving people. You never know what they might be going through. I went to work and it felt so meaningful--every interaction with a student or co-worker, every opportunity to show people they matter. We had an end-of-the-year ceremony for the students, and they were so proud of their accomplishments. Suddenly I had a 180 degree shift. I loved my job. I decided to stay another year. And sure, over the next year there were moments I felt stressed, but the love for my students and staff never dissipated.

We can wake up one day and see the same thing in a totally different light. Lately, it is my task to search for the different light. Practice seeing it, and one day, suddenly, wake up full of joy and wonder and anticipation of the great love that suffuses the world.

It is in the small things: I was angry I had to pay more money than I had anticipated, to run in a weekend long relay race. I had to give up sleep, spend the whole weekend with people I didn't know too well.
But as it unfolded: On the first day the pouring rain washed out any inhibitions or complaints and we saw how far we could push ourselves, and on the second day the sun came out and the early spring red buds sparkled and after 3 miles the uphill gave way to the most beautiful mountain vista I could imagine and I said aloud to myself, "That was worth it!"

It is in the big things: I had to move away from my family and community and job, put my dreams on hold for two years, because of my husband's job and career.
My neighbor put it this way for me a few days ago: I can enjoy my marriage in the mountains and rivers and trees with little stress or work. I will write and listen and grow a garden and learn what's inside me.

And in the life-and-death things: Grandfather is leaving us; my last grandparent is no longer alive, a frightening reminder of decay and mortality. Only one generation now separates me from death. And we will miss him.
Or the way it really is, the way that spirit and love and community have confirmed for me this weekend: he lives, he has crossed to a realm of pure love and joy, a realm he sought his entire life and longed to be in. And we will be united again.

There is to everything a light and a dark side. And both are real. But I am convinced the light side, if we can see it, is the more real.