Father's Day

So, from time to time people send me their reflections about a service. Something that moved them or annoyed them or struck them in some way...or didn't. I am (almost) always grateful that BSM has never been a place where you stand at the exit and people line up following the conclusion of the service and say things like, "Nice Sermon...Pastor." People around here either say nothing or say something touching/painful/powerful like this. So I thought you should get a chance to see it too. (In case you are wondering I asked if I could post and she said 'yes.')

Sunday, June 15, 2008
precioustoday is father’s day.
I forgot it was father’s day until someone said something about it this morning at the church service held at the psychiatric hospital (where I’m working this summer).
Most of you know my Dad died when I was ten, from a heart attack.
So father’s day is rarely on my radar screen, and if it is, I don’t really like to acknowledge it. But one thing I appreciate about Broad Street is that they practice ‘non-avoidance’ regularly—they allow feelings and reactions that normally would be quieted by other churches to be heard and acknowledged as legitimate. So, Broad Street helped me be healthy today by acknowledging that this might be a great day for some people and it might be a shitty day for other people. I expected (and hoped) it would be left at that.
But no.
We’re also working through the beatitudes, and today we talked about a chunk of them, including ‘blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, and those who mourn’.
Our pastor genuinely expressed a frustration and puzzlement that many people feel when they try to find any kind of meaning in loss, any real meaning that goes beyond the trite saccharine sayings. He was able to hesitantly offer two possibilities: first, that for some reason God seems to show up in the midst of loss. That people have the capability to be God incarnate to those in pain—that we have the possibility of literally becoming peace or grace or comfort when we reach out to another who is hurting. The second, offered almost apologetically, again working under the premise that ‘blessed are those who mourn’ is perhaps one of the most mysterious concepts there are, was that people who have lost important people or things or dreams have a clearer understanding of what really matters. Petty arguments become less frequent. Stress over being late diminishes. Time and energy spent is re-prioritized.
And this all sounds perfectly rational and logical. And therefore, objective and abstract, not grounded in flesh-and-blood reality.
One of the significant tasks of preaching and sermon-writing is to bring the abstract into the concrete, to kind of recreate the grand Incarnation (Divinity coming into Humanity, God becoming Human in Jesus) with the words of the Bible and life experience. Bringing the abstract and thousand-year-old Word into contact with the messy concrete of our present experience.
Our pastor did this, he told a story, and if you know me, stories are what get me, every time. The essence of the Gospel is storytelling. The very essence.
What’s funny (or uncanny?) is that he referenced a story he told in a sermon in the fall—a story that at time was the final playing card that brought the house of cards crashing down, a story that made me cry, no, really cry, in the middle of the service, in the middle of a row of chairs and I couldn’t leave. And that was the point of the sermon—that pain must be dealt with and brought into the light in community. But this time the story had an even more sad chapter, the woman who had lost her husband, the woman who had experienced this great loss and loved again and stood up and said, ‘I choose you’, this woman was now dying from cancer.

And even now, if you’re still reading, you could say ‘oh how sad, cancer sucks’. It’s still abstract, to you. And I don’t know if writing about it makes it concrete at all, so maybe this entry is worthless. But something that our pastor got at is something I am wrestling so hard to write. It still makes me emotional, even now, and I wish I was with each and every one of you who reads this so I could ground what I’m about to write— in touch, in emphasis, in gestures. But I can’t do that—so do me a favor, and imagine me at my most passionate: where words have disintegrated into peals of laughter or shrieks of joy or sobs of grief. Imagine me, with a touch of anger in my voice, but it’s colored with a shade of desperate love, too. Imagine me.

Do you not get it? Really? That person you love—that son or wife or sister or husband or lover or friend—that soul-in-flesh could be gone, in less time than it takes to breathe in or out. No, that’s still too abstract for you, isn’t it? (It is for me, anyway.). That person, that man with all of his mannerisms and flaws and quirks, all the stuff that gets on your nerves but is somehow endearing too—all of that could just cease existing, just like that. poof. no more man. just memories, which are flawed and often unreliable. That person, that dear friend who has held you as your ribs shook with sobs, whose laughter has rung out in harmony with yours, that person, who is now holding your hand, or hugging you tight, could, in a heartbeat, be no longer holding your hand. no more love-through-touch. again, just flawed memories. That person, that woman who carried you in her own body, who fed you through her own breasts, who tucked you in, who held you in your grief, she could just one day stop living. just stop.

This still isn’t working. It’s still too abstract.
Here’s one last shot:
When someone you love, someone who forms the foundation of your own daily existence, simply stops breathing in the middle of the night, when this happens.
Everything becomes precious.

Every time laughter rings out from another's lips alongside your own, it is precious.
Every time a loved one touches you—the smallest or most accidental of caresses—each of these speaks volumes and volumes of love to your heart (let alone an intentional touch). each touch is precious.
Every time another’s love and passion for life is written on his or her forehead, it is precious to be a witness to such a thing.
Every time you cry or laugh or sigh or sob or exult, and someone you love witnesses this, and you are aware of their witness, you are aware that someone cares about the small-yet-immense events in your life—this awareness is precious.

It’s as if in some seriously fucked up way, if you’ve experienced deep loss, you get to thinking that that’s all life is ever going to give you—loss upon loss. And often this does happen, or seems to happen—every time you turn around, someone leaves or dies or turns out to be an asshole or loves someone else more. So you get used to loss, it becomes part of your vocabulary, and you can deal with it alright.
But when life does *not* wrench every echo of love from you—when you hear a friend’s laughter; when your own skin is touched; when you witness joy; when your heart is witnessed to; when these things happen—you are shocked into gratefulness, you are moved, deep down deeper than deep, by what you’ve been given, a flash, a glance, of love. Because you know there’s no way you could have tried to see these flashes of love—you know because you’ve tried everything to avoid more loss, you’ve worked to insure that no one else leaves you or dies—and even these sad and pathetic (and yet understandable) graspings have not worked, you have still lost, and lost much.
So the essence of love as ‘gift’ becomes utterly and completely real.

[Now, my cynic says: an awfully high price to pay for such a simple life lesson. Something I’m still kind of yelling at You about. ]

Mary Oliver says something to the effect of 'what will you do with your one wild and precious life?' in one of her poems. And perhaps this is betraying my increasingly unorthodox views of heaven. But, truly--what will you do with your one wild and precious loved one? (if there is no 'other side' or 'street of gold' to meet them on after they've died--just 'if'--how would that change the way you love?) and if you are so immensely blessed to have more than one 'loved one', what will you do with them? how will you love them?
I would venture to say that you would love unreservedly, unabashedly, with no concern at all--at all!-- for reciprocity but only an effort to witness to the beauty you see in another. (And the real beauty is that when you are motivated by this and not by reciprocity, you are more able to receive love yourself).




love, with the deep awareness of what is precious and fleeting, i wish for you,
becca