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and After …
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What a Week
What a week … on Monday my beloved ex-wife Cyndi died after a long struggle with a terrible illness … she was peaceful and surrounded by loved ones …
Then on Tuesday, our home and everything we own was taken by wildfire … we (Nancy and I) have our cars, the clothes we’re wearing, our phones, computers, and Shanti the wonder dog … and we are safe at a friend’s home. Elijah is safe as well …
Feels like the last 24 hours have been an experience of Biblical proportions … but again we are safe and deeply grateful to many good friends … so many around us are displaced and in great need … it is truly unbelievable …
Feeling a little anxious about what this day may bring … but in the midst of it all so grateful for my wife, my son, peace in my heart, and the love of so many good friends … more to come I’m sure …
Hide and Seek
Hide and Seek? podcast #13
What if there are simply seasons in our lives when God withdraws for a time to urge us into deeper intimacy?
Grace
May grace guide you, peace surround you, and joy surprise you today. Blessings, Fred
A Requiem for Rudy
Rudy was a devout atheist who regularly attended the First Presbyterian Church. Actually, that’s where we met, sort of. It’s not that Rudy was looking to convert from atheism—he just loved to sing, and being in the Presbyterian choir gave him a chance to share the beauty of his deep bass voice.
The pastor was out of town one Sunday and had asked me to preach for her. The next day Rudy knocked on my office door at the hospital. After a brief introduction I thought he had come because he had been captivated by the brilliance of my sermon. I soon discovered he was on a mission and this interview was a test.
During the sermon I had mentioned I was a hospice chaplain. Rudy had come to check out my views on advance directives and set me straight if I didn’t see things as he did. His wife had died after years of dementia and the toll it had taken on him and his children (both emotionally and financially) caring for her body long after her mind, memories, and anima had vacated was devastating. After retiring from a distinguished career of psychiatry, Rudy now spent his days working to help people plan for their death. He had experienced firsthand the importance of making your preferences known about the kind of medical care you would and would not want to have done if you could no longer communicate for yourself. I passed Rudy’s test.
He became a dear friend and mentor. Rudy was one of those rare individuals who seemed to have shed his ego and passionately enjoyed his living. Well into his nineties, he continued to learn, to read, to sing, to travel, and to enjoy his beloved partner. Rudy was simply alive while always having his dying in view.
The week before he died he called me to his home and asked if I would give the eulogy at his memorial service. After pointing out the incongruity of praising an atheist in a Presbyterian church—I humbly agreed. He chuckled and handed me a file folder containing what he wanted me to say. The folder contained the distilled data of his richly lived life: his resume, his accolades, and his distinguished achievements. All facts. But what was missing from the folder was the delight he exuded when learning new discoveries about how the brain works, the passion in his eyes as he shared his thoughts about living and dying, the joy on his face while singing in a choir. What was missing from the folder was the way he made you feel special when you were with him.
Early on in our relationship Rudy sent me a letter in which he quoted Johannes Brahms from one of the pieces he loved to sing, “The German Requiem.” Words Rudy’s life made very real –
“Lord, make me to know the measure of my days on earth,
to consider my frailty that I must perish.”
Time to Talk about Dying – A Review
F. Grewe, Time to Talk about Dying: How Clergy and Chaplains Can Help Senior Adults Prepare for a Good Death. London and Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2018. Pp. 168. Pb. £18.99. ISBN 978-1-78592-805-5.
In most books, it becomes clear how far its writer knows the geography, the contours and the sense of direction in the field of study which they seek to open up for their reader. When it comes to the geography of death and dying, there are plenty of writers who offer maps for such a journey. The field is saturated with many fine guides. So a text which captures attention, reveals a wealth of grounded practice and has the potential to be used for spiritual and pastoral accompaniment, deserves commendation. This is a generative book, carefully written, well organised and rich in lived pastoral experience among those preparing for death. Its focus – enabling adults to enrich later age by considering what a good death might look like – is carried through in ten chapters. Fred Grewe invites his readers into a process of reflexivity which asks what we might want to leave behind for those who care about us and how we might be remembered after we die. In and through the exercises which have been tested with a wide range of individuals and groups, there is a commitment to affirming and celebrating what is precious and lasting in relationships. This is all done within an acknowledgement of the isolation, uncertainty, meaninglessness and pain of change, grief and loss. The chapters bear significant testimony to the author’s experience. The use of personal experience is appropriate and sensitive. There is a practical wisdom here which can be trusted as it is applied with honesty and insight. While acknowledging the cultural differences between the UK and the USA, much of the material in this book travels well. I can see it being put to good use in the training of pastors and ministers. It could form the basis of an innovative parish or community course in order to provide a safe framework within which we befriend the older stranger within us, living with boundedness and mortality. As the relationship between religion and its wider culture weakens in terms of both credibility and relevance, communities of faith would do well to explore where their strengths lie. What makes the life of those who believe distinctive, and how might theology be put to work for human flourishing? Those who teach theology would do well to explore how practical theology as opened up and explored in this book might be a force for the nurture of imagination in all our relationships but especially with our mortality. Enabling individuals and groups to create time to talk about dying could in and of itself be renewing for our understanding of religion and its practical application for our journey towards wholeness.
Sarum College, Salisbury, and University of Winchester James Woodward