Meditations 4 Misfits

As I sat weeping next to Sam’s just deceased body, what I missed most was the playful glint behind those beautiful blue Irish eyes. They truly were the window to his kind and gentle soul.

He had been a strapping young lad from Wisconsin camping in the Grand Tetons when Mary and her family arrived for their vacation. Sam and Mary hit it off straight away and, in fact, Sam followed Mary’s family back to Utah. He simply showed up on her doorstep and never left. That was 76 years ago, and part of the story Alzheimer’s had erased from Sam’s memory bank.

Also gone was a lifetime of working for the forestry service, raising two loving sons, untold hours fishing, and traveling the country with Mary in their little camper. Bedbound for the last several years of his life, as his body ever-so-slowly diminished so did a lifetime of memories and even an awareness of who he was.

What did not diminish, however, was that playful kindness in those deep blue eyes. Always present to the moment, Sam loved to laugh and tease. After months of visits and simple conversations Sam could vaguely remember my face but not who I was or why I was there. Most of the time I simply told Sam his own life story. It all started naturally enough. On one of my first visits, those blue eyes looked like a deer’s caught by headlights as Sam told me he couldn’t remember who he was or why he was still here. So, I just started to remind him. As I told him his own life story, those blue eyes began to water and relax. When I told him he was a good man and had lived a good life he smiled. That mischievous Irish grin captured my heart.

Over the months Sam taught me so much about living in the present moment. That’s all we really have anyway. With him, the present was all there was. He taught me how lost we can get when we forget who we are, when we forget our story—and how important it is to have good friends and loved ones to remind us. He also taught me about emotional investing. Because of the love he had deposited into others throughout his 90-plus years of living, he earned great dividends and was able to benefit from those investments when they were needed. His memory bank may have been depleted, but his emotional and relational accounts continued to thrive.

The night before he died, Mary and their daughter-in-law Joyce were up caring for him and got no sleep. The next afternoon, Mary had just laid down to get some rest in the next room. She told me she really didn’t sleep—she called it being in a “twilight zone”—when she saw a golden luminous ball suddenly appear on the door of the bedroom. She was thinking, “Is that Sam’s spirit?” when Lynn came in to tell her that Sam had just passed away.

Was that luminous golden ball that manifested on Mary’s bedroom door Sam’s spirit as she believes? Was it the divine spark that animated the playful glint behind his beautiful blue eyes? I don’t know. But what I do know is that my own life has been incredibly enriched by simply spending hours with a good man, basking in the glow of his love with and for Mary, and having the distinct privilege of re-telling this kind man with the beautiful blue eyes the story he actually lived.

Our God Concepts greatly influence how we live our lives and relate to others. In this reflection on Jeremiah Chapter 1, Fred asks us to consider what we “see” when we think of God.  

Sitting next to Jake’s bed as he lay dying, watching his fitful sleep, I noticed the framed sign on the wall near his bed in the adult foster home. It read: “When I was a kid, I prayed every night for a bicycle, but then I found out this isn’t the way God works. So then I stole one and asked Him for forgiveness.”

A hard life of drugs, alcohol, and rock-n-roll had taken its toll on Jake’s forty-something-year-old body. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, living fast and dying young doesn’t always leave a good-looking corpse. Nearly all of Jake’s teeth had rotted out, save the bicuspid on his upper right side. His abdomen was greatly distended (bloated) from terminal liver disease. And Jake was painfully afraid of death.

Jake had some sort of a Baptist background and had loved to play the drums. Years before, as a result of his addictions, Jake had deserted his wife and daughter in pursuit of his dreams. When I first met him, he told me that all he wanted was to see them again, to be given a last chance to “make things right.” Mercifully, his ex-wife and daughter did come to see him, bringing along a newborn grandson whom Jake had never seen. It was a beautiful reunion with a lot of love and grace. Before they left, Jake’s family made a collage of family pictures and mounted it on the wall next to the framed sign. Jake was so proud of his family. He would lie for hours on his side, simply looking at the collage and delighting in the pictures of his grandson.

But now, weeks later, he was dying, and I was sitting there praying for him. Several times he woke up in pain. His care giver, Joe, and I repositioned him to ease his way. I moistened his lips and mouth with one of those pink sponge swabs soaked in water.

Looking at the pictures of his daughter and grandson, I thought of how much Jake had missed out on as he wandered the world looking for his place to fit. What if everything his thirsty soul had longed for was right there at home the whole time?

Earlier that morning, I’d read some lines from Antony the Great, the first of the desert fathers. “What must one do in order to please God? Pay attention to what I tell you. Whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes. Whatever you do, do according to the testimony of the Holy Scriptures. Wherever you live, do not easily leave it. Keep these three precepts, and you will be saved.”

We’re all looking for a place to fit. We’re all looking for a meta-narrative, a grand story that helps explain our lives, makes sense of our existence, and provides a source of meaning to our days. Often, we don’t need to travel to discover that story. I think that’s why St. Antony tells us, if we find that place, we should not easily leave it.

I was still lost in these thoughts, when Joe the care giver’s two young daughters arrived home from school and went running down the hallway outside of Jake’s door fighting about something. I said a short benediction for Jake and bade him Godspeed.

As I pulled out of the driveway, I noticed in the rearview mirror two young Mormon missionaries cresting the hill behind me. Their starched white shirts and black ties were a sharp contrast to the gray overcast November sky behind them. Two more pilgrims searching for a place to fit, I thought. Aren’t we all … aren’t we all?

In this reflection on the Gospel of John chapter 21, Fred shares how Jesus invites us to the place of hot, burning coals not to shame us but to liberate us. 

“It’s when we won’t let go of a thing that we are defeated by it. ‘Let me go…’ says the Spirit of God. And Jacob answers, ‘I will not let you go until you bless me.’ And therein lies the secret of winning all the struggles of our lives. We must learn to let go of them so that we can come to the blessings hidden within them.” – Joan Chittister

More wisdom from Thomas Merton …

“There has to be a real fear by which you orient your life. What you fear is an indication of what you seek. What do I fear most? Forgetting … who I am, to be lost in what I am not, to fail my own inner truth …”

This morning in my time of reflection, a line I read recently from James Finley’s wonderful work, “Merton’s Palace of Nowhere,” bubbled up. Finley records that Thomas Merton waged “a ruthless campaign against giving way to all ‘trifles which cannot bear inspection in the face of death.’”

And I thought about some of the things that are currently stirring me up so emotionally, the really annoying people who get under my skin … and thought about how important will these things and folks be when I’m on my death bed?

Put another way, what am I giving myself to emotionally right now that will have lasting impact? What will outlive me?

My thoughts drifted to that lovely line from Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” … “we are distracted from distraction by distractions.”   

Working with the dying as I do, I know there are just times when we need to take a vacation from the really important … from dying … some periodic distractions and trifles are necessary for emotional balance … but it takes real discernment and discipline to not overstay the vacation.

That’s why I read so much by and about Merton. He just seems to have a way of calling me back to the present moment and the really important. And he skillfully does this not by shaming but by invitation.

I was reflecting too on how last Sunday I spoke to my friends at church about facing death and living fruitfully. I talked about the profound idea put forward by Fr. John Dunne … “what if death isn’t an interruption to life, but rather its destination?” The question that continues to linger days later is, am I living in such a way now that will prepare me for my destination?

Selah.

Just wanted to share this wonderfully thoughtful prayer for Valentine’s Day by Pete Greig, featured today on Lectio 365.

 “I pray today for those in love, those out of love, and those in between. I remember especially those who find themselves a little bit lonelier than normal.

 I do not pray today for loved-up couples, exchanging overpriced flowers and foil-wrapped hearts, leaking pheromones like diesel fumes at candlelit dinners. I’m pretty sure, Lord, they will be OK (for now).

 Instead, I hereby dedicate this happy-crappy day to all the brave teenagers who dared to send a card (hoping in vain with every fibre of their being for something back). Let them be a little bit more OK because I prayed.

 I think of the mother, coping alone, who quietly bought herself flowers yesterday. Let her kids be kind today. Let her teenagers tidy their bedrooms. And if that’s a miracle too far (I realise You’ve got a lot on in the world right now), could they at least initiate a hug at bedtime. And, Lord, let those daffodils she bought herself last longer and shine brighter than those overpriced red roses that also caught her eye.

Finally, I ask You to look upon the elderly gentleman gazing today at a fading sepia photograph in a silver frame of a wedding in another time. Look at him and look with him and be with him in the remembering and the unremembering too.

King of Love, on this day named after one of your unmarried saints, embrace the unlovely and the unloving parts of the world and of myself today.

 Song of Songs, inspire surprising turns of phrase and simple thoughtful acts, scatter sparks and rekindle the fires of romance wherever marriages are mired in the mundane. Melt our tiny, tinny expensive chocolate hearts.

 And forgive me today, I pray, for this cheap, gaudy, hysterical, isolating thing I have sometimes somehow tried to make of love and of You.

 Amen.”

I Don’t Believe in Death

People will deny
anything these days
so, I have decided to join
the practice of dismissing things
that we’ve been told are true
I have decided to quit believing in death
~ it just doesn’t exist for me anymore

I have a new theory
I’m working on~
when our dear ones
depart their bodies and
turn back into air and light
they don’t disappear
behind a brick wall
that separates us
~there are no bricks
there is no wall
~there are no barriers
there is only a grand
window between us
and those whom we
have stitched ourselves
to with the most divine
of angel hair threads
we can see our beloveds in
the heart shape clouds
and they can see us
as we kiss their picture
goodnight ever so softly

death doesn’t exist
it’s a debunked
flat-earth theology
where we are told that
the people we love spill off the
edge of the world and
fall away from us into
the endless unknown
that’s not my experience
what I have seen is that when
a dear one leaves me I don’t
feel the space grow between us
I feel us grow closer together
~ our entanglement becomes tighter
they travel with me to the
store to buy garlic
they brush my hair out of my eyes while
I cry in my car in an empty parking lot
they join me on my daily
walk around a lake
they sit on the board of my conscious
and offer me advice
they float above me while
I write a poem
they laugh when I trip over the same
damn chair every day
they catch my prayers and
courier them to God
they write love notes to me with steam
on my bathroom mirror
they play the right songs on the radio
at just the right time
they have made a cottage
in my heart
they have turned my eyes
into miracle telescopes
they converted my lungs
into a retreat center
they dance in the eyes
of my children
my loved ones haven’t gone anywhere
and neither have yours
they are just on the other side of the window
waiting for you to see them
waving at you
in their sundresses made out of stars
and their tuxedos stitched by time

and someday I will be on the
other side of the glass
acting so obnoxious that you
won’t be able to ignore me
and someday I will be writing
you love notes on the petals
of sunflowers for you to find
just when you need to read them
and someday I will help paint a
sunset in the exact color of the
way I felt whenever I was wrapped
up tightly in your arms

I’m not scientist but
my research tells me that
death doesn’t exist
however, love does
and it has no end
and neither do we

~ John Roedel

This morning I was invited to preach for our Sunday morning worship. I gave a reflection on the experience of Jonah and the title was, “Why are you so angry?” If you’re interested in watching, here’s the link. ..

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__youtu.be_5PPcAZGXPwE-3Ft-3D1023&d=DwMFaQ&c=KoC5GYBOIefzxGAm2j6cjFf-Gz7ANghQIP9aFG9DuBs&r=JOilRuLbDBwj5RAefK62sVeWPOwe9gAp7CHJa3XsPAI&m=6vSx53y2Meb7odiUTyEnZ2aHheFtao7OU6ZmkyGKwGE&s=ZcLtt8BIHw502S1sIcNs0EdGX1KYBIu31dPOojsbdHs&e=