Tag Archives: blessing

Sep 02 2020
Leave a comment
Acceptance, Alone, Compassion, Grace, Prayer

A Prayer For Healing

Recently a dear friend had become seriously ill and she asked me to come and pray for her. In preparation for our time together I stumbled across this beautiful blessing / poem by the wonderful John O’Donohue. As I was reading it to her, it struck me how the words flowing from O’Donohue’s soul were so appropriate for our nation right now. It seems to me that as a country we are suffering from a deep and festering soul sickness. It matters not to me what side of the political line you may be on, I think it is clear we are all hurting. You know the issues. Fear, anger, and shaming are rampant. 

So if you are sick, you love someone who is sick, or you agree with me that our culture is not well … may the following prayer bring you comfort as it did for my friend and myself. And may it even sow the seeds of healing.

 A Blessing for a Friend on the Arrival of Illness
by John O’Donohue

Now is the time of dark invitation
Beyond a frontier that you did not expect.
Abruptly your old life seems distant.

You barely noticed how each day opened
A path through fields never questioned
Yet expected deep down to hold treasure.
Now your time on earth becomes full of threat.
Before your eyes your future shrinks.

You lived absorbed in the day-to-day,
So continuous with everything around you,
That you could forget you were separate.

Now this dark companion has come between you.
Distances have opened in your eyes.
You feel that against your will
A stranger has married your heart.

Nothing before has made you
Feel so isolated and lost.

When the reverberations of shock subside in you,
May grace come to restore you to balance.
May it shape a new space in your heart
To embrace this illness as a teacher
Who has come to open your life to new worlds.

May you find in yourself
A courageous hospitality
Towards what is difficult,
Painful and unknown.

May you use this illness
As a lantern to illuminate
The new qualities that will emerge in you.

May your fragile harvesting of this slow light
Help you release whatever has become false in you.
May you trust this light to clear a path
Through all the fog of old unease and anxiety
Until you feel a rising within you, a tranquility
Profound enough to call the storm to stillness.

May you find the wisdom to listen to your illness,
Ask it why it came. Why it chose your friendship.
Where it wants to take you. What it wants you to know.
What quality of space it wants to create in you.
What you need to learn to become more fully yourself,
That your presence may shine in the world.

May you keep faith with your body,
Learning to see it as a holy sanctuary
Which can bring this night wound gradually
Towards the healing and freedom of dawn.

May you be granted the courage and vision
To work through passivity and self-pity,
To see the beauty you can harvest
From the riches of this dark invitation.

May you learn to receive it graciously,
And promise to learn swiftly
That it may leave you newborn
Willing to dedicate your time to birth.

 

 

 

Tagged , ,
Aug 25 2020
Leave a comment
Acceptance, Forgiveness, Grace

The Blessing

Imogene had been a hospice patient for several months and lived with her daughter Bonnie in a very small travel trailer. She slept on a little cot in the midst of a forest of unread paperback books and magazines. Bonnie slept next to her mother on another cot.

Less than five feet tall and weighing less than 80 pounds, Imogene was still a very intimidating personality. She was very precise in what she liked and didn’t and let everyone know it. Normally on my visits, Imogene talked non-stop (with great bravado), recounting familiar stories of her broken marriages, her two children, her years of unfulfilling work, her in-your-face life philosophy, her unrealized dreams, and her indomitable spirit. Her son lived out of the area and out of Imogene’s life, so Bonnie was left to faithfully provide the constant care Imogene now required.

Maybe it was the cramped quarters. Maybe it was the pain of Imogene’s cancer. Or maybe it was just too many years of toiling at tedious, unrewarding work—but in the months I had known Imogene, I had seen how she and Bonnie could get on each other’s nerves.

On one of my visits Bonnie was out running some errands, so I was alone with Imogene. Uncharacteristically, Imogene shared in a vulnerable manner the underside of her life narrative. She told me how as an unmarried teenager, pregnant with Bonnie, she had to drop out of school and was never able to formally complete her education. This was a defining experience in Imogene’s life. Believing she was exceptionally gifted intellectually, but unable to gain the formal recognition, she had to settle for a less-than life. Was this why she occasionally made little digs about Bonnie’s weight?

That’s the backstory.

I honestly don’t know how or why, but on a subsequent visit with these women at the stuffed little travel trailer I was witness to a miracle.

Everything started off as usual. I asked if Imogene was in any pain. “No more than usual,” she said, then added, “But I know I’m getting close to the end…and it’s OK.” The bravado was absent as she began to tenderly recount the same stories I had heard on so many previous meetings. The bitterness and frustration over unfulfilled opportunities was mysteriously gone. I was even more amazed as Imogene began to praise Bonnie, who was sitting next to her. “You know, I love my son…but Bonnie’s the one who really loves me and has come to care for me when I needed her. She’s a great daughter—and I’m so proud of her.”

And then Bonnie chimed in, “Mom, I’m so proud of you. I’m proud of the way you never stopped learning. You couldn’t go back to school, but you never stopped learning…and you’ve taught all of us the importance of education. You didn’t let anything stop you. You got us all through.”

I remained in hushed silence as for more than an hour these two beautiful broken souls spoke words of love and acceptance to each other, expressing deep words of appreciation for what is so special and unique in the other. It was a miracle. When wounded souls bless each other, it always is.

Tagged ,
Jul 25 2020
Leave a comment
Acceptance, Death, Forgiveness, Grace

Looking for a Place to Fit

Looking for a Place to Fit

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. 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, brining 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 that, 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 …

 

Tagged , , ,
Jul 15 2020
Leave a comment
Beliefs, Death, Freedom, Meaning, Peace, Riches, Uncategorized, Wisdom

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.”

Tagged , ,