Yesterday

 

 

Finally! a day for a walk in the cemetery.

Angels

This is one of those not-for-the-faint-of-heart posts.  Don't read it if brutal details haunt you in difficult ways.

I am also somewhat extremely hesitant to post this for other reasons, as I know there are people reading this blog who will conclude that my mind and I have finally parted company.  But, you know, fools rush in  . . .

And where is it that angels tread, exactly?

The first time I was with someone who died was in 1960, when I was in the automobile collision in which my mother was killed instantly.  Although I am told that I was conscious when we were discovered, I have no memory of that event.

The next time was in 2005, when I sat with my stepmother as she died after a several-months journey with lung cancer.  My father left the hospital immediately, but I stayed with her for about an hour.  I was so sure that we were being accompanied by Others that I occasionally looked out the window into the 5:00 a.m. darkness, expecting to see someone.

The next many dozens of time occurred during the summer of 2008, when I was doing my clinical chaplaincy education at The Cleveland Clinic.  Sixty actual workdays and nights over a ten-week period.  One of my units was a medical intensive care unit, and at a hospital like that, the people in the MICU are desperately ill.  When we were on call in the hospital at night (about once a week), we were each the only chaplain for 1000 beds -- all units.  I had two days that summer in which no one died.  Many days and nights the numbers were two, three, four.  I did not have any sense of the physical presence of Others that summer.

A few weeks after that, my son jumped to his death. Some months, maybe a year afterward, the shock beginning to wear off a bit, I began to wonder whether it was possible that the small patch of ground outside his apartment building had been crowded with angels that night.  I didn't particularly believe in angels, or not, but I began to wonder. I found that I kind of like to imagine that there is, quite literally, a host of beings of light who rush to lift the broken to God.  That they appear on isolated country roads, in high-tech hospital units, in suburban neighborhoods.

Yesterday, sitting by a hospital bed and waiting through the final moments of an elderly woman's life, I closed my eyes and bowed my head and -- yes.  Despite the occasional beeping of machinery and the voices of nurses in the hallway, I heard it -- or rather I sensed it.  The light brush of Others in the room.

I wondered, later last night, what angels look like.  Probably not like us, and probably not wearing white robes and bearing feathery wings.  Probably more like columns of light.  Think Tanner's Annunication.

I don't suppose it matters what they look like.  It matters that they are there.

Image: Lakeview Cemetery, Cleveland OH

Mother's Day 2012

Holy Week Friday Five

From today's Friday Five, brought to us by Mary Beth:

Holy Week is upon us.

Realizing that most of our readers are clergy, and that clergy don't necessarily have the opportunity to fully worship when they are responsible for leading (creating, writing, facilitating) worship:

I invite you to share five favorite Holy Week things, five things that are truly worshipful for you.  It may be that it's the way they are done in your congregation (or were done in a previous one).  It may be your personal preparation for certain services or observances.  

Breathe.  Be still.  Look to the week ahead, and Holy Weeks past, and imagine the worship.

Bonus:  a piece of music that "is" Holy Week for you.

I'm not sure that I have five.   Holy Week has been precarious ground for me the last few years and, not having really grown up in the church, I don't have longstanding memories to which I can return.  But let's see how far I get:

1.  The Tenebrae Service (at my "home church" which is no longer my home church) ~ deeply moving.

2.  The Easter Vigil, to which I was introduced by Catholic friends and which I am now introducing, in a much abbreviated version, to my new home church, the one I pastor.  I am particularly fond of the fire outdoors with which we begin.  Many of the men in my rural church are members of the volunteer fire department, and I think they're afraid that this practice might catch on.  No pun intended.

3. The Easter Sunrise service, co-celebrated by four local Methodist churches, in the cemetery where I walk.  A large cross stands above a gravesite on the edge of a ravine, and as we gaze at it we look east and the sun rises behind it.

4.  The couple of blocks walk to the sunrise service, with the full moon above.  This short journey, like all of this week, is a tough one, as Josh always  accompanied me.  He was with me this year, maybe 2006:

5.  Something new, and I have no idea whether this will be worshipful or not.  My congregation wanted to host a Maundy Thursday service with a meal, a celebration of communion, and a concluding drama of the Garden of Gethsemane.  I have written the drama and distributed the scripts, and now I have the task of convincing actors and audience alike that we want to approach this minute production from a contemplative, prayerful stance.  I have invited the actors, in particular, to spend some time imagining themselves into their roles, praying their way into the evening and what it means, whether as Jesus, as followers or traitor, as soldiers, as curious or accusatory bystanders.  It's been worshipful for me to plan it all, but whether I can convey that to others remains a matter of speculation.

Well, I guess I do have five!  And the music bonus is an obvious one, although it's taken me four years to be able to listen to it again since, sadly, it now reflects personal experience.  Herewith,as sung by King's College Choir, of course:

Daily Photo 33 - Cemetery Stained Glass

 

There are small mausoleums scattered throughout the cemetery where I walk.  Many of them harbor stained glass windows, windows which almost no one sees.  And why is that the case, that almost no one sees them?

For one thing, not that many people spend time at the cemetery.  And those who do tend to be walking or running, or visiting the graves of those they love, or perhaps stopping in to see the Garfield Monument.   They aren't pausing to do more than glance at the smaller buildings.

And the windows are usually on the back side, often covered with protective grating.  Even if someone were inclined to walk around to the back, she wouldn't see much.  You have to walk up to the front door (all of them locked) and peer in, hoping that the sun will illuminate the window from the back. If you and the sun both co-operate, you may be rewarded with a view of a small, hidden treasure.

Mausoleum Door - Daily Photo 32

Shana Tova!

In a perfectly wonderful confluence of events, the Jewish New Year started Wednesday night and today is the Feast of the Archangels in the Roman Catholic Church.

When I taught in the Jewish school, I had students named Gabe, Gabriella, Michael and Rafi.  

The Lakeview Cemetery images above are of Michael the Archangel (two details) and, I presume, due to the trumpet, Gabriel.

Since this whole cancer thing began, I have had emails and calls from Jesuit friends telling me that they are praying for me when they celebrate Mass, and a FB  message from my friend Carol that she remembered me in her Rosh Hashanah mishebeirach (healing) prayer.  (You should see the photo of her beautiful dinner table.)

Last night I went to the session/council meeting of my new church and came home assured of many Presby-Methodist prayers (and feeling like a pastor!).

And I know that there are other Jewish-Catholic-Protestant-of-all-flavors prayers floating around out there, because people keep writing and telling me so.

There was also Rosh Hashanah chicken soup on my back porch when I got home awhile ago.   And Ignatian tea and jam and chocolate in the mail.

Thank you all so very much. You make cancer a small thing and friendship a great one.

The Spiritual Journey

A couple of days ago, I longed for my camera as I walked down the woodland cemetery path. It lingers along the stream carved through the hillside center of the grounds.  The sunlight sparkled across the clear water, which rippled gently across the rocky creek bed.  The stream practically sang aloud.

The next day, an early-morning deluge had altered the entire scene.  The water, thick and murky, rushed down its channel; it was so much deeper than it had been only twenty-four hours earlier that only the slightest hint of rapids was visible.  Nothing called for a camera; it appeared, in fact, as if survival were at stake.

The Environmental Dimension of Spirituality

A couple of days ago a Jesuit blogger whom I follow wrote about having just completed his annual eight-day retreat in Chicago.  I immediately wanted to know how that worked: silence in the city?  Not exactly summer in the city as I imagine it. He responded that his spirituality is very urban, and that he's made retreats in several cities, including Montreal and Jerusalem.

That got me thinking: How does environment play a role in our spirituality? Is it something extremely personal?   I would call my own very outdoor, open-space oriented.  The evidence:

As an adult in my late 20s, the place in which it occurred to me that there might possibly be a God was at the top of Stoney Indian Pass overlooking Glacier National Park ~ on a backpacking trip.  Not in a church (actually, it had not occurred to me to go anywhere near a church for at least a decade at that point, despite all those years of Catholic and Protestant boarding schools), and most definitely not in the city in which I practiced law every day.

If you asked me to name a few places in which God has seemed especially present to me, off the top of my head they would probably include the beach (any beach) at sunrise, the North Carolina mountains, the soy bean fields of southern Ohio, the Rockies, and the starry sky above the Connecticut Valley and the Berkshires.  The exceptions to prove my rule: Gothic cathedrals.  They are usually located in cities (but they are interior environments of extraordinary open space - ha!).  And the Chapel of the Martyrs in Paris ~ a major exception.

Retreats?  Well, my first one was at Guelph in Ontario.  As I told Joe, my then-director responded to my plan to go there in a pejorative email tone of voice by saying, "It's very RURAL."  And it was -- it offered me a place in which I could walk across fields and through woods for miles each day, and spend much of my afternoon prayer time during that 90-degree week sitting on a rock in the middle of the river.  Then I tried Manresa outside of Detroit, which was way too small ~ although anyplace in the universe would have been too small for the day on which I learned that my son had died.  There's a retreat house here to which I've been with groups and occasionally to walk the grounds with friends -- where I've even co-led a retreat, actually ~ and it's a lovely respite from the city, but city is where it is.  And now there's Wernersville, a Pennsylvania version of Guelph.  On the outside anyway.  I guess interiors are a topic for another post.

At any rate, outdoors and remote is the way to go for me.  Here, I spend a lot of my prayer time walking, either to the Little Lakes a couple of miles away or to the cemetery a couple of blocks away.  Both provide enough in the way of woods and water and birds and other wildlife to at least seem spacious and even a little  remote.

And when I imagine my future in ministry, my fantasy life includes a late-in-life decade spent as a spiritual director and writer at someplace like Ghost Ranch.  (Oddly enough, that plan seems to be working out in reverse, sort of, as I have plenty of spiritual direction work to do here in the city.  Does this mean I'll be pastoring a church in the middle of nowhere in  my 70s?)

I suppose that I might make an exception for Montreal or Jerusalem, though!  (And seriously, this has got me wondering about my own limitations in terms of spiritual openness and availability in urban environments.  Or in small spaces, such as Michelle's been writing about in describing her adventures in exploring the contemplative life in Japan.)

What about you?  Where does God seem most present to you?

Summer in the Cemetery

Cemeteries: Pennsylvania

Anyone who reads this blog knows how entranced I am by cemeteries.  I've wandered a couple in this past year that I haven't gotten around to writing about, so this week I think that I'll rectify that situation.

Next door to the Wernersville Jesuit Retreat Center in eastern Pennsylvania stands St. John's (Hain's) United Church of Christ, which began life in 1735 as a congregation of the German Reformed Church on land donated  by George and Veronica Hain.  Since I spend a lot of my prayer time in motion, I have now walked through the church cemetery a number of times.   (Wayne had told me that I would see bluebirds there, which turned out to be an accurate prediction.)

The German words on the oldest gravestones, those closest to the church, are fading  into obscurity, but you can still make out birthplaces and family relationships.  Fifty-seven veterans of the American Revolution lie buried there, as well as numbers of babies and small children, so often encountered in older cemeteries.

I, of course, like that the Jesuits and a Reformed congregation are next door neighbors.

Spring!

I walked down into the cemetery this afternoon to look at daffodils and leave some flowers from our garden on Josh's bench.  I sat there for awhile, watching the Canada geese harass one another with much splashing and honking, and then I looked up and saw ~ a yellow warbler! 

 Migration is finally underway.

Images

 Lakeview Cemetery, Cleveland OH  (2010)

Yesterday's Friday Five asked us to come up with five words that identify our passions, spirituality, and/or life.

Do I even like words anymore? I wondered. I suppose that sounds a little silly. Most of my work involves words, and as a Protestant perhaps-almost-Minister of Word and Sacrament, I focus on the Word ~ the Word, Jesus Christ; the Word in Scripture; the Word proclaimed.  I read a lot of poetry and fiction and write a lot of bloggy stuff ~ yes, I do still like words.

But I'll let you in on a secret: When I was trying to decide what to do with my one but seemingly no longer precious life after my son died, I was divided right down the middle for a long time: Should I return to seminary?  Or should I turn entirely to my photography and build a completely new life?

I decided to honor what I had begun, and let the photography slide ~ going on mini photo binges once in awhile, but not attempting to learn anything new, and certainly not trying to express my new reality in that manner, except on rare occasions.  Perhaps today's, taken some months ago after a rain, is one example of those rare occasions.

I have, however, as the fog has lifted, become more and more attuned to images of all kinds.  And recently I have begin to think that it's time to schedule some regular time for museum-going and for some of my own work. I realize now that for more than than two years I have been quite overwhelmed by the unwanted images that crowd my mind; perhaps, finally, some space is opening up for others.

Especially for My Protestant Readers

Some questions have come up in my various conversations this week, and I'd love to know your answers.  Anyone can respond of course; Protestant faith -- or any faith -- is not a requirement:

Do you believe in angels?

If so, do you invoke the assistance of angels?

Anything else you want to say on the subject?

The comment section is wide open.



(Image: Wings of the Archangel Michael, Lakeview Cemetery)

Hands and a Foot (Daily Photos 26-30)

I don't have much to say these days.  Or rather, I'm saying it in images, old and new, rather than words.  As I was walking through the cemetery a couple of days ago, I became almost completely focused on hands ~ and then, a few feet.

Memory (Daily Photo 8)

I think that my brother put it best when he said on FB," In the midst of thinking of those who protect us and have given so much, and those who have gone before us in our own lives....whom we miss so much."

In our family, at least in recent generations, we have not been touched by death in wartime.  My own family's generations were slightly off the timetable; my husband's father and his three brothers all headed for Europe in WWII, and they all came home.

But my brother and I, we miss our mother, and our brother, and our grandparents, and our stepmother Jewel, and now our son and nephew.

My brother did the work in getting this bench in memory of Josh placed in the cemetery in which I walk so often.  Due to various foul-ups, it took the past nine months for the task to be completed, but this last week-end the mother of one of Josh's best friends and I were able to plant some impatiens.  The bench is on a dirt path in the woods; the view through the tress is of a small lake, where mallards and wood ducks sailed by this morning.  I like to think that those few cemetery visitors who are a bit adventurous in leaving the main roads and paths will find some delight in stumbling upon this small patch of color, and that the words, "And may perpetual light shine upon him" will deflect a bit of the sadness coming from the dates indicating that a young man, a boy, really, died far too soon.

Symmetry (Daily Photo 7)

I have photographed this mausoleum countless times.  Yesterday the play of light caught my eye, and today I had a little photoshop fun.

This Is So Weird (plus Daily Photo 6: Cross)

I have cleaned out two dressers and hung some pictures and done four loads of laundry and played around online and .  .  .   there's no rush at all.  

I can plan to spend the entire week-end in the yard (which looks like the jungle) with lengthy breaks to hang out with my brother and his wife, who may come to visit  . . . and there's no rush at all.

However long it takes to do something is how long I have.

Angel (Daily Photo 4) and Confluences

This morning I went for  a walk in the cemetery, which is filled with statues and sculptures of angels.

Then I had a conversation with someone in which the Annunciation came up.

And for a day now, I've been thinking about this exquisite poem, which I found here, thanks to Mary Beth.   While ordination for women is a given in my denomination, I spend a lot of time with women for whom it is not.

Woman's Body

by Frances Croake Frank

Did the woman say,

When she held him for the first time in the dark of a stable,

After the pain and the bleeding and the crying,

'This is my body, this is my blood?'

Did the woman say,

When she held him for the last time in the dark rain on a hill-top,

After the pain and the bleeding and the dying,

'This is my body, this is my blood?'

Well that she said it to him then,

For dry old men,

Brocaded robes belying barrenness,

Ordain that she not say it to him now.