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I was saying good-bye to Patricia in her office on Saturday, and as we hugged one last time she asked doubtfully if I’d be coming to church today. “Of course,” I said with complete certainty. “Church is the best part of my week!” One big reason for that statement is Sunday School at St. Dunstan’s. I was looking forward to the visit of the Rev. John Talbird, a friend of Patricia’s from Chattanooga, who was in Port au Prince when the earthquake struck in Haiti.
But the reason she asked that question about showing up was actually pretty valid -- last Sunday after church I found out that someone I had loved dearly died suddenly and unexpectedly. I’d spent the past hour or so in her office, talking through my grief with a box of tissues, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible -- death is permanent. Not like getting stranded on the highway, or moving to another city or being ship-wrecked for 20 years. For those of us left, it’s that strange realization that we will never hear the voice of our loved one again.
Anyway, we planned the funeral and Patricia took me to the inner sanctum, the sacristy room where the altar guild works its magic, weaving sacred symbols and mysteries into the services. She pulled out a box, the one where ashes are placed, and walked me through the service, told me where the box sat, showed me the path to the memorial garden where I sat a moment on the slate wall at the edge of the trees.
The altar was already decorated with the red cloth flames for Pentecost. I questioned myself if I belonged in public just yet this morning, if I was ready to face people, which I’ve done a fairly good job of avoiding this past week, allowing just enough grief out at any given moment that I can stand it, trying to control the flood of memories and tears.
When I got to St. Dunstan’s for the early service, I knew it didn’t matter. Who else should you be with at such times if not the people you love, who love you back. I got through the service pretty well until the Prayers of the People. As soon as Patricia said “The peace of the Lord be with you . . .” I knew I should have brought Kleenex or grabbed a wad of toilet paper from the bathroom before the service began.
I told Nancy Dillon, who was sitting beside me, and who immediately dug down in her purse and produced a fresh travel pack of tissues. I cautiously began passing peace, not at all certain of myself, but feeling the strength of my friends, an extra strong hug, a warm and sympathetic smile.
We headed to the altar for the Eucharist, where tears began streaming down my face, soaking the altar rail. I felt Nancy’s comforting hand on my back, the chewy wheat communion bread and red wine, washed down with blessings, made true by faith and love.
This afternoon, I was at the customer service counter at the Kroger when a sort of short, barrel-shaped woman with thin gray hair pulled back in a pony tail came up beside me. “I’m in a hurry,” she said. “My daughter died last night.” I let her go ahead. She was from Ellijay, up in the mountains. Her “baby girl” had just died of cervical cancer. She was trying to sell things I guess to pay for funeral costs. She said she had agreed to sell her computer for $30 but had only gotten $27. I reached out and put my hand on her, “I’m so sorry.” In her face, I saw my own grief and confusion. As she walked away, I saw her feet were bare, swollen and cracked.
Once outside, I scanned the parking lot for this grieving mother and hoped when she got back to Ellijay she wasn’t alone, that she had a community of friends and family —-as I do and am so grateful for--to hold her up and help her get to the other side.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Acts
I scribbled down the words “The Church is not a memorial society to a dead Jesus.” Patricia was teaching Sunday school on Acts, the part of the Bible where Christianity begins to take shape, where decisions are made about who’s in and who’s out. So if we don’t go to church to mumble, murmur and be reverent, it probably means we come for community and to figure out just what it is we should be doing in this life. God’s work, Her will, His love. Charged by the Holy Spirit perhaps, that strange wind that whips around and through and beyond.
Tell the truth. That’s a good one. Don’t cut in line. Don’t cut corners where they should not be cut. Practice tolerance with people who irritate you, try to keep your mouth shut. Don’t be impolite. Enjoy your fellow man. Talk to the person behind you in line at the WalMart. Be genuinely interested when she tells you she used to sew costumes for the Atlanta Ballet and now her 50-year-old son has moved back home. Listen with all your heart as this person passes on a few personal worries, and chooses to tell her story to you, a stranger. Dig deep down in your purse or in your wallet when you’re on your way home from the airport late at night on the MARTA train. See the old woman with the placard sign that shows news events for the past 20 years that prove the end of the world is nigh. Press a $20 in her hand and be sorry that you can’t give her more because you know without a doubt she could be your grandmother.
I think those are all very nice things to do. I think most of us pretty much try to do the small, easy stuff. What I’ve found more difficult, however, is doing what Jesus really did well, that is going out and getting your hands dirty. Even if it means looking at something we’d rather not. I’d rather not. So lately I find myself on this Diocesan task force to stop sex trafficking of children in Atlanta. Me squeamish in that I had to leave “Silence of the Lambs” half way through. The evil, though just a movie, was too easy to feel, too disturbing, too potentially real.
My job on the task force will be to write whatever is needed. How I thought I’d pull that off blind folded I’m not quite certain. Most people on the committee are doing important work to fight the kidnapping and selling of children from five to 18 for rape, abuse and torture.
One committee member in that first meeting said you could see children being prostituted downtown every day. For instance, if you see a 14-year-old girl with a $10 bill sticking out of her shirt, it’s like a price tag. I won’t say for what, but you get the picture. I told him the thought of it just made me want to die.
Anyway, all of us on the committee were invited, no urged to attend the screening of a movie about the problem at the Rialto at Georgia State. I got my dates wrong at first and thought the movie was a week ago, Sunday. On that day, I went to church, but I dreaded going to the movie. I just couldn’t see what good it would do for me to see any of this going on really vividly like in the “Silence of the Lambs” sense. In fact, as the 5 p.m. show time neared, I actually found a plausible excuse to miss the movie altogether, one that I almost believed myself.
Well, it turned out that Sunday a week ago was the wrong day. The documentary, Playground, was playing yesterday. And I did not want to go then either. But thinking about doing, really doing, I got up my courage and went. And for the full 80 minutes, I sat and watched and listened to the saddest, most frightening and disturbing stories I really think anyone will ever hear. These are children. They come from every socio economic background. They are so damaged that anyone would say they can’t be brought back. Better to forget and throw them away.
But this isn’t what these priests and volunteers and cops and judges and activists and students do. They fight something that frankly nobody wants to hear, an image nobody wants to fall asleep with or wake up to. I certainly don’t. But I think it’s a bit like the engineer on our committee said: “You can’t know about it and not try to do something about it.” And this engineer had come to the subject simply by entering the wrong room at the Diocesan Council.
I came to it that way a little myself, sitting in on that meeting in a sort of random way. But more, I was lamenting to Patricia that frankly I was useless to really help people. I have no skills that will mend broken bodies or broken souls, no money to build shelters, not even handy in the kitchen for that matter. But she encouraged me and said my modest skills could be put to work. In fact, she said, that task force on the sex trafficking of children, she thought needed a writer. But now I’m not sure getting your hands dirty is even about possessing specific skills. I think it may be first and foremost about not turning away.
Tell the truth. That’s a good one. Don’t cut in line. Don’t cut corners where they should not be cut. Practice tolerance with people who irritate you, try to keep your mouth shut. Don’t be impolite. Enjoy your fellow man. Talk to the person behind you in line at the WalMart. Be genuinely interested when she tells you she used to sew costumes for the Atlanta Ballet and now her 50-year-old son has moved back home. Listen with all your heart as this person passes on a few personal worries, and chooses to tell her story to you, a stranger. Dig deep down in your purse or in your wallet when you’re on your way home from the airport late at night on the MARTA train. See the old woman with the placard sign that shows news events for the past 20 years that prove the end of the world is nigh. Press a $20 in her hand and be sorry that you can’t give her more because you know without a doubt she could be your grandmother.
I think those are all very nice things to do. I think most of us pretty much try to do the small, easy stuff. What I’ve found more difficult, however, is doing what Jesus really did well, that is going out and getting your hands dirty. Even if it means looking at something we’d rather not. I’d rather not. So lately I find myself on this Diocesan task force to stop sex trafficking of children in Atlanta. Me squeamish in that I had to leave “Silence of the Lambs” half way through. The evil, though just a movie, was too easy to feel, too disturbing, too potentially real.
My job on the task force will be to write whatever is needed. How I thought I’d pull that off blind folded I’m not quite certain. Most people on the committee are doing important work to fight the kidnapping and selling of children from five to 18 for rape, abuse and torture.
One committee member in that first meeting said you could see children being prostituted downtown every day. For instance, if you see a 14-year-old girl with a $10 bill sticking out of her shirt, it’s like a price tag. I won’t say for what, but you get the picture. I told him the thought of it just made me want to die.
Anyway, all of us on the committee were invited, no urged to attend the screening of a movie about the problem at the Rialto at Georgia State. I got my dates wrong at first and thought the movie was a week ago, Sunday. On that day, I went to church, but I dreaded going to the movie. I just couldn’t see what good it would do for me to see any of this going on really vividly like in the “Silence of the Lambs” sense. In fact, as the 5 p.m. show time neared, I actually found a plausible excuse to miss the movie altogether, one that I almost believed myself.
Well, it turned out that Sunday a week ago was the wrong day. The documentary, Playground, was playing yesterday. And I did not want to go then either. But thinking about doing, really doing, I got up my courage and went. And for the full 80 minutes, I sat and watched and listened to the saddest, most frightening and disturbing stories I really think anyone will ever hear. These are children. They come from every socio economic background. They are so damaged that anyone would say they can’t be brought back. Better to forget and throw them away.
But this isn’t what these priests and volunteers and cops and judges and activists and students do. They fight something that frankly nobody wants to hear, an image nobody wants to fall asleep with or wake up to. I certainly don’t. But I think it’s a bit like the engineer on our committee said: “You can’t know about it and not try to do something about it.” And this engineer had come to the subject simply by entering the wrong room at the Diocesan Council.
I came to it that way a little myself, sitting in on that meeting in a sort of random way. But more, I was lamenting to Patricia that frankly I was useless to really help people. I have no skills that will mend broken bodies or broken souls, no money to build shelters, not even handy in the kitchen for that matter. But she encouraged me and said my modest skills could be put to work. In fact, she said, that task force on the sex trafficking of children, she thought needed a writer. But now I’m not sure getting your hands dirty is even about possessing specific skills. I think it may be first and foremost about not turning away.
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