Dear People of Christ Church,
This week, I'm writing early, getting ready to fly to Sweden to be with my aunt Barbro. She was diagnosed with lung cancer this spring and has taken a turn for the worse. I should only be gone for a week, but I do regret that I'll miss our festive joint Pentecost service with St Peter's, this Sunday at 11. Matt is preaching and Rev. Mary will celebrate, so it will still be a great celebration! Norm Faramelli has graciously agreed to take the 8:30 service so there will be Eucharist then as well. Please come!
Meanwhile, I've been trying to justify my time away to my children, who are not too pleased about it. Explaining things to them so often is another way of explaining things to myself; in the midst of creating their own worlds, they ask all the hard questions that help me to consider why I really do believe what I do. Most powerfully, they also keep me accountable, pushing me to re-evaluate the half-truths I'm sometimes willing to settle for. Still, talking about death with a five year old is something else altogether (my 2 ½ year old doesn't get it at all, which is fine!).
Isaiah is quite aware that his Saturday playground plans get put on hold for burials, but trying to explain the matrix of faith and sadness that comes together when one of "our own" is dying is another story. We haven't been to Sweden since 2008-when Isaiah was barely 1 ½--so he has no memory of our family there (my mother's whole side of the family, of whom there are not many more). I have been trying to explain to him how I want to go before my aunt dies, to see her before I can't see her anymore. At the same time, I am also explaining that she will be with God, and that everyone dies eventually, so even though I'm sad, it's not necessarily such a terrible thing because we trust in God's love. I really do believe all the alleluias we throw around at burials in the Episcopal Church.
Still, I'm trying to explain it to him with the background of my own grief; the reason I'm going tomorrow and not waiting until "later" (as I've been putting it off since she was diagnosed) is that her needs are such that she is not going home again, whether she lives for another six days or six weeks. This is the time, and I am incredibly blessed/fortunate/just plain lucky to be able to have a flexible job and a credit card that make it possible. There are not many Johannsons or Irwins, so it's not like I can catch the next family heartbreak at a more convenient time.
Meanwhile, there is that perplexity of "my sorrow" vs. "cosmic joy," not to mention the work my aunt herself is doing. Dying is a verb. Going to be with her is witnessing that. Witnessing, in both senses of the word-to see it, to witness, but also to give witness, to affirm it and show that it is important. Gene Burkart and I were talking about this the other day; in our culture death is somehow left to the experts to "fight." Death is often is seen as happening to us, as though our souls and bodies were not on the same team. I think, though, that death has a lot in common with giving birth-when else are we working so closely with God's work on earth? Both are like standing beside a volcano, both with complexity and grace and risk and wonder.
So thank you for your prayers-especially the wardens, Jonathan and Victoria, who fix everything when I'm away! I'll close with the last verse of the wonderful hymn from St Francis, "All Creatures of our God and King." which we sang a few weeks ago. You can listen to some English children with frilly collars singing it, though unfortunately not all the verses--Click here
And thou, most kind and gentle death,
waiting to hush our latest breath,
O praise him, Alleluia!
Thou leadest home the child of God,
and Christ our Lord the way hath trod
Blessings,
Sara+
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