In greek
mythology spring comes from a deal made in the underworld. In exchange for
Hades’s possession of the beloved Persephone for a winter’s season, she is
returned to us for six months. Her return is what brings us Spring and Summer. The poignancy of this deal combines the
enjoyment of the time spent in nature’s bounty with the sting of loss that we
know must come again.
Today my task
is to conduct a ceremony for the daughter of very fine folks from Bobcaygeon;
the mother of three young adults; the partner of a man my age.
Now these good
people are spiritual but not religious. It is a family of scientists,
biologists, people of the medical world. In their home, surrounded by books and
art and music, we spoke of this daughter, mother, wife lost to them very
suddenly. She suffered a hemorrhage in her brain and died within hours without
ever gaining consciousness.
We had to get
the subject of religion out of the way first. They wanted a ceremony. They
wanted someone to take them through this time of public mourning; of sharing
their loss with family and friends. But they wanted me to know that the church
was not a place that they belonged. They struggled to let me know that while
they were open to the idea of God, of soul, of spirit – that the dogma and the
moral constructs of Jesus worshippers were a foreign tongue they had little
interest in speaking.
The children
had attended Catholic schools – the parents choice for the structure and moral
authority it offered. The daughter and son, now in university, let me know that
while they weren’t about to wear any religious labels – they were open to
believing…
The
husband/father, had attended the school ceremonies within the church culture as
obligatory passage rituals without being touched by their sentiment. The
religion offered him nothing he could use. He told us about growing up in
communist Czechoslovakia and getting married in a church as an almost radical
act of defiance to the social norms of his generation. He’d done it for his
first wife’s family.
He also told
us about the end of that marriage in their adopted land of Ontario. He told us
that in the pain of that situation – he’d prayed.
Who doesn’t?
Whether we call it prayer or not, don’t we all conduct conversations with the Other?
Don’t we all, out of some unconscious instinct, call our questions into the
wind, our requests out to the stars, our curses down to the pit opening and
widening at our feet?
And if we
don’t let our minds go there, won’t our dreams take us where our thoughts
refuse to wander?
All I know of
the lost woman’s spiritual life is that she’d lately begun spending time each
morning alone in quiet. The daughter called it prayer. The son called it
meditation. The husband called it a searching.
And I know
that she gardened, that she skied, that she laughed and played and made love
and worked hard and drove her kids to hockey and dance and listened to her
favourite tunes on the car stereo. Everyday spiritual acts of soul.
So, what will
I say today? How will I honour her life as unique and sacred? Who will I pray
to on their behalf?
At the pub
last night, with spoken word poetry in my ears, I penned these words.
-52
is not enough-
52 cards
completes a deck
52 weeks
completes a year
52 years is
not enough to complete a lifetime
And yet,
that’s all she was dealt
that’s all the
time you had to share
her last week
ending without a chance to say…
On the pages
of her days
we remember
what she wrote with care
in a language
of time spent touching hearts
Beneath the
sound of talk
there’s a
dialect without words
heard within
heart’s circle of a moment’s passing
How can we
count what’s without measure?
How can we say
what’s best unspoken?
How can we
keep what’s lost forever?
One life, one
love, one heart
to which we
all belong
never-ending
undying ever-beginning
our song goes
on and on and ever on
and her soul’s
chord is struck again
each time we
open heart’s ears and re-member…
for Jlee
March 21st, 2012
thanks for the photos again this week to Richard Choe http//:wondergaze.blogspot.com
keep em coming Richard!
1 comment:
Thank you for the post, Al. I find it a privilege to walk with people in their grief. Funeral is one of those times and places where we, as clergy, are given an opportunity to serve our neighbours.
Peace, R
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