Cocoon to Butterfly

My first grade teacher has spun a cocoon around herself; a deep coma, a place of peaceful rest. She waits like a butterfly bursting out of the cocoon. We wait with her watching for the newness of life to burst forth. The dying body cocooned will become the butterfly of new life as it flys to eternity.

See Spot. See Spot run.

I visited my first grade teacher today. She is dying.
I was filled with warmth as I remembered her tender kindness and gentle patience as a teacher of energetic 6 and 7 year olds. Affirmations abounded for each child in her class.
Gratitude washed over me as I held the hand of the woman who taught me to read. Irony overwhelmed me as I wondered how I was called to care for this wonderful woman who had cared for me 44 years ago. The shoe was now on the other foot and it felt uncomfortable.
Once again, in her dying, she has become my teacher. I sit at her bedside and learn lessons of gracious gratitude. She lives out her gratefulness with polite please and thank yous said with a gentle smile and soft eyes. In her dying she teaches me about living with dignity, integrity and quiet courage as she does not complain while her positive and hopeful spirit continue to shine.
Today she taught me that the vale between this life and the next is mysteriously thin as she spoke these words with the same kind of deliberate communication style that I remembered as a child: "Pastor, I want to speak to you about my death," which was followed by a long moment filled with intentional and yet comfortable silence. She continued, "It will be Sunday." I wondered what she saw and heard that I did not as I waited for Sunday to come.

With Gratitude

It is often difficult to find the blessings in one's grief, but one blessing that emerges is that our own grief calls us to be more compassionate toward others who are hurting.
Marva Dawn wrote a poem to a family that blessed her with compassionate understanding. It is entitled "With Gratitude."

You said,
"Call us, any time you need us,"
and I felt at home in your words,
I poured out my grief,
and you hugged me.
I told you my fears,
and you prayed that I would sleep protected.
I expressed my confusion,
and you helped me sort out the parts.
I tried to face my ugly self,
and you kept on caring.
I gave you my pain, and you gave me a kiss.
How can I thank you?
How do I express this awareness
that I have found a home in your love,
that I have been adopted in your grace?
It is like the Resurrection, promising life
and healing and hilarity.
It is just that Easter is incarnated in your care.

Disaster, Destruction, Devastation, Death

The earthquake in Haiti on January 12 brings one emotional aftershock after another. The images streaming across the television are earth shattering-mothers screaming for their babies, children wandering helplessly, the dead laying in the street,buried under ruble, piled in mass graves.
The devastation became personal with the news that one body buried in the ruble was Ben Larson, who was a shy little boy with melt your heart eyes when I met him at the age of 5. With the blink of an eye he grew up to be a passionate, joy-filled, young man who sought to serve his loving God by accompaniment with those Jesus chose to hang out with; the poor, the disenfranchised and the excluded. His life flowed on with endless song as he sang God's Good News into the hearts of all.
Ben, a senior seminarian at Wartburg Theological Seminary, traveled with his wife, Renee, and his cousin, Johnathan, to Haiti to learn and walk with the people of the Eglise Lutherienne d'Haiti (Evangelical Lutheran Church in Haiti). All three were in trapped in the ruble of the earthquake. Renee and Johnathan escaped and heard Ben singing God's praises as he died.
My mother's heart weeps with Ben's parents, Judd and April, and aches for Ben's sisters, Katie and Amy, who have lost the ability to create more memories of their brother and whose children will not be able to bask in the playful spirit of their Uncle Ben. Renee's pain with all the hopes and dreams of young love is beyond my comprehension.
Both Ben's passion for walking in accompaniment with the poor and his death, call me to accompany the people of Haiti through the process of rebuilding and it also renews my passion to accompany those who are grieving. Both the people of Haiti and Ben's family are in the life long process of rebuilding their lives, lives that are forever changed. They need people to walk along side them, to sit with them on the mourner's bench, to bring God's love in the flesh.

Death Revisited

It has been 5 years ago today that I got the call that my brother died in a plane crash. It feels like it is yesterday. Conversations, experiences, emotions replay like an old 8 track tape. Raw pain is like an unwanted guest knocking at my door. I expected murmurings of grief, but the rawness renewed caught me unprepared. It feels like a Minnsota winter wind chill without a coat-a chill that goes bone deep with a bite that lingers.
Once again I turn to Psalms of Lament by Ann Weems. She captures the long night I experienced as death revisited the door of my heart.

Lament Psalm Sixteen

O God, will this night never end?
Give me sleep, O God!
Give me rest!
Erase from my memory
the moments of his death.
Blot out the terror
and the ever-present fear
and let me sleep.
I lie upon this bed
tortured by thoughts
that come unbidden.
The night is full of demons.
They stand uon my heart
until I cannot breathe.
There is nothing in my world
this night except his death.
O God, bring the morning light.

Is it not enough
that he is dead?
That there is nothing
I can do
to change what is?
Must I spend each night
revisiting the unlit
corridors of death?

O God, be merciful!
Bring the dawn!
Come into this night
and tear it into day!

Another year of grief

On Monday, January 11, it will be five years since my brother died.
A poem from Cathedrals of the Heart will mark my loss,and his
life.

NOTHING IS THE SAME

Nothing is the same.
Thoughts of heaven, eternity are heavy on my mind.
Dying is a new image
front and center,
very personal.

My equillibrium has come unglued.
when out of balance,
how do I stand?
where do I stand?
with whom do I stand?
where do I take refuge?

Thoughts take me everywhere and nowhere.
Flashbacks, dreams and visions exhaust me,
stir me, propel me.
New reality seems to emerge.
Worlds pass through my mouth before my brain.
I miss him so. Everything everywerhe seems empty.
Can anything be rational at this moment?

I wait for peace and balance.
It's a time to celebrate memories and mourn losses.
A time for emotion to settle.
A time to place one foot in front of the other,
step by step.
Emptiness is deep and dark.
Each day is a year.