From the Dean
Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play? I don’t remember growing older; When did they? Sunrise, Sunset; Fiddler on the Roof
Signs of endings all around us; Come O Christ and dwell among us; give us hope and faith and gladness. Show us what there yet can be. Hymn 721 Wonder, Love and Praise
I have a picture in my office of Gina, age two, and me sitting on our freshly-constructed backyard play set. Her eyes are ablaze with excitement. Her dad is looking pretty excited as well. The play set traveled from Georgia to Mississippi to Asheville where it still resides in our yard. Last week Gina became engaged to be married. We love her fiancé Tom (sometime ask me about his recent Father’s Day present to me). I am deeply moved when I see the ocean depths of excitement in their eyes. I am also deeply moved when I see the play set. Our endings are our beginnings.
When talking with one of my wisdom friends recently (wisdom friend means someone with more grey hair than me) they talked about how we often don’t make room in our lives for times of transition; we don’t consciously acknowledge and attend to the emotional space of life changes, be they hopeful changes such as a new job or new opportunity or tough changes such as the loss of someone or the physical or cognitive changes in ourselves or those we love. Too often, they said, we tend to expect the same of ourselves in these moments as we do in other periods of our life. Too often we don’t find ways to mark and face openly that which our guts are registering quite clearly.
As Episcopalians, we are big on death. That may seem a blunt, even crass statement. Yet at every Eucharistic liturgy we speak of Jesus dying, we hold high bread broken, and speak of human flesh offered for us. We devote a whole season to loss and brokenness and a whole week to the death of Jesus. With great regularity we proclaim in death our life is found. Yet even with these “signs all around us” I admit I am repeatedly ready to run from endings.
In the months of October and November, the Adult Forum will reflect upon transitions and how we walk through them. We will consider what our liturgies have to tell us about these times. We will reflect on how we deal with transitions in our health and the health of our family members. We will ask how we can face endings with the same integrity we use when facing beginnings. We will look at how we do this not alone but as a community; how we do this not unprepared, but intentionally, with an informed communal courageousness.
The Hebrews erected piles of stones they called tabernacles in places where they had encountered the Holy One. These served as reminders, particularly in times when the Holy seemed more absent than present. Looking back in life affords the view of seeing what endings we have come through and how they have led us into a new land. Yet even with these memories it seems every new ending calls for renewed faith and courage for “what there yet can be.”
“Swiftly flow the days; Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers, blossoming even as we gaze.” Sunrise, sunset. How do we find new life in our transitions? Where is found the resurrection in our endings? Join us as we consider.