From the Pulpit:

Thanksgiving for a Beautiful Life
 

In just a couple of weeks it will have been five years since I first came to St. Alban’s as your rector. I remember driving up the hill on my first Sunday to find that Paul Rozowski was already here and that he’d unlocked the doors, turned on the air conditioning, and started the coffee percolating.  

I remember waiting for the first parishioners to arrive and walking down this aisle for the first time and preaching from this pulpit for the first time and celebrating Holy Eucharist at this altar for the first time. After church you all had a fantastic pot luck lunch to welcome John Bennet and me, and my sons Michael and Colin were here with the young women who are now their wives.  

It was an excellent day, and you welcomed us warmly. I remember going home that afternoon tired but exhilarated and that before I had so much as taken off  my collar the phone rang, and it was Sue Shirley telling me that Frank Higgins had died and that I might want to call his wife, Liz. I’m always grateful to get a heads up as to a parishioner’s need I don’t know of. I must have skipped the seminary class on mind-reading. I did call Liz, and could hear the grief in her voice, and when I asked if she would like me to come to see her, she said, “Oh, yes, would you?”  

So I was back on the stretch of road I have come to know so well and turned off I 35 into a neighborhood I’d never been to, following her directions and looking for her driveway. If you’ve ever been to Liz’s home, you know that it is like entering another world. There is a gate there now and when you go through it you are instantly aware of the tranquility and beauty of the place, and this is way before you get to the house or to what is quite possibly the most beautiful back yard in the world. Everything Liz touched became as beautiful as she was.  

A week or so later I joined Liz and the six sons she and Frank had raised and their wives and children for a liturgy down on the dock on Onion Creek to celebrate Frank’s life and to scatter his ashes in all the places where they remembered him walking and sitting. The creek there is wide and deep and green and silent except for the calls of birds and the buzz of insects and the occasional plop of a small fish jumping. We met there again yesterday, some of the sons and me, to hold the same liturgy, to pray the same prayers, to celebrate Liz’s life and to give thanks to God for the time she shared with us and the beauty she brought into all our lives.  

Liz attended the 8:00 service and usually sat with Betty Braziel. She had never been to Japan but you wouldn’t know it from her yard, which has the spare order of a Zen garden, or her home, where every wall and table hold Asian treasures, or her dress, always elegant and exotic in a simple way. At the peace she would hug you and tell you she loved you. And you knew she meant it. Being loved by Liz was truly a gift because you never doubted for a moment that she meant it.  

As I was planning these morning services I made some conscious decisions  that may or may not be liturgically correct, but when something is all about love the importance of correctness is not paramount. Her sons are very glad that we are celebrating her life in a venue where anybody who knew Liz and loved her may come. I decided not to make it a formal memorial service because a lot of people didn’t know Liz and are here today simply because they wanted to come to church and might not feel at home realizing they had come to the funeral of a stranger. I didn’t depart from the lessons assigned for the day or the hymns David had chosen. Actually, other than preaching about Liz and adding a couple of prayers, it’s a regular Sunday service. But I believe we will all be touched by what is not so regular.  

And so we listen to the stories the Bible gives us, one of Elijah from the Old Testament and one of Jesus healing a mad man from the Gospel according to Luke. We listen to these stories and we listen to them deeply to let them be interpreted into wisdom for our lives, for nourishment and empowerment for our work and our play and our interactions with other people all through the week. And so, what I heard in these two stories as I thought so much of Liz this week is that they are both stories of transformation, they are both stories of God’s healing powers.  

It is in the silence that Elijah was transformed even though he does not recognize it immediately. Do we spend much time in silence? Can we even really find silence? Not often in our busy world. Many days I come into the empty church to pray and meditate and even when I try to still my mind there is the sound of the air conditioning cycling off and on, the rumble of traffic on the highway, the more welcome calls of many birds, the distant barking of a dog. Silence, when we do find it has a presence of its own that makes us stop and listen to it. Silence, the silence of the creek behind her home where Liz sat on the bench and said her morning prayers every day, silence has a strength and a beauty that Liz knew deep in her heart and that she communicated to all of us.  

The story in Luke’s gospel is not one I would ever choose for a memorial service, but when I read it over and over this week I realized that not only is it a story of transformation but it is a story of resurrection.  A man, and a gentile at that, is as good as dead but Jesus brings him back to life.  

Every Sunday is an Easter service. We celebrate the gift of resurrection, the gift of eternal life which is so much more than a continuation of life after the body has ceased to breathe. It is a different quality of life. It entails knowing our Lord as the source of all we have been given, as love incarnate. It entails seeing the goodness of all creation and understanding that God has empowered us to embody that love and to share it. It entails looking with eyes that see and listening with ears that hear to the Christ-center of our fellow human beings.  

Liz gave those of us who knew her so much by her fine tuned sense of tranquility and beauty. Every one of us is a far better person in her eyes than we know ourselves to be, and Liz stretched us to live into the selves she saw and knew. She was an agent of our transformation, and we give God thanks for that.  

Liz asked that a little poem be read at her memorial, and her family asked that I read it to you today. Because it is her wish and their wish, I share these words with you.

Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.  

It is true. Liz is not dead, but rather is transformed. She has gone from life to new life. She has rejoined her beloved husband Frank and her precious son Tim, but her love, which lives with us, lives on.  

And as long as we can attune ourselves to silence and beauty, and as long as we can open ourselves to God’s healing, and to living as the kinder, gentler, more loving people who Liz saw and knew and loved, she lives on among us. And so today we give God thanks, even if you personally never met Liz in this life, that she has touched each and every one of us. She has, by living in
Christ-like love, invited each of us to grow in our likeness of Christ, and she has blessed us richly and deeply.

Amen.

Do not stand at my grave and weep is a poem written by Mary Elizabeth Frye