ON THE BREATH OF A PRAYER, WE ENTER ETERNITY

Lift High the Cross

"I guess the family was all there, just visiting, and they were discussing nothing in particular when a chaplain came to ask if they wanted to pray.  They said yes, and right as the prayer started, her mother took one big breath...and was gone."

"Just like that?" I asked.

"Just like that."

"Wow," I sat, momentarily struck by the beauty of it all.

To imagine that on the breath of a prayer, you can cross unfathomable distance.  Your spirit and the doors of heaven meeting one another within the fraction of a whisper.  To inhale here, and then exhale in exhalation 10 million light years away. 

I don't remember who wrote this or where I found it, but I copied and framed it.  To me the words are true.  On the breath of a prayer, we do cross from life to eternity.  I've seen it happen.  

I didn't notice whether the breathing stopped after an inhale or an exhale, and I was sitting right there listening, right at the bedside.  We had been there since Wednesday and now it was Sunday morning, July 17, 2005.  We were watching and believing in God's promise of eternal life.  The room, a cold place where he lay sticky without speech or movement, was suffused with heartache and love.  Only we spoke and that not much.  We few, who loved him best, barely existing in the dim uncomfortable room where hope was for no more than another day of the same. 

Then came the silence of no longer breathing.  I heard it first.  The nurses had just come in to lift his head and smooth the covers.  

Witnessing death may be as universal as dying.  We want to be there for the passing of someone we love.  We put all our effort into reaching their bedside.      

No one knows which breath will be the last.  No matter how faithful the waiting, the cessation is startling; on that Sunday morning 18 years ago, it was louder than any other sound in the busy hospital.  Someone hears it every day.  A sound so clean it leaves no doubt.  This body will never breathe again. 

A life doesn't stop alone; it brings everything buckling inward with it, until later the survivors claw their way out, as we in our family have done and as you in yours no doubt have too.  

Then, maybe quickly or maybe more painfully, we understand.  This being is standing before God.  He does not see through a glass darkly, no; he sees face-to-face.  In the seconds it takes our tears to gather, this soul is already consoled by the arms of God, whose love is as great as ours, even though that we can't imagine.  But then, we can't imagine any of it.  We can only believe.  That we cross an unfathomable distance and arrive on our knees at the throne of God, where all is light transcendent.   It is 10 million light years away.  The meeting place for our souls.  A story, an event, that never ends.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN 

                        Nina Naomi

FACING GREAT LOSS

 

Have you noticed that abundance and lack are the same?  The same circumstances that could feel mean at one moment, overflow with richness at others.  Even, strangely, the greatest of losses can feed abundance.  Losing a son--born January 28 many years ago-- to cancer, I was desolate.  All who lose a child are.  Once when driving to the hospital, I saw a young man jog in front of my slowed car.  "Why is he healthy and my son not?" my tortured mind asked.    

But when I stood at the gurney after breath had ceased, I felt how blessed it was to have had this wonderful boy for 33 years.  From the moment of his diagnosis, the blessing of his life outweighed the loss of his life.  Never would I have traded having him to avoid the pain of losing him.   

And don't you feel the same about your great losses?  Not that heartbreak doesn't overwhelm. There's no healthy way to skip grief.  The stronger the love, the greater the suffering.  We don't want to forget.  But love is stronger than death.  That we know.  It is also, if not as often said, stronger than grief.  So that we, mostly and in good time, feel the abundant blessing rather than the stabbing loss.  

I wonder how it's possible to feel rich when we look at life's ledger.  Not to minimize our hardships, but we often do.  Even after losing someone, we can feel rich that they were in our life.  It would be a strange thankyou to let a death turn us bitter and resentful.  Like turning up our nose at growing older, failing to appreciate the gift of years as they accumulate.   

It seems like gratitude unlocks life's fulness.  It can turn any meal into a feast.  Gratitude turns what we have into enough.  Confusion becomes clarity.   We accept the reality of human limitations, and the reality of death.  And then, miracle of all, we accept the reality of resurrection.    

Thank you, Lord, for the gift of your Son, who after 33 years of life endured death and after 3 days was resurrected.   And in that way, we know that you understand our grief and grant us reprieve.   AMEN 

  

SEVEN STANZAS AT EASTER

 

John Updike wrote the most famous Easter poem of the second half of the 20th century.  If you believe, or want to, it is worth rereading.  

SEVEN STANZAS AT EASTER (1960)

S1                                   Make no mistake:  if He rose at all

it was as His body;

if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules

reknit, the amino acids rekindle,

the Church will fall.

If I'm not in a hurry, I find God in nature every time I walk outdoors.  But loving God's creation isn't a belief.  A belief is knowing that the tomb was really empty and that the man Jesus showed his pierced palms to Thomas.  Updike's "if" in line 1 is not hedging his bets, and we don't need to hedge ours.  

S2                                       It was not as the flowers,

each soft Spring recurrent;

it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled

eyes of the eleven apostles;

it was as His flesh; ours. 

His flesh rose and ours will too.  That's the promise of Easter.  We won't turn into Monarchs floating among the Lantana.  Our very bodies will walk (or stand or sit or lie) with the risen Lord.  

S3                                 The same hinged thumbs and toes,

the same valved heart

that-pierced-died, withered, paused, and then

regathered out of enduring Might

new strength to enclose. 

 More anatomy.  As His heart re-beat, so will ours.

S4                               Let us not mock God with metaphor,

analogy, sidestepping, transcendence

making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the

faded credulity of earlier ages:

let us walk through the door.

The Resurrection is not a parable.  Not a puzzling little narrative where one thing might stand for something else.  It is simply, literally, true. It needs no interpretation. Jesus rose from the dead.  That's why he is the Christ.  Take a breath.  Open the door to the room of faith and walk in.

S5                            The stone is rolled back, not paper-mache,

not a stone in a story,

but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow

grinding of time will eclipse for each of us

the wide light of day. 

It's all literal.  The wounds, the death, the grave, the stone.  And next comes the angel, literal too, wearing a garment that somebody wove!  No one imagined the angel.  We don't need our imaginations here. 

S6                                And if we have an angel at the tomb,

make it a real angel,

weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,

opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen

spun on a definite loom.

S7                           Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,

lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are

embarrassed by the miracle,

and crushed by remonstrance.  

I remember (always) when our son died.  Instead of harming my faith, his death made it more logical.  We wouldn't be created in all our complexity to end on the 9th Floor of Duke Medical Center.  Now that would be ridiculous, not eternal life.

Let's have a wonderful death and resurrection.  Happy Easter!  

                                                    Nina Naomi 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE SUNDIAL

In my side-yard sits a cast-iron sundial.  Our son Adam gave it to my mom, a gift for her garden.  Adam and his wife picked it out, their first gift to her as newlyweds.  She had created what she lovingly called "Adam's Park" by the creek that ran behind her house.  Nina Naomi's first-born grandson was special to her.  He showed his love in an open, talkative, physical way--arm around the shoulders, a hug, a glancing touch of the waist.  I was the recipient of these affectionate moments too, given often and unselfconsciously.  At 6'3", he was strong and graceful; he could lift the heavy sundial with one hand and move it wherever his grandma wished.  She was young when he was born and he called her simply Nina.  

My mom and dad lived near the North Carolina beach.  When Adam would visit he and his grandma would bring plastic chairs out to Adam's Park. It was always in the shade and she had planted hosta and lined the path into the glade with some of her sea shell collection, conchs of various sizes and brokenness.  Sometimes a turtle would crawl up the creek bank or seagulls would fly over.  Conversations were mostly about Adam's future.  It always seemed unlimited.

At age 82 my mom died of cancer.  Adam couldn't visit her because he was immunocompromised from his own cancer treatments. After her death, and then his, shortly thereafter, my father decided to move inland near me.  I went to close up the house and sell it.  There sat the sundial, sturdily marking each hour that passed, as it had been doing for 6 years since Adam and his wife placed it there, in it's spot as sentry to "Adam's Park."  Marking the hours of everyone's lives, my parents happy retirement near the beach, Adam's marriage, his and Nina's illnesses, their deaths and the birth of his daughter. . . . 

I asked my dad, now 84, "Can I keep it?  We can't give away the sundial."  I'd broken vintage plates, worn out family quilts, misplaced jewelry, lost photos--but here surely was the one thing indestructible:  the cast-iron marker of the days of our lives.  So now it sits outside my door.  The grandchildren dodge it when they chase runaway balls.  I haven't moved it in almost 14 years. We are impermanent.  The sundial is as permanent as anything I've seen in my life.  It was chosen by young newlyweds to mark the ending years of beloved grandparents.  But one July it marked another death as well and then a birth and now, in my yard, more griefs and more celebrations.  Moss covers its heavy base. It is indestructible, like love.  

THE NOWNESS OF LIFE

I was thinking about this--how much our life is more like a river than the top of the mountain.  How seldom we can say, "OK that's done."  Carly Simon has a beautiful ballad she wrote after her mother died.  The chorus is

I'll wait for you no more like a daughter,

That part of our life together is over

But I will wait for you forever

Like a river...

The first three lines are just a small range of even notes until her voice rises and soars on the word "forever," drawing it up, out and down.  It sounds like falls in a river.  I love the song, maybe now more than ever since my mother is gone.  

When we climb the mountains in our life, we never reach the top.  They're rugged and hard but they're beautiful and we love climbing.  We see wonderful views along the way and find treasures, but we also love coming back down.  Then we can follow the river, float, swim, survive its currents and climb another day if we want.  These are good choices.  They last. 

So what are these things that are never over, the tops we don't reach?  You know them.  Forgiveness is one, ourselves or others.  That takes forever, sung with our own voices rising and lingering on the word.  Understanding our children is another.  Or our partner.  Or even ourselves--maybe especially ourselves.  We never say, "OK that's done!"  

Making a home is another.  That's why we feather our nests over and over.  We add a blanket or a new plant.  We rearrange our collections.  We paint a room, plump the pillows, or even move and start over.  We don't want our homes to be finished.  We aren't, why should they be?

Enjoying nature is another one.  Yesterday I read an article called "In Life's Last Moments, Open a Window," by Dr. Rachel Clarke.  She works in palliative care in Britain. She says that even (or maybe especially) the dying want the experience of nature.  When the doors and windows of their rooms are opened their spirits lift, they're more peaceful, accepting and calm.  They want the sights and sounds of birds, of leaves rustling, and the feel of the breeze.  The idea seems to be that in our last days the trivial and the important merge.  Perhaps we need nature to remind us that we are part of its cycle.  She quotes a writer who said about his ending, "The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous."  I think being on a river or climbing, pausing, climbing, pausing are wondrously in the now. 

Dr. Clarke says that people often imagine a hospice to be only about the dismalness of  death.  But it isn't, she says.  It's about "the best bits of living.  Nowness is everywhere. Nature provides it."  We want this all the time, don't we, the best bits of living, nowness everywhere, nature providing?  I'm going to do my best to put myself in a place where this can be true for me.  A place in my river or on my mountain side. 
                                   

HEALTHY ATTITUDES (ULTIMATE THINGS)

A friend thought that her cancer had progressed.  Beautiful woman whom I have known only a few years. I wish I knew her better.  She asked for prayers for peace and strength for herself and her family.  Oh the wisdom of this request!  When we are up against it, is there anything we need more than peace and strength?  Is there anything ever we need more than peace and strength?  

Pierre Bonnard, Garden, 1935

We know that disease is no respecter of persons.  A man whose wife was dying of cancer said to me, "I have enough money, enough friends, enough faith, but I can't save Carole."  They were a beautiful couple.  We'd known them a long time.  Then last year one of their grown sons lost his life to depression.  This kind of despair has been on my mind, and perhaps yours, because of two suicides--Kate Spade's (1962-2018) and Anthony Bourdain's (1956-2018).   No silver linings there, no "all for the best" or "everything has a reason." 

We each of us live with the specter of death, our own or that of someone we love.  And yet we live.  We love each other.  We care for each other.  We care for strangers.  We feel for others and put ourselves in their place. 

At book club the other day the friend who asked for prayers seemed to have found strength.  She is doing everything necessary to enjoy and prolong her life and lessen her pain.  She seems to be doing this with determination and a degree of peace.  Her wisdom has not failed her. Then a few days later she got unexpected news.  Another test showed that her disease has not progressed.  Our friend whose wife died, years ago now, is concentrating on his remaining family.  It grows every year.  Marriages, births. . .  I see peace and strength in him too.  I've read reader responses to the recent suicides--so many people describing their paths in and out of depression, such precious strangers living with this disease, sharing their pain, staying the course.  

I expect God to ready me when it is my time.  So far when I have asked for help and guidance it has been given.  My problems are as bad as anyone's--early deaths, family mental illness, shocks--but I do believe I have been given what in our church's liturgy is called "the peace that passes all understanding."  To me this means that there are facts that should destroy peace but haven't. My life has joy. I expect yours does too.  

My mother, Nina Naomi, was not particularly religious.  Although she loved God she did not attend any church.  When her time came, after one round of chemo she refused another.  She faced death with peace and strength.  Most of us are facing lesser trials than the end of life. But strength and peace are always worth asking for.  That's what I learned from her.  We can give up on many things but not the quest for peace.  

Edouard Vuillard, A Seamstress, 1892

 

EASTER IS ABOUT DYING AND RISING. SO IS LIFE.

Last Sunday was Easter.  How was your week?  Your month?  Ours has been up and down.  Two weeks ago over Palm Sunday weekend we attended the funeral of a dear friend, my age. Friends for 20 years. Is there anything harder than the death of a friend who is our own age?  Sudden, no illness.  Her husband left a widower without warning.  Although my friends and I are mostly past the age of dying young, that was no consolation at the funeral.  Nor does it seem to console as we continue to miss her.  

Then as Holy week progressed, we spent Good Friday with three grandchildren who had the day off school.  They are at the age where fart jokes are THE BEST!  Forgive me for mentioning these ridiculous sounds in the same paragraph with Good Friday.  But I know everyone remembers this stage.  Or is in the midst of this, with nieces, nephews, children or grandchildren.  One grandchild found great obnoxious-sound-makers for the others.  The pièce de résistance of the Easter Baskets.  And of course Alexa, the far-field voice control genius, is the wonder woman of disgusting noises and follow-up descriptive comments.  We listened to her while we played card games, doubled over with laughter.  A silly day.  Then we hit the road.  I hope the children settled down for their evening service. 

Pieta, Michelangelo

Good Friday for us usually culminates in a Tenebrae Service of Darkness where the candles are extinguished one by one until only the Christ candle is left.  It too is removed and a loud noise of a book slamming shut follows.  Everyone leaves in silence.  But this year we shared a lovely Seder celebrating Jewish Passover at the home of friends.  We learned how to repeat longer and longer incantations in one breath.  We drank 4 mandated cups of wine--how relaxing is that?  We welcomed Elijah.  We all felt so uplifted.  Then . . . .

On Easter Saturday we received word that another dear friend has breast cancer.  Found in a routine mammogram. She saw the radiologist yesterday and will see the surgeon next week.  Later the same day another beloved grandpa in the family was rushed to the ER.  He spent his Easter in the ICU.  Three stents and angioplasty for a heart that had seemed perfectly fine.  

So Easter is about dying and rising and I feel like that is what we do.  At the funeral of our friend her young granddaughter honored us with her beautiful God-given voice singing "And He will raise you up on eagles' wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun.  And hold you in the palm of His hand." ♬  I hope you know the melody.  

The Seder was the perfect segue into the Resurrection. Easter we spent alone with church, brunch and a day outdoors.  

Isn't life like this?  We have wonderful times then a reminder triggers something sad, a disappointment or grief.  Right in the midst of happiness.  Or the other way around. We're stuck in an involuntary repetitive thought when something lovely intervenes, something simple like a fragrance or the sight of spring blooms or a boy with his dog.  


I am not a philosopher or theologian. I have no moral or wisdom to offer. I am just an observer.  But I see dying and rising everywhere.  In our love for one another.  In nature.  In our goals and dreams.  In our health.  In the poetry I read.  And this week in Easter.  Do you see it too?   With blessings for us all, Nina Naomi