Enough is Enough

Preaching was my passion. One of the first things I learned about the effect of preaching was that what people heard was not always what you thought you were saying. As carefully as a preacher may sort through historical texts and biblical criticism and engage hermeneutics (don’t worry, that is  a fancy theological/philosophical term that is a way to talk about interpretation), the intended point (or points) in a sermon are often usurped by the heart and mind of the listener. Preachers preach to themselves, often saying what they need to hear, and assume it has similar value and meaning to others. The hope is that somehow in the mix, people will hear a word from God. A wise colleague once lifted that promise before me, (thanks Jack Olive). This is an attitude of open receptiveness that I attempt to practice now that I sit in the pew.

My passion for preaching, my desire to be informed and inspired and challenged, is still with me. I carry my high standards for theological integrity and intelligent inquiry as expectations for other preachers. On Easter, though distracted by wiggly grandchildren, and displaced from my normal, comfortable place in the third pew from the front on the left side of the church, I was not disappointed. One phrase, one sentence, one idea grabbed my heart, and I received what I needed to hear. 

“With grief and death come things that require change.”

My own personal season of grief and death has been enlarged in the last month with the deaths of two more colleague/friends and a nineteen year old son of clergy couple friends. My love and concern has been stretched and magnified by a diagnosis of advanced colon cancer and life saving surgery for another dear one. Our collective outrage and despair over gun violence that targets children has sent me to March alongside them and cry out, “enough is enough!” Many days the reality of lost innocence, the brutality of public rhetoric, and the sense of despair, the contagion of fear, is more than enough to bear.

I want to embrace the battle cry, “Never again.” It is a plea and a prayer, a dream and a desire, but in my experience, in the mortal nature of humanity, our protests against death are futile. Death is our common end. The means, the timing, the circumstances are not within our control. And yet, we live, we love, we expend our resources and energy, we protest, we resist.

The change that is happening in me, on this day, April 9th, which would have been our 35th wedding anniversary is that I have come to the end of anticipating with dread those “first-holidays/events” since Larry’s death, and have turned to remember the last times, the final times that last year, those painful final six months. At the end, I could accept death as a blessing.

Today those memories began to give way for the deep memories from times before that, 35 years worth of tenderness. 35 years of kindness and shameless adoration, of always having someone in my corner, supporting and cheering me on, tolerating my moods and idiosyncrasies, infuriating me with his patience, loving unconditionally, always, never-the-less, never less, always more.

Today it feels selfish to miss him, to grieve so deeply, to feel my sorrow in the midst of seemingly greater losses, fresher pain. And yet, as I have been held, I hold others in love, and leave myself open to listen, to be present, to walk alongside. We are not alone in this world. We are meant to be together. I preached it often, I believe it still;

“In the beginning was the relationship.”