Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings,
with your most gracious favor,
and further us with your continual help,
that in all our works,
begun, continued, and ended in you,
we may glorify your holy name,
and finally, by your mercy,
obtain everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
A friend of mine died last week. I don’t know how else to
put it; or rather, I don’t want to put it any other way. I hadn’t spoken to him
in several months, since I left Nashville, and I didn’t even know he was sick
until three, maybe four weeks ago. What do people do? What do I do? This seems like the silliest, most
obvious of questions, but really I don’t know.
I suppose the thing to do is not to ask that question, not
to ponder my response to make sure it’s timely, appropriate, enough. It will
never be enough. John has died. This fact leaves a gaping hole in life, in
lives many more than my own.
A few minutes ago I was trying to conjure up my grief (yes,
I have to do that sort of thing), and I rummaged through my closet to find the
card that has on it the prayer above, the prayer from Weavings, a journal John edited for years. We read this prayer at
the beginning of every weekly meeting John and I had during the year I spent
under his guidance at The Upper Room.
As time went on I found it more and more surprising that John wanted us to
recite this prayer so regularly. It seemed so orthodox, so Anglican, so Jesus-y…so unlike what I expected from a
man as progressive in his thinking as John was.
Why did we pray this prayer? I never asked. I wish I could
say I have an answer now, but no. I have a feeling I won’t for years, perhaps
many of them. Still, it brings me…something. Not peace, exactly, or even
comfort, but just a bit of memory, a bit of John. Is that what prayer is?
Memory? Presence? The memory of presence? If it is, then I’m on board with it
more than I’ve ever been. Not that prayer needs me to be on board, but I need to be on board with prayer, or at
least with some act, any act, that makes the dead come alive again.
I wanted to write this to, oh, I don’t know, process my
feelings, or to use what I learned as a hospital chaplain this summer, to allow
grief to enter and to welcome it. Now I’m not so sure. But, I am utterly
convinced that not enough people knew John because the whole world didn’t. I am
writing this, and sharing it, so at least another handful of people know how good he was, or is. If not the whole world,
I want a few more creatures to remember him. Amen.
