The Boy's Birthday Wish

The Boy (TB) turned 7 this week. Before blowing out his candles, he paused to make his birthday wish. Under his breath, I heard him mumble, "Mama, Daddy, Sissy, Auntie, and Nunkie." When I asked him about it later he told me that all he wanted for his birthday was what he already had, his family.

I've written before about The Boy's remarkable moments of spiritual maturity. When My Imaginary Friend (IF) reads these stories he warns me about painting the wrong impression. Somehow he seems to think that I need to remind people that TB is not always like this, that sometimes he's a thoughtless, selfish little boy. IF had similar comments when I first posted my remarks from my Dad's funeral. So just for the record: My Dad was imperfect. TB is imperfect.

One of my favorite quotes is from Fr. Alexander Schmeman's last homily: To love is to remember. I've got a little twist on that for IF: Sometimes, to love is to forget.

Blues Beget Blues

It seems that (at least for those of us that struggle with depression) once our psyches start traveling down the path of sadness or depression, all of our sadnesses, depressions, failures and disappointments are more easily brought to mind. So it is that something as cheerful as the picture of the 12 foot snowman brings me back to the year of my mother's death. Just about any song from the 80's, no matter how danceable, can plunge me into the dark days of my divorce. And an innocuous Kansas license plate can bring my Dad's passing to mind and put a lump in my throat.

A friend sent me an article from Frederica Matthewes-Green that contained the following passage that is helping to nudge me back to sanity. Speaking of an epiphany she had during her father's funeral, Frederica writes:

He was [now] standing in the searching light of God, where all things are made clear and all truth is known. That meant that, from his perspective, our relationship was for the first time perfect and whole, in a way it could never have been on earth.

Though I don’t yet have that perspective, I can still grasp its truth. The only place I can ever meet my father again is in the presence of God, who understands us both, perfectly—much better than we can understand ourselves. And even though he sees right through us, his response is endless love.

This passage helped me to see that I wasn't just missing my Dad. I was also mourning the fact that our relationship wasn't as good as it could have been, and any attempt to improve it now seemed lost. It also helped me to see that I need not mourn as those without hope. All is not as it seems.

Higher Than the Angels

I've been thinking about Dad an awful lot this winter. As spring break approaches, I'll sometimes think about going to Florida to visit him. And then I'll remember that he's dead.

The guy who watches me shave every morning looks more and more like the guy who used to dandle me on his knee, and tuck me in at night, and kneel by my bed to pray for me when I was sick. Is it any wonder then that after having watched my Dad stop breathing, and held his hand as his soul left his body that I have been thinking an awful lot about my own mortality?

I've already written on the tragedy of death (A Good Word). But I mentioned something in that piece that I think needs further elucidation. I wrote "But I don't believe, and my Dad didn't believe that the story ended with the banishment of Adam and Eve from Paradise. The Uncreated One came into the world to restore all of creation. The Creator of Man became a man to redeem all men. The Deathless One endured death to destroy death. Adam and Eve are not the end of the story. Jesus is." What did I mean by that?

At the time, I'm sure I was thinking merely of the eternal life that Jesus brought into the world, that death was not the end. But recently I've been thinking about the awesome goodness and power of God. Originally, He made us a little lower than the angels. We messed that up, preferring instead to be merely animals. But God, through His assumption of our human nature, death and resurrection, has improved on His original design by making us partakers of His divine nature. In the end, through the grace of God, we are all capable of being raised higher than the angels.

Is there suffering and pain and death in the meantime (a very long meantime)? Of course, but God has made, is making, will make it better, much better than Adam and Eve had it. Incomparably better. Indescribably better.

The other night I was listening to an interview with a recently widowed woman who was struggling with her grief and her faith that God could work even this out for good. She said that in order to keep herself together she sometimes walks around the house yelling to herself, "God is in control. He knows what He's doing. Help me to trust You, God." But I'm sure that even if she had had perfect faith, it would still hurt. Even Jesus wept at the death of a friend.

A Good Word

Every funeral marks a tragedy. We feel that tragedy most sharply at the funeral of the youngest of the victims of death. And although our minds might tell us that the funeral of an old, sick, great-grandfather isn't as much of a tragedy as the funeral of a young child, our hearts tell us otherwise. Our hearts know that this isn't the way it's supposed to be. We weren't made to last just a few decades. Death is not what we were created for. This is one of the points of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve: God didn't bring Death into this world, we did. This is why every death is a tragedy.

But I don't believe, and my Dad didn't believe that the story ended with the banishment of Adam and Eve from Paradise. The Uncreated One came into the world to restore all of creation. The Creator of Man became a man to redeem all men. The Deathless One endured death to destroy death. Adam and Eve are not the end of the story. Jesus is. And though we shed tears now, and suffer and strive, we have been given a glimpse of the end. And it is not a tragedy.

"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him." 1 Cor. 2:9 (NKJV)

Many preachers can't seem to resist turning a funeral service into an "evangelistic crusade." I guess it seems like a natural opportunity to them. With a little nudge everyone of us can see into the future and see ourselves layed out in a coffin. With a mention of the possibility of an eternity in Hell, maybe they can "save a soul." But this technique does a disservice to the memory of those who, like my Dad, didn't live as a Christian in order to avoid Hell. My Dad never lectured me that I should or shouldn't behave in a certain manner in order to avoid Hell. With my Dad it was all about pleasing God, it was about being thankful that God had delivered him from the self-destructive path he was on.

Now at Pascha I know I'll be thinking about both of my parents as we sing: "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down Death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life."

(The above is based on comments I made at my Dad's funeral in December 2005.)