Thank you to my friend, Evey McKellar, for exposing me to enough of the poet Mary Oliver that I finally realized I needed a book of my own. Got it and there I found, I Wake Close to Morning.

Why do people keep asking to see
God’s identity papers
when the darkness opening into morning
is more than enough?
Certainly any god might turn away in disgust.
Think of Sheba approaching
the kingdom of Solomon,
Do you think she had to ask,
“Is this the place?”

I love that poem. I think, at least as much as beauty can be got, I get it. But, it occurs to me that Oliver could be seen as a little too matter of fact in her wondering why one would ask to see God’s identity papers. It’s true enough that darkness turning into morning is a wondrous thing and surely Solomon’s place was so spectacular that Sheba didn’t feel compelled to ask if she had the right house. But, how about when life doesn’t feel that obvious?

What about the times we aren’t so sure we have the right place? For instance, let’s say there’s a pandemic, a loved one dies, the country you love is terribly divided, some of your friends are expressing their pain, saying it feels like someone’s knee is on their neck but what they hear in return is, “get over it,” and maybe you wake up one morning while it’s still dark but you don’t feel the wonder, you feel lonely. You would really like to hug some of your loved ones that you haven’t seen in long time, some of whom are on the other side of the veil. I know that sounds like a stretch but it could happen, right? Would it be okay to ask God for some ID then?

John the Baptist seems to have had one of those days. The Gospels tell us of a time he sent some of his disciples to ask Jesus if he were indeed the one or if we were still waiting. Of course, John was in prison at that time, facing a beheading so one can appreciate how he could possibly not feel like Sheba in Solomon’s palace and he could be wondering if he was in the right place, hitched to the right guy.

It’s interesting how Jesus answered. He didn’t say, “Here’s my ID. Note how it says, ‘Jesus, The One. Soon to be known as Christ.’” He said, “Tell John what you see, what you hear. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the good news brought to them.”

“What you see, what you hear.” It always comes down to paying attention, being observant. Noting what is.

So, today, as I ride this spinning planet through the universe, watching darkness turn to morning, afternoon turn to dusk, thinking that each full moon is fuller than I remembered and there really are a bunch of stars; I notice.

I notice that I am seeing more clearly, with more empathy. I am not lame, I am able to help. God does not call me unclean and cast me away, my wounds are healing and I am slowly but persistently being transformed into God’s image. I am not deaf, I do hear the cries of the needy. I am not dead, I am alive, very alive. And, I have seen the good news of God’s love and presence come to the despairing.

Of course this is the place. No ID required.

When a loved a one dies a lot of people tell you, “they’ll always be with you,” and “they’ll live on in your memories.” To be honest and perhaps a little cynical, for most of my life I when I heard this I thought; nope, that’s just remembering. They’re gone. We may meet up again some how, some way but for now, we are separated.

Julian of Norwich, the 14’th century mystic, has helped me reconsider that. She said, “The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is seen no person can separate themselves from another.” I think this oneing that she wrote about is true for this life and for this life after death. And, yes I meant to say “this life” twice. We don’t have two lives.

The Apostle Paul points at this unbreakable connectedness when he is making a rather extensive list of things that can not separate us from God or one another, and he includes that which we would think is surely able to separate us if anything is able, death (Romans 8). No, it is not able.

The truth that Julian and Paul proclaim is that we are connected, held together by God and by God’s love. We are one. Another way to put this is that we, and all things, are in God; held together in God. Paul again, “In God we live and move and have our being.”

Could there be a more powerful concept that speaks of connection than the simple word, one. In God, all are one. There is no separation, not even the seeming separation between the living and the dead. We are one.

Obviously, there are ethical implications to this idea. When we start to get it, we even read the command to love our neighbor as our self differently. If we are one, the commandment isn’t telling us to love our neighbor like we love ourselves, it is saying our neighbor is a part of our self. In other words, love your neighbor because your neighbor and you are one. Your neighbor as your self.

But, back to those who have passed.

If this is true, then it’s real. And, if it’s real, it can be experienced. How is it experienced? I’m throwing it out there that it is experienced like all those truisms say. Our loved ones are with us in our heart, in our grief, and in our blessed memories. All that we feel is real, not “just feelings and memories” They are with us and their hand is on our heart.

In fact, if I’m tracking Julian and Paul, it’s more than just a matter of their being with us. They are a part of us and we remain a part of them.

I find a good deal of comfort in the idea that just as I remember and continue to love those on the other side of the veil, they continue to remember and love me. We remain connected. We are together. We are one. The veil is thin.

Amen.

The other day I realized that I was in bad need of some time away, a retreat. I know that seems a little odd in the midst of the isolation brought to us by Covid-19 but that’s actually the reason I needed to get away.

About the time this stuff got serious my father died. We weren’t able to have a memorial service so I’ve been going through life like a guy who’s wound was left open after major surgery. In addition to that, we’d been planning a family vacation with my daughter and her family since October. A wonderful cruise was lined up, tickets purchased, and excursions planned. Nope. No cruise and it’s been weeks since I hugged my grands. Oh, and our portfolio (kind of important to retired folks) has taken a sizable hit. Sprinkle in a few barnyard crazy conspiracy theories and you get Jim with a nice case of stress, thinking John Lennon had no idea when he sang, “Nobody told me there’d be days like this.” But that’s just me.

As you can probably guess, as I have talked with others, there are a lot of people out there who know very well the kick in the gut that comes when you catch yourself thinking, I need to remember to tell Dad that joke and then you remember he’s gone. A lot of folks have lost vacations, graduations, weddings, honeymoons, and funerals; not to mention Palm Sunday and Easter. And, while most of our financial loss is still on paper, way too many have been furloughed or are wondering if their business will survive this. Now, sprinkle in a growing number of friends and neighbors that are requesting prayer for their child, uncle, or grandmother who is suffering from this virus and it can start to feel like the world is hurting all over.

I’ve been sighing a lot, drinking a lot, and eating way too much. I needed to get away.

So I did. Not to a different place geographically. I didn’t go anywhere, I just tweaked my days a bit and declared a three day retreat.

For three days I called myself to prayer four times a days, some kind of morning, midday, early evening, and bedtime praying/pondering. I did a little more sacred reading, cut back on tracking current events, left beer alone, paid attention to what I was eating, spent a little more time outside, wrote some, talked to my dog a good bit, and rested. None of this was a to do list, except the beer and a goal of hitting a high percentage of the prayer times. If anything started to feel like a chore or a requirement that I needed to fulfill if I wanted to do retreat right, I quit, moved on to something that felt lighter. That was my three day retreat.

I came out feeling like it was the most common sense thing I could have done. It was like a coach calling a time out when the game is getting out of hand. I needed it, badly.

Nothing magic happened, nothing changed, but I am feeling more centered and a little more able to share the pain others are carrying.

And there’s this. There was a moment I experienced during one of my prayer times.

I was centering myself, taking a few breaths after going through that afternoon’s order. Inhale, exhale… Most of the time when I’m doing something like this I imagine love in, love out or peace in, peace out. That day, I wasn’t feeling much love and peace so I found myself moving more toward gathering myself for something like a roar on the inhales and then giving an imaginary loud, forest shaking roar of pain when I breathed out. All in my imagination but just as satisfying as if I were actually hurting my throat when I did it. In, a gathering; out, a primal roar, “I’m hurting!” In, a gathering; out “I’m grieving!” In, out more than a few times then I realized hurting and grieving weren’t exactly the words I was looking for.

In, deeper this time; out, more emphatically this time, “I’M LOST! I’m lost! Somebody help me!” And, a word came from the Presence that never leaves us or forsakes us, “You’re not lost. You’re just leaving familiar territory.”

Felt timely. It was the word of God for me, perhaps for you.

I got my brother’s text just as we hit the driveway. He, Sam, was asking where I was and I was delighted to tell him, at exactly 3:36, that we were arriving at Dad’s house. You see, an hour before we left for our 280 mile trip I had told him that our ETA was 3:30. That was a non-google maps assisted call and I was impressed with myself.

He texted back that he would see me at the nursing home in a few. That’s Hunter talk for. “If you want to see Dad alive, get here soon.” We unloaded the dogs and headed to AutumnCare.

When we got to the room, we found Dad unresponsive except his restless breathing would ease a bit when we turned him or rubbed his back. Occasionally, when I bent down to look in his face, his eyes would look in my direction but the blue twinkle I’d known all my life wasn’t there.

I started trying to remember our last conversation. I know we talked about Jesus always being with us after I read the Upper Room devotional to him a few days before. And, of course he told me that he loved me and I said that I loved him too when I left. But, the last conversation may have been when I was feeding him lunch and I got him to eat one more cooked carrot from his beef stew.

“I’m tired. Now that I’ve eaten a carrot and can see again, I’m done.”

“Come on Dad, one more carrot?”

He took the second carrot from the fork, slowly chewed and swallowed. “Oh no! The lights are too bright! Turn them off!” An apparent overdose of eye health due to one carrot too many.

We sat and watched. After a couple of hours, Kathryn and Vikki, Sam’s wife, went back to the house to feed the dogs and let them out. It was just Sam, Dad, and me when Dad’s eyes rolled back and he tried to throw up. We rushed to the bed to get him off his back. After we rolled him, he settled into a soft, shallow breathing pattern, punctuated with an occasional long, sighing exhale. When his breathing slowed, Sam put his finger on his pulse. “It’s weakening.”

One last, long sigh and the breathing stopped. Sam pressed his wrist, “nothing.” I stared at my father’s still body and began to weep. Sam patted my back and offered a prayer of thanks. I gathered myself and started to offer a prayer as well. My father took a deep breath.

“What the hell?” That was me. Sam shook his head, chuckled and said, “I thought he was gone.” “I did too!”

A few minutes later Flo, who over the last four and a half years has become a family member, and April, another C.N.A., came in to change Dad’s gown. Leaving out the “what the hell” part, I told them what had happened.

“Is that what you call a ronafor?” asked April. I found it fascinating that such events actually have a name, ronafors. Sam later acknowledged that his thought was, “How should I know? You’re the one that went to nursing school.” But he asked, “What’s a ronafor?”

April looked puzzled and said, “Is that why you were in the hall looking for Rhonda?” Rhonda was the head nurse that night; Sam had gone to the desk to ask her if she could give Dad something for his restlessness. That’s what he called Rhonda for.

I snorted. Flo said, “I thought you said ronafor too.” Sam and I burst out laughing! I thought we were going to lose it right there but we gathered ourselves and acted semi-mature long enough for Flo and April to change Dad’s gown and fix his sheets. As soon as they left, we lost it and when Kathryn and Vikki came back they thought we had gone crazy. Who’s to argue?

We had a couple more ronafors that night. Each time he timed it perfectly. Just when we thought he was gone, he’d come back. Each time my brother and I were completely inappropriate. Our father was literally minutes away from dying and his two sons, both of whom qualify for the senior discount, were acting like fourth graders headed for a spanking as soon as church was over.

Death did come. The four of us were standing around his bed when Vikki silently leaned down and gave Dad a hug. As she held him, he passed through the veil.

When we were sure, Sam said he’d go get Rhonda so she could call it. It didn’t occur to me until I was planning to write this line but for some reason I let one last chance for a ronafor joke slip past me.

Sam and Vikki went to get the information for the funeral home and Kathryn stepped out to call our daughters. I was in the room alone with Dad when Flo and April came back to clean him up. I said, “We’d like for you put this East Carolina shirt and pants on him. We think he’d like purple and gold better than a hospital gown.” “Of course.”

They were gentle and respectful. They cleaned him, dressed him, then stood back to see how he looked. They weren’t satisfied so they adjusted him a little to get him just right. I thought about the women who had followed Jesus preparing him for the tomb.

When they left I told them thanks. Then I looked at Dad and a part of me wondered if he would say thanks as well or say one of the little things he used say to tease Flo. He didn’t.

A few hours later I stood at the door of my father’s house, watching the morning get stronger. There was a male cardinal on the other side of the driveway, bright red, and I remembered the legend that cardinals bring greetings from the other side. I thought it’d be nice to see a female too so I could believe Momma and Dad were together. There she was, on a limb above him, and just as a I spotted her she flew down next to her mate. Then I heard creation whisper, “They said to tell you, they’re fine.”

My brother and I are agreed, our father is in his last chapter. He is almost ninety-three, suffered a debilitating stroke four years ago, and a couple of weeks ago we thought it was time to plan the funeral but apparently he had a couple more pages before the end.

He’s very weak, sleeps a lot, doesn’t eat much, but still tries to get a story out now and then. The other night he was telling Kathryn and me about a man who had a German Shepherd who’s girlfriend took it with her when they broke up and now he wants to go home but he can’t because he’s not allowed on the sofa. Then he paused, wrinkled his brow, smiled, and said, “I’m not sure that’s exactly how it goes.” I’ve got no idea where we were headed with that German Shepherd but I couldn’t imagine a better ending. Life lesson: sometimes it’s best just to stop. shrug, and smile.

What else have you taught me, Dad? Certainly to be honest. Go one more round even if you think you’ve lost. Keep doing one more day, maybe they’ll plan your funeral too early. Grow when life’s seasons change. Love one woman the best you can. Smile when a friend walks in the room, even if you’re on your deathbed. How to live the last chapter.

We all have a last chapter. Sitting with my first and best hero as he goes through his is hard, sweet, holy, earthy, real, surreal, sacred, funny, tragic, tiring… life. I’m anxious about what my next chapter will be like without him in it.

Sometimes I know exactly what to do: drive a bit so I can spend a few days with him, tell him I love him, cut up his pancakes, put his teeth in the cup for the night, put lotion on his face after shaving him, and try to support my brother who is the primary caregiver. (a woman once told me that if I was half the man my brother is, I’m alright. I told her half sounded about right)

Sometimes I have no idea. No idea. This is my first time watching my father die.

Sometimes all I know to do is breathe, be honest, go one more round, love the best I can, start a good story and remember to smile when I realize that’s not exactly how I thought it went.

A little girl asked her mom, “Since love hurts, why do we love?” It’s a child’s question. Surely any semi-thoughtful adult would be able to field it while doing the dishes and listening to the evening news.

Well move me out of the semi-thoughtful adult column because I’m calling that one a stumper. Especially when I walk past the picture of my mother, a daughter of Pageland SC, “the watermelon capital of the world,” and she’s laughing because we just gave her a huge watermelon with a bow on it. I pause and look into her eyes and I can still hear the laugh. I smile because she’s smiling but my heart triples in weight and cries yet again, as it has for almost thirteen years, “I want my Momma.”

Or maybe I’m watching my sleeping father with his newly acquired oxygen tube and I’m wondering, just what would I give for one more round of golf? To relive one of those games where I, or he, I don’t care which, is only assured of winning on the last green.

Why do we love? The question itself hurts. I hate that a little girl already knows enough hurt to ask it. This early in life does she already get that the people we love all eventually leave? Surely she hasn’t noticed that those who are most precious sometimes hurt us the most. Or worse, we hurt them. Why do we love? Forget people, sometimes I wonder why we ever get a new dog?

But then I try to imagine my life without memories of my mother’s laugh; my life without memories of golf balls that went in from 20 yards out or just missed to the left, again it doesn’t matter, I was with my dad; my life without silly puppies that jumped for joy just because I came home. What would your life be like if that precious person who could hurt you like no other had never been in it? Empty? Void? Colorless? Would it really be life?

It occurs to me that when we are loving we are living life at its most real, most alive level. I believe we are built for it, created for it. Scripture proclaims that God is love and that God is the God of life so if you ask me, when we love we are experiencing God’s presence in our lives. We love because it makes us truly alive. We love because it makes us us.

I’ll go even further. It’s not just when we are laughing at watermelons or riding in golf carts. We are experiencing God’s presence in our lives when we hurt, sigh, and long for a day that feels like it’s gone forever. The apostle Paul says that is God’s Spirit joining with ours in those moments too deep for words. He says that in those moments we join with all creation in longing for the day when everything and everyone says, “This is right. This is good. This is wondrous.” We love because it’s more us than breath itself. It’s God’s best gift, a part of God’s self.

Thanks for asking your mother the question, young one. You make me want to love on. Let’s not be afraid of the hurt. I believe that Love will teach us how to do that.

Every Friday during this season of Advent, the group I’m meeting with comes to the time called, The Inquiry. Each week, one by one, we attempt to answer the question, “How would you like to grow in your relationship with God this next week?”

What a good question! Maybe good enough to be addressed daily instead of weekly? Maybe good enough for us to address prayerfully every morning? Or, maybe good enough to give it a grand answer and set your life’s course around it. A good question indeed.

This week I realized my usual answers weren’t actually appropriate to the question. I was using different words but generally speaking, all my answers could be lumped under, “I would like to do more of the things that I should and less of the things I shouldn’t.” It occurred to me that answers such as this aren’t really addressing how to grow in a meaningful relationship. Doing more good stuff and less bad stuff probably comes from the place in me that wants to feel worthy of God’s love. Doing more good and less bad would be a better fit if the question was, “What can I do to get God to love me more?” and the answer to that question is, nothing. There isn’t anything we can do to get God to love us more.

In that case, seeking to grow in relationship with God begins with the knowledge that we are known and loved right now. The foundation of our relationship is that we can trust that no matter what happens or what we do, God isn’t going to desert us. We are a delight in God’s eyes. How in the next week, are we going to grow in that relationship?

Just as there are many ways to grow in our human relationships, there are many tried and true practices that can serve as pathways to a better relationship with God. The key is to remember that we are invited to walk those paths without masks. We can bring those things that we wish everybody knew about us, and we can bring those things that we hope no one will ever find out, all openly and without fear.

So again I ask, how would you like to grow in your relationship with God in this next week, today, in this lifetime?

Campfires can be sacred places. I have a lot of memories of sitting around them as a young boy with my guys. Sometimes, after the darkness was full, after we decided that stump just outside our dancing ring of light wasn’t actually a wolf and certainly not a wolf-man, some budding theologian would ask something along the lines of, “Do y’all think God is real?”

That’s a great question for a twelve year old to ask his friends but truth is it’s hard for a young fellow to process, even with all the holy whispers that were all around; friends, a good fire, a bazillion stars, and a singing forest. I would usually simply answer, “Yea, sure.” That wasn’t because of much reflection on my part. It was mostly to reduce my chances of going to Hell. Evidence suggests that accidentally grabbing the wrong end of a stick in a fire has a way of making one want to avoid burning forever.

Now days, in the third stage of life,(with a different idea and experience of hell) I am ready with a better answer to the question. Life is real, creation is real, love is real and for me that is a lot of footprints that help make me comfortable saying that God is absolutely real. But, tweak that question from long ago a bit and it becomes a little more troubling. How about, “Do y’all think your God is real? Or, do you file God in the religious compartment of your life denying his presence in the most real parts of your experience?” Now that’s a strong question for any age.

More and more I am convinced that there are three connected parts to authentic spirituality, all of them committed to embracing reality. They are; seeking God as God is not as you wish God to be, owning that you are who you are, and receiving life as it is not as you wish it was.

It’s my experience that this stance requires a little courage. Like most folks, I like the idea that with a little more effort I can get my life straightened out and I have my wishes about how I want life to be and it makes me more than a little anxious when things aren’t going the way I want them. Trials can be disconcerting. Same with my relationship with the Creator. I often get pretty comfortable with my current beliefs and way more than a little anxious when they are threatened. I like it when life is safe, God is figured out, and things are under control. Of course, that is not reality. It is illusion. We meet the real Christ in truth, not in pretending.

I invite you to consider what Jesus meant when he said, “I am the Truth.” I believe that it means that when we seek truth, reality, not illusion; we can trust that at the end of our search we will find Christ. Truth is, God is beyond being grasped, I am who I am, and my genuine experience of God is found in my real life.

It is said that St. Francis of Assisi often spent entire nights praying “Who are you?” along with “Who am I?” Think about it, all night seeking to receive the real God, wrestling to become his real self, in real life. That’s the real path.

Psalm 96 invites all the earth, not just humanity, to tremble before the Lord. As I ponder trembling, it occurs to me that it is an involuntary response, usually associated with fear, so upon first reading I’m thinking that when we remember the awesomeness of God we feel a holy terror causes us to tremble. Why wouldn’t we tremble, and shake, when we consider the unfathomable mystery and deep wildness of the One who once had something to say and the unending, ever expanding universe came into being.

But terror isn’t he only thing that causes trembling. When we consider the many facets of our relationship with God we also tremble:
-like a child on Christmas morning that realizes the gift that was only hoped for, not really expected, is right there under the tree.
-like the youngster on the edge of the board, just before that first jump off a high dive, excited, afraid, forgetting to breathe, thinking about how good it will feel to know that the dare was answered.
-like the athlete who has trained for hours every day for months and the race is about to start.
-like when the person you admire most has just given you the compliment it would have been embarrassing to admit you longed for.
-like the young lover who knows the first kiss is a moment away.
-like opening the acceptance, or rejection, letter that will change your life’s course.
-like the puppy in the kennel that spots its owner coming for it and it knows we are on our way home.

All that. More than we hoped for, a challenge that calls for all, complete acceptance, our deepest heart’s desire, joy, love… sometimes it causes me to tremble.

My new neighbor was working in his yard when I walked by the other day so I stopped to chat. He told me that a couple of hours earlier he had been struggling to move a large stone to a new place in his flower garden when a fellow he didn’t know came by on his walk and offered to help.

“I’m not sure I would have been able to do it without his help,” my new friend told me.

He went on to describe the helpful stranger and I realized it was George, another neighbor who lives a couple of miles away and is known for his long walks.

“A tall fellow, really nice.”

“Yep. A good guy for sure. He helped us with Operation Santa Claus at the elementary school and does a lot in the POA.”

Here’s the back story that I am sure my two friends don’t know:

The new neighbor goes to a church that has decided to pull out of its denomination because its leaders feel like it needs to make a stand against full inclusion of the LGBTQ community. I don’t know where my friend is on this and I doubt he is aware that I know this is going on in his church.

George is gay and is happily married to Dave.

Again, “I’m not sure I would have been able to do it without him.” Hold that thought while I share some more from my life.

I have a good friend that has shown me that being a Christ follower often requires courage and faithfulness. She’s a lesbian. I have another friend, a wise teacher and Bible scholar, that has helped guide me through change and painful times. He’s gay. Another that is crazy smart and one of the most insightful, loving people I know. He’s transgender. I could go on for a while but hear what I’m saying. These aren’t people I’ve simply met or read about. They are dear friends, family, I am not sure I would be able to do it without them.

That’s what distresses me so much about the present crisis of the United Methodist Church, my church. In just a few weeks we are going to be deciding our stance concerning human sexuality and there are many that are all in on making sure that we say to the LGTBQ community that they need to change who they are in order to be fully accepted.

It hurts me to type that. For one, it hurts because I do not believe that is true. I believe that they are fully accepted, not by me but by God, just as I am. My sound Biblical and Theological defense of this statement can wait for another time. Mostly it hurts because I don’t think we will be able to do it without them.