Last night's memorial service went rather better than I'd expected.
We've got a new team member these days, a retired United Church minister I'll call FL. When I got there he had things in hand. He'd recruited CCL, the piano teacher, and talked to a few people about what would be good to do. Amazing Grace was requested, and CCL had found Kum By Yah in one of her song books, along with Morning Has Broken.
At around 6:45, a dozen or so of us gathered at the far end of the room, chairs on the dance floor, and FL led the service. A short eulogy, some singing, a poem, some memories shared (the tray!) and a framed picture of our friend smiling down on us from the piano top. Tears and laughter and honour.
We've had memorials of a sort a few times in the past, led mostly by a certain well intentioned person (yes, he was!) either while people were standing in line waiting to eat, or while they were eating and chatting. It wasn't possible for us to intervene on these things, but we found them very... um... very... Suffice it to say that one event featured this guy, apparently because it's what our deceased friend was singing in heaven now.
'Nuff said.
But on this occasion, time and care were taken. Space was set aside. The people gathered who particularly wanted to, nobody was waiting for it to end and it was right. Our friend's relatives might not be having a service, but that's OK. His family did.
My husband wondered on the way home what Robert would have thought if he'd known, sitting in that room last week eating his Dinner with friends, that one week later we'd be sitting a few feet away having his memorial service.
You just never know.
We're feeling more and more how important it is to bear witness to the passing of people. What an obscenity it is to just let them die and bury them in the ground nobody else wanted at the Community Cemetery, unremarked and unremembered.
How important it is to say, "He was here, and he mattered." Even if that's all you can say.
Last week, a bunch of us had a meeting in a church basement, to share a meal, talk about stuff and to hear from a speaker who works for an organization we hope to learn from.
Before he spoke, I said a few words. I didn't prepare well, and it was a bit rambling, but I talked about different kinds of poverty.
I just finished reading "When Helping Hurts", and the author works from the premise that all poverty is the result of bad relationships. And since there are different kinds of relationships, there are different kinds of poverty.
Our relationship with God - When we've lost our childlike understanding that God is there and he's good and he can be heard. When we don't understand who Jesus is and what he's done for us, we can fall into confusion and materialism.
Our relationship with ourselves - When we see ourselves through a fog of what's been said to us and about us, been done to us and 'for our own good' and we forget that we're worth something. We can lose courage and hope and dignity, or fall into the traps of low or inflated self esteem. We start thinking that we've failed, so there's no point in trying.
Our relationship with others - When we've been hurt, disappointed, abused, abandoned. Or we have hurt, disappointed, abused or abandoned people who relied on us. We find community with people who are harmful to us and to themselves. We lose connection with the people who ought to be our family and our neighbours either through their fault or our own.
Our relationship with the rest of creation - When we don't fit in with the world around us, don't belong, can't function healthily in society. When we don't have enough money, can't read, are mentally or physically ill. When we reject it all, or are rejected.
It's easy to see at least two, maybe three of these in our friend's death. I can't speak to his spiritual state.
But his financial condition, his isolation from all but a few, the absence of his family, his relatively young death, all speak to a variety of poverties in his life.
Which can seem really sad. But if you think about it, it's actually very freeing. A variety of opportunities.
Nobody is good at everything, and nobody can respond to all of these poverties at once, but all of us can respond to one of them.
We all have something to give, to receive, to teach, to learn.
We all can help. Somehow.
r
We've got a new team member these days, a retired United Church minister I'll call FL. When I got there he had things in hand. He'd recruited CCL, the piano teacher, and talked to a few people about what would be good to do. Amazing Grace was requested, and CCL had found Kum By Yah in one of her song books, along with Morning Has Broken.
At around 6:45, a dozen or so of us gathered at the far end of the room, chairs on the dance floor, and FL led the service. A short eulogy, some singing, a poem, some memories shared (the tray!) and a framed picture of our friend smiling down on us from the piano top. Tears and laughter and honour.
We've had memorials of a sort a few times in the past, led mostly by a certain well intentioned person (yes, he was!) either while people were standing in line waiting to eat, or while they were eating and chatting. It wasn't possible for us to intervene on these things, but we found them very... um... very... Suffice it to say that one event featured this guy, apparently because it's what our deceased friend was singing in heaven now.
'Nuff said.
But on this occasion, time and care were taken. Space was set aside. The people gathered who particularly wanted to, nobody was waiting for it to end and it was right. Our friend's relatives might not be having a service, but that's OK. His family did.
My husband wondered on the way home what Robert would have thought if he'd known, sitting in that room last week eating his Dinner with friends, that one week later we'd be sitting a few feet away having his memorial service.
You just never know.
We're feeling more and more how important it is to bear witness to the passing of people. What an obscenity it is to just let them die and bury them in the ground nobody else wanted at the Community Cemetery, unremarked and unremembered.
How important it is to say, "He was here, and he mattered." Even if that's all you can say.
Last week, a bunch of us had a meeting in a church basement, to share a meal, talk about stuff and to hear from a speaker who works for an organization we hope to learn from.
Before he spoke, I said a few words. I didn't prepare well, and it was a bit rambling, but I talked about different kinds of poverty.
I just finished reading "When Helping Hurts", and the author works from the premise that all poverty is the result of bad relationships. And since there are different kinds of relationships, there are different kinds of poverty.
Our relationship with God - When we've lost our childlike understanding that God is there and he's good and he can be heard. When we don't understand who Jesus is and what he's done for us, we can fall into confusion and materialism.
Our relationship with ourselves - When we see ourselves through a fog of what's been said to us and about us, been done to us and 'for our own good' and we forget that we're worth something. We can lose courage and hope and dignity, or fall into the traps of low or inflated self esteem. We start thinking that we've failed, so there's no point in trying.
Our relationship with others - When we've been hurt, disappointed, abused, abandoned. Or we have hurt, disappointed, abused or abandoned people who relied on us. We find community with people who are harmful to us and to themselves. We lose connection with the people who ought to be our family and our neighbours either through their fault or our own.
Our relationship with the rest of creation - When we don't fit in with the world around us, don't belong, can't function healthily in society. When we don't have enough money, can't read, are mentally or physically ill. When we reject it all, or are rejected.
It's easy to see at least two, maybe three of these in our friend's death. I can't speak to his spiritual state.
But his financial condition, his isolation from all but a few, the absence of his family, his relatively young death, all speak to a variety of poverties in his life.
Which can seem really sad. But if you think about it, it's actually very freeing. A variety of opportunities.
Nobody is good at everything, and nobody can respond to all of these poverties at once, but all of us can respond to one of them.
We all have something to give, to receive, to teach, to learn.
We all can help. Somehow.
r
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