Here's one I wrote about an ordination in California, a cousin's funeral in Richmond and a dear friend's funeral at St. John's.
The View from the Left Coast…
“Vocatus atque non vocatus,
Deus aderit.”
--quote on the tombstone of Carl Jung
“Why don’t
you stay for a while?” Bishop William Swing of the Diocese of California asked
me on the plaza outside Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, during the reception
for the three priests and six deacons he had just ordained.
“I don’t know, Bishop,” I answered,
trying to be truthful, “I think I have to ease my way into being on the West
Coast. I’ve been here less than 24 hours and I already feel a little anxious….”
Bishop Swing and I have a history—it’s not “shared” history, but it is a history all the same. We are both West
Virginia boys, born and raised and ordained to the priesthood in the Mountain
State. When Bishop Swing and his wife were visiting Yale/Berkley Divinity
School, Jennifer Hornbeck brought them to Waterbury. We walked around St.
John’s and had lunch together. The West Virginia history connected the Bishop and me. Whenever I meet someone from
West Virginia, we tend to know each other in a complicated way. It’s not
like “being blood”, as West
Virginians refer to relatives—but it’s something like that. The shared story of
strangers in strange lands.
And San Francisco was a “strange land”
for me. I wasn’t ready for the brown hills of the Bay Area. I expected
greenness and lushness. But it is, in the odd northern California calendar, the
dry season when everything is brown.
Jennifer told me that spring and summer in New England astounded her because it
was so green and alive. Such color and
vitality comes only in the fall and winter in San Francisco. Two coasts: two different worlds.
Going to Jennifer’s ordination to the
diaconate was an impulsive decision. Bishop Swing was right—flying to the West
Coast on Friday and back on Sunday wasn’t a logical thing to do. On Monday
morning I woke up on both Pacific Daylight Time and then, three hours later, on
Eastern Daylight time! I’m too old to throw my systems into such shock in so
short a time.
But it didn’t make much more sense to
ride an Amtrak train to Richmond and then back the next day for my cousin
Bradley Perkins’ memorial service. And when I got back, there was Ed
Jefferson’s funeral to worry about. Too much dying in too confined a
space—eight, or was it nine, funerals in May? Maybe I needed to fly across the
country and back for a little new life.
*
Bradley Perkins was my Aunt Georgia’s
son. Brad and his younger sister, Mejol, were, along with my four Pugh cousins,
what passed for my older brothers and sisters as I grew up. Mejol went on
vacations with my parents and me. Gayle Pugh—the only girl of the four Pugh
cousins—was a baby sitter for me. All this was concentrated around my
grandmother’s house up on the hill in Conklintown, West Virginia. All six
cousins lived on that hill as well. At Bradley’s “celebration”—which was what
his family called his memorial service—they were all there: Mejol, Gayle,
Duane, Marlin and Joel. I’m not sure when we were last all in the same room
together—perhaps at my father’s funeral almost 15 years ago. I was overwhelmed
with memory and nostalgia. Someone—Gayle’s husband, I think, took a picture of
us all together.
Maybe I should do a View from Mamaw’s hill next month and
tell you more about them. But suffice it to say, what I did not, perhaps could
not, say to them—“bidden or unbidden, God
is present.”
*
Then there was Ed.
“O’ Ed…o’ Ed o’….”
I was flying over South Dakota when
Ed’s death really hit me. I was looking down from 37,000 feet on a landscape
that is as barren and empty as anything in this world. Somewhere to the north
was Mount Rushmore, but I couldn’t see it, we were simply too high and it was
simply too small. Perspective is everything. From that height, the world looks
different. And it was then I realized how utterly different my life was going
to be without Ed Jefferson in it. Ed was Treasurer of St. John’s when I arrived
a dozen years ago. And, through hook and crook, I had convinced him (never a
hard job!) to stay on year after year. I learned to respect his opinions and
follow his advice. And he and I never agreed on much of anything politically or
theologically. We were Ying and Yang—the two opposites that completed
each other. He filled up a space in my life as large as Mount Rushmore is from
the ground. And suddenly, the landscape was bleak and vacant without him.
And, 7 miles above the earth, I
grieved for him.
And I knew, in an inexplicable way,
that “bidden or unbidden, God is
present.”
Jen’s ordination was glorious. Grace Cathedral’s impeccable Gothic
architecture echoed the sounds of joy and hope and wonder and new possibility.
Along with her parents, three children, her friend from Tennessee and the
Rector of her home church, I presented her for ordination. My anxiety at being
three time zones away from what I know and understand left me for an hour or
so. Vocatus Deus aderit—my fellow
West Virginian, Bill Swing, called on God to be present and the Spirit swirled
around Jen and me and the 1500 people in that glorious cathedral. In my own way,
I prayed for my cousin, Brad, and my dear friend, Ed. And, in ways I neither
understand nor profess to be able to explain, a good 3000 miles from Richmond
and Waterbury, God was present. And the Spirit swirled beyond my knowing to
include Brad and Ed and all those “we love but see no more.”
Reason enough for two long rides on
airplanes. Reason enough and more….
Shalom, Jim
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