Today, I officiated my first memorial service. 

To this point, all of the services that I've done have been weddings.  A wedding is a happy occasion.  Everyone is eager, excited, and for the most part full of good feelings.  If you can keep that mood going in your ceremony, all goes well, even if you screw up.  And you will.  But you laugh, hope everyone laughs with you, and keep going.  I think that you'd have to screw up pretty badly to do a wedding badly.

A memorial is a different thing entirely.  Paul was a man who was very much loved and respected, by everyone who knew him.  A teacher, a mentor, a husband and father.  I wanted very much to do this well, but at a memorial you don't have the buffer of happy feelings.  You have memories of someone who touched many, many lives, and now lives on only in their memories.  Memorial services are ways for people to connect with those memories and feeling, and share them.  The sharing somehow eases the pain of loss, by dilutes it with other memories.  When you know that other people are sharing your feelings, it is easier for you to feel them.

This was one of the most difficult things that I've done as a clergy person, but I'm glad that I did it.  Weddings are a transition into a new life.  Death is another transition entirely, but the transition is for the people who are left behind.  Rather than joining two lives together, death is separating one life from many, many other lives.   It's as much a part of life as birth is, and it needs to be respected, and acknowledged.  The best way, I think, to do that, is to keep the memory of the one who's passed fresh, and the best way for that is to share those memories.  Too often in our clean, sterile, technological culture, death is seen as something to be avoided, and hidden away, and hidden from.  We've lost the intimacy with death that our ancestors and other cultures who live and lived closer to the bone have.  Sharing the memories, and speaking of the life of the person who's died is the best way to keep them with us.  The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote "Let us not be gripped by the fear of death.  If another day be added to our lives, let us joyfully receive it, but let us not anxiously depend on our tomorrows.  Though we grieve the deaths of our loved ones, we accept them and hold on to our memories as precious gifts."  Paul's greatest legacy was the gift of love that he shared with everyone around him.  That love will remain as long as his memory does.  This is a lesson that I should know, but it's too easy to forget in the rumble and noise of life.

So live well, and love the people who share your life.  They are precious gifts, and the gift of tomorrows will not always come.  Life is too short for anger, and resentment, and scorekeeping.  Memories are all that you will leave, so leave good ones.  And when you remember someone, remember them with love, too.

Peace,

In my last post, I wrote about faith.  It was my intention this time to write about hope, but I realized that faith and hope are as closely linked as cause and effect.  I have faith in the redeeming capacity of love, and I have hope that we are all capable of love.  But are they really separated enough to try to differentiate them?  Marriages are based on faith in each other, and hope for the future, but they are almost inextricably linked.  How do you talk about one without talking about the other?

A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by a woman who wanted someone to perform her wedding.  It was a very short timeline, just a few days between the initial contact and the wedding date.  She and her fiance had made plans for a big family ceremony in the fall, on her parent's pumpkin farm, but on the spur of the moment chose another day for a small, intimate wedding with just a couple of close friends.  The reason for the change in plans was because the wedding date that they had chosen was the birthday of the bride's daughter.  She sent me a picture of her daughter, who had died eleven years ago, and would have been thirteen years old on her mother's wedding day.

I can't imagine the pain of losing a child.  The very thought of it is like a black hole yawning in front of me, swallowing everything that comes near it.  Yet, out of that pain, out of that empty abyss, she created a new life.

She told me that it was the memory of her daughter that had given her the strength to continue her life and bring something good from the tragedy of having a child taken from you.  Her grief inspired her to start a non-profit organization that provides support services to children and families who have suffered the loss of a family member.  It was the death of her daughter that gave her the realization that she could live a life based on love, and not fear.  And it was for that reason that she chose her daughter's birthday to marry the man that she loved and wanted to spend the rest of her life with. 

I can't think of any better testament to hope than that.

It was my great pleasure to perform another wedding ceremony this weekend.  All brides are beautiful, and all grooms are handsome, but this couple were even more so.  Young, nervous, excited, and ready to begin their new lives together as husband and wife.  The setting was a park near Grand Rapids, and the sun was shining and the air was full of birdsong. 

I love performing weddings.  To me, there is nothing more human, or more sacred, than the joining together of two lives to meet a shared future.  This world can be a cold, empty place, and when you reach out your hand into the darkness, and find another hand to hold onto, that is truly miraculous.  I'm not religious in the traditional meaning of the word, but I have a sense of the divine.  That which passes between between two people who have decided that their lives are incomplete without each other is divine.

I'm not anti-religion.  Please don't get me wrong.  I believe that everyone has a path that they should follow.  Some follow the path that they were shown as a child, and are quite happy to do so. If they are happy, then that is as it should be.  If your faith sustains you, helps you to live in this world, gives you purpose and meaning and, yes, the divine, then that is the path for you to walk.  Some, like me, have chosen a different path, a path without faith in the traditional teachings and dogmas of our culture.  And again, if this is the path that you have chosen, that is as it should be.  One of the definitions of faith is "belief in something for which there is no proof".  Meaning, at least to me, that whether or not you have faith in a particular religious teaching is purely subjective.  We can't know for certain whether or not a particular god or gods exist.  Any deity worthy of the title is going to exist outside of our ability to prove that it exists.  The only way to know whether or not that god exists is through faith, and not all of us have that, or even feel the need for it.
Besides faith, the other gifts are hope and love.  That's why I've become a wedding minister.  A wedding is an act of love, but it's also an act of hope.  A person getting married is declaring to their partner and to the world that their future is bonded to this other person's future.  They believe that life together is going to be better than life separated, and that they trust this person with their hopes and dreams and fears, now and tomorrow and all of their tomorrows to come.  This other person will help them carry that love and hope forward into the unknown.
Reading this, I guess maybe that I do have faith after all.  Not in gods or revealed wisdoms, but in humanity.  In spite of all of the horrible things that we are capable of doing to each other, we are capable of love.  And when we love, we are divine.  And I have faith in that.