Death and Relationship

Death and Relationships

“We are given each other in trust. I think people are much too wonderful to be alive briefly and gone.”  Marilynne Robinson.

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When I talk with spiritual friends who have experienced the death of a loved one, I remind them that the God of my understanding does not give us an amazingly loving relationship with someone else and then abruptly take it away. Death is not a period at the end of a sentence but more like a comma. The relationship still goes on.

Our loved ones are still in relationship with us but in a way that we don’t yet understand. We can sometimes feel their presence. We often feel and know their prayers. Frederick Buechner has written about doing active imagination with those we love who have died in his book, A Crazy, Holy, Grace. We talk with them in the silence of our mind but we often can still feel their presence supporting and loving us just as they did before when they were alive.

I also remind friends that those we love are now with us, at all times, beside us, again in some form we do not understand. When they were alive, we were only present with them when we saw them physically. They are now always with us closer than we can explain.

Joanna joannaseibert.com.

Guest Writer: Burton, Love of Jesus

Guest Writer: Larry Burton, Love of Jesus

“I’ve got the love of Jesus, love of Jesus, down in my heart.” George William Cooke, I’ve got the Joy, Joy, Joy Joy, 1925.

 Memories are a way of discovering where God has been active in our lives.  Of course, we have to be willing to bring them to mind, both the good and the not so good.  Summer brings its own particular set of memories. 

This summer I am reminded of summer camp.  My mind easily traverses the years back to the 1950s and a particular summer camp in Southern Indiana.  There, amidst the rolling hills, rivers, caves, and farm land was Rivervale.  It was a church camp, and every summer we went there for at least a week.  Sometimes we went with our friends, other times we were reunited with those we saw only once a year.  Looking back, I can see what a sacred place it was (and I am pretty sure it still is)! 

Thinking back, I realize that at Rivervale’s very center was the Tabernacle, a huge, open-sided building large enough to see at least a couple of hundred—maybe three hundred—people.  That it was at the geographical center was not a mistake, for that was where we started and ended each day, with prayers, scripture, a brief homily, and singing.  Always there was singing.  “I’ve got the love of Jesus, love of Jesus, down in my heart,” we would sing time after time.  As many memories as I have of the wonders of nature, the gifts of friendship, the wisdom of the elders, what I remember most is the physical pleasure of singing, and the physical sensation of having the “love of Jesus, love of Jesus, down in my heart.”  I can feel that still.

That memory haunts me—as it may haunt some of my friends from 60 years ago.  Though we were young, they were still spiritual friends; friends with whom I explored what it meant to follow Jesus, what it meant to see God in each and every part of Creation.  And now, all these years later, in a time when my heart breaks for those who are separated, abused, used, lonely, frightened, angry, frustrated, and worst of all despairing.  It is the memory of church camp, of that physical tingling in my chest as I sang…as WE sang…”I’ve got the love of Jesus, love of Jesus, down in my heart,” that still gives me hope.  I hope it does for my friends from long ago, too, because God was surely, and IS surely, at work down in the hearts of God’s people.

Larry Burton

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Movie Date

Movie Date

“I have a theory that movies operate on the level of dreams, where you dream yourself.” Meryl Streep

My granddaughter, Zoe, and I have been having a date for many years on Friday afternoon to watch old movies. I wish we could swim together or walk in the woods or walk down some of Little Rock’s beautiful trails, but my physical disability makes that too difficult. But we can curl up in the king bed in our bedroom each covered by our favorite blankets with all the lights out, eat popcorn, and watch movies. We have watched almost every musical made. Occasionally we watch drama and less often comedy. This week Zoe saw for the first time, Some Like It Hot. I forgot to mention that Zoe is going into the ninth grade and usually I get permission from her parents for certain movies. We usually talk a little about the movie after it is over. Sometimes there is much to talk about, at other times, very little.

In the past I have shown her paintings from my favorite art museums and rarely have we read poetry together.  There is so much grandparents want to share with their precious grandchildren. Mostly, however, it is just the pleasure of being in their presence. I have learned to drop everything I am doing and be with her if she sends a text about a possible movie date.

This movie date has become for me an icon of what prayer time may be about. I think there is some built in homing device where both we and God yearn for each other’s presence. Prayer is occasionally words, but mostly presence. I think God longs to share God’s experience, God’s amazing world with us, but mostly God longs for our presence just as there is a conscious and maybe even a stronger unconscious longing in us just to be in God’s presence as well.

Joanna joannaseibert.com