I'll Never Let Go? Really?

OK. This is the thing. I keep imagining that scene near the end of Titanic--Rose holding onto the frozen and very dead Jack, saying "I'll never let go" as she opens her fingers one by one and Jack sinks down into the North Atlantic. Contradiction? Oxymoron? Delusion? I mean, she's letting go precisely as she says she will not. What's up with that? It didn't made sense.

And then Dave died. Three years ago today. Just like Jack. And I had to figure out what to do next. I mean, the last time I saw Dave on this earth, he was sitting right next to me. Alive one minute and not the next. No heartbeat. No pulse. No breath. And I had to let go. It was unthinkable. I had to do the one thing I could not. I had to open my hand and let him go.

Well, that's when I began to understand Rose. That's when I learned that letting go is not only a function of fingers or an action of hands.

• Letting go means that there comes a day when the bundle of Dave's clothes, the last he ever wore, the ones I slept with for months, first get hung on a hook in my room and then, years later, get packed away.
• Letting go means lifting Dave's Vietnam Vet baseball cap off the hook in the sunroom where he hung it himself and laying it in a box with his clothes, closing the lid, and carrying it downstairs. 
• Letting go means selling his books, giving away his tools. It means finally dismantling his computer. 
• Letting go is realizing that the things of his that once comforted me do not do so any longer. They have taken on new weight; they have become so heavy that they no longer comfort. They have become a burden.

I'll never let go.

 And even as I say it, my hands let them all go, one by one.
 That's when I know that Rose was telling the truth.

Dave is more than his things. He always was, of course, but after he died, it took awhile to separate them. In fact, Dave is more than his own body. Now, Dave exists in a different place than he did when he lived. I don't mean heaven, although he is certainly there, wherever it is. But he exists apart from his stuff, even his corporeal self, and, increasingly, apart from me.

You see, Dave is beginning to sink into the ocean.

I gradually realized this all along but understood it in a new way couple of weeks ago, when someone asked me out on a date and, well, I accepted it. Now, anyone who knew Dave, and especially Dave and I together, knows that after him, there is no second act. He was my great love story. There will never be another. I don't even want one. But, honestly, I would occasionally like to go out to dinner.

And that's when Dave spoke to me. He did. Not through some ethereal, other-worldly voice, but through the faithful recollection of his friend Zach, who was there to hear the invitation and my acceptance, and who took me aside to say that Dave knew this day would come, that I would some day want to spend time with someone else. Zach told me that Dave had entrusted him with a message for that day--for this day. And, with Zach's voice, Dave spoke to me. He told me he loved me and part of that love was wishing me companionship when I needed it. Dave told me that my happiness was as important to him now as it ever was. Dave told me that, if the man was a good one, and kind to me, to go on a date.

And I did. And it was fine, but when I came home, and walked in the door, I had something so say to Dave in return.
"This has nothing to do with you."

It didn't. It still doesn't. And that's when I understood Rose even better. Dave is alive in me, but he is not alive. Simply by virtue of breathing, I will do things in which he can have no part. I do not have a choice in this. I retain my earthly life and Dave does not. Even more, the life I'm given comes from God and, whether I understand it or not, is His gift to me. Just as I bore witness for Dave while he lived, I bear witness now to God's life in me after Dave is gone.

There's Dave, drifting away, still reaching out, our fingertips only inches apart, but the space between them increases by the second. Dave is gone and must sink into the deep. When that began in earnest, however, when I increasingly knew the howling desolation of being left alone, that's when I remembered the Heart of the Ocean, the precious, fabulous necklace Rose kept after Jack had gone. The necklace wasn't Jack, but she held it for years as a reminder of their life together until she finally opened her hand and let that, too, slip from her fingers.

We all hold on. And each year, when this day comes, I relive the night Dave died--tortured dreams surrounded by fitful sleep, waking up every two hours thinking, "This is when this or that happened", knowing again the tearing pain of separation, renewing again the unthinkable. But with increasing quickness, each time I am rescued. Not by my own memories, nor by my own resolve to move on, but by assurance from a Companion who is perfectly constant and who loves without pause or recrimination.

It is in His name I have been able to open my fingers one by one, both hand and heart, and let go. After all the good that Dave brought me, what God brings me is what sustains now, and brings strength, and resolve, hope and peace. Whatever good I have been able to do since Dave's death, whomever I have loved, and wherever I have walked for the sake of someone else is because of what God is investing in me.

So now I have a double blessing--a temporal one from Dave and an eternal one from God--not the Heart of the Ocean, but the heart of God, one that beats forever. And now, it is God's voice, not mine, that says,
I'll never let go.

Comfort her, comfort her, all things good,
While I am over the sea!
Let me and my passionate love go by
But speak to her all things holy and high,
Whatever happens to me!
Me and my harmful love go by,
But come to her waking, find her asleep,
Powers of height, Powers of deep, 
And comfort her tho' I die.

--Tennyson, Maud 

What if I Could Not?

This is my niece Jocelyn. She's sitting here, a little over two years ago, between my younger son and her husband, and she's smiling.

She's not smiling today.

Today, she is dying. Not fighting for her life anymore....just dying. Her liver has failed, her other organs ceasing to function one by one, and her blood has ceased to clot. She's 38 years old.

She is more than 600 miles away. I can talk to her if someone holds up the phone, but she can no longer respond. Her mother says that she squirming with discomfort. She knows. There is no doubt that she knows she won't live much longer.

The problem is this: The ones who love her struggle not only because she is way too young for this to happen, but because she has, for at least the last ten years, professed to be an atheist. She is a young woman without hope for any future, any life beyond this one.

She and I have talked often about this. She was churched as a youngster, even tried to worship for awhile, but the contradictions in her church and the hypocrisy of the people who worshiped there became too much for her. She gave up. She just gave up. And, in recent years, although she would tolerate, even sometimes ask, for prayer, she still would not profess to any belief in God. She saw the contradiction, of course, but would not open her heart.

And here we are today. The end of her road.

And it is Sunday. This morning I went to church.  As I moved into the usual pew, and stood at the appropriate time to say, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty", I was struck nearly dumb. So simple a phrase, so easy. I've said it pretty much all my life...so often, it has become automatic, taken for granted as normal. But it isn't normal for everybody. What would life look like, particularly the end of life, if I could not? What if I could not honestly say I believe in God?

I can't imagine it, frankly. Unlike Jocelyn, who said that God made no sense to her, I can make no sense of a world without Him. And I am frozen by the enormity of it all...the vast implications of a simple phrase, the everyday working out of it in ways that have become so much a recurring part of my life. I marvel at the symbols that carry such heavy implication, yet are so ridiculously common-- pieces of wood and thorn, bread and wine. No wonder some struggle with belief.

We are seemingly given so little. Small, fleeting representations that are monumentally life-altering. Out-of-the-box game changers. Leaps of faith. A word in the right place or time that sinks to the core. A conviction that honoring my creator trumps all other endeavors. Loving for no other reason.

This is why, I'm thinking today, that just being good is not enough. It keeps us pinned to Earth. It does not provide for the God who explains everything we don't understand. It does not give us a reason for having lived. It does not answer the whys pretty much everyone seems to ask when their last day arrives. If God is not real, everything lofty and important dies in that last breath. Transcendence doesn't exist. Without Him, we are left to squirm.

I told Jocelyn this morning that she should trust now. Rest in God, and trust, and everything will be all right. Even now. Even when she has come to this. She can still open her heart and I pray that she does. God is loving and merciful. He will meet her there. This is the day.

And I will raise you up on the last day--John 6:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CRMbh8ViUI

What Food We Are Offered

The part of my house I like the best is the kitchen. Some years ago, I designed it with meticulous care, measuring up each cabinet and drawer with relish and precision, planning exactly what I would keep in them and sizing them for their specific purpose. And all the planning paid off--everything fits where it belongs, and I wouldn't change a thing.

I took great pleasure in this not just, I think, because of its order and beauty, which it has, but because it brought a fresh vision for what I would make there. And the space has rewarded me with many meals shared in fellowship with people I love. I wouldn't change a thing about it.

I can't leave behind the notion of the importance of food in our lives. Of course, in practical thought, we'd die without it, but most of us realize that food is more than fuel, more than filling our stomachs. In very real, maybe even mysterious ways, food is love. I really think so. Who doesn't have fond memories of  meals prepared and shared together? Of chicken soup, or turkey dinners, or birthday cakes made with loving hands? Food is life in many more ways than one.

My camera files are filled with plates of food I've made, either alone or with friends and family, arranged carefully on dishes or in bowls, and presented with satisfaction and anticipation. These are my offerings to the ones I care most about, or ones I want to know better. I want the food to say "I care about you" when words fail.

And I think sometimes of the food that God has offered us, our New Testament manna, His own body, presented to us on a plate as we gather to worship:

 

 "This is my body...."
The moment when food becomes something else--love of a very different kind. Sacrificial love given at a cost way beyond hours spent in the kitchen. That plate holds a promise. That plate becomes, for the moment it holds the bread of heaven, holy ground. That meal, on that plate, feeds us unto eternity.

And this morning I read,
And when the daughter of Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod, and them that sat with him, the king said unto the damsel, Ask of me whatever you will, and I will give it to you. And he swore to her, Whatever you ask of me, I will give it to you, even to half my kingdom. And she went forth and asked her mother, What shall I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist. And she came in straightaway with haste to the king, saying, I want you to give me in a charger the head of John the Baptist.--Matt 14:22-24

Do you know what a charger is? It's a serving plate. A big serving plate. Chefs still call them that--chargers. But think of how it would look to any observer...could a plate bear anything more revolting? Death instead of life. Evil rather than nourishment, as though it were something we would actually eat:



The very place we expect to find something tasty and filling and sometimes even beautiful, we find instead....this. Death. Blood.

And so does God surprise us again. He turns, with the help of man-made evil, something beautiful into something violent. And He gives us a sneak peek at what to expect from Him in the future. It will be His death that He serves up to us soon. His sacrifice. His challenge to recognize what He's doing.

He's turning our world inside out.

Think, He says. Recognize Me. Even as John dies, even as I will die, I fill your plates with what you most need. See the faithful nourishment I provide. Body. Body and blood. Not always beautiful, but always perfect and always holy.