“Haunted by Grace”
Rev. Greg Ward
Unitarian Universalist Metro Atlanta North
October 30th, 2005

Responsive Meditation # 720  “We Remember Them”

Sermon:
They say that ministers are immune.  But they’re not.  They think that it doesn’t affect us.   That we don’t feel the same discomfort that others feel when we walk into homes where someone has just died.  Some will say that we can sit in hospitals rooms, listening to the rhythm of monitors falter until they go flatline and not feel a thing.  They say we enjoy hanging out at cemeteries and funeral homes.  That if they could somehow bottle the smell of the intensive care ward and put it into an air freshner, a minister’s closet would be filled with it.  It’s just another one of those things that people say makes ministers a little weird – or uncomfortable to be around.  Like the way we like to walk up to someone at a memorial and shake their hand but hold on a couple seconds too long.  And then stare intensely into their eyes and ask, ‘How are you… really?’

There’s really no doubt about it: we are weird that way.  But we’re not immune.  We notice the same haunted feeling that most people notice around death.  That same disquieting feeling that lingers in the room for hours – sometimes even months or years – after someone dies?  We can feel it too.  We are not immune. 

We know that whatever it is that does linger in a room, doesn’t really making sense.  It’s not rational.  We know that being close to someone who just died - or walking by the newly empty bedroom where they used to be – that the unnatural silence in the hallways where they used to call out – we know – but can’t explain why - the air really is heavier there.  And we know that even after we’ve looked over the room and seen nothing there, switched off the light and turned our back to go, there isn’t really a hand reaches out from the dark and touches our shoulder like it used to.  It just feels like it will.  

And we know that feeling lasts a while.  I was talking to an elderly man after the memorial we had here on Friday for Vera Ray.  He said that even though his wife of fifty years had died five years previously, he still reaches over in the middle of the night to put his hand on her and make sure she is okay.  He said that he still feels her presence, still instinctively checks on her, still says ‘good night’ and ‘good morning’ even years after he moved out of the home they shared into a new place of his own.  He said he couldn’t get past that feeling of reaching out for something that he could no longer see; and feeling something reaching out for him.

This feeling that we have around death – the feeling that there is some sort of connection between us and those we have loved who have died – is something most of us have known.  That palpable love that is lost frightens us sometimes.  Our grief – and our need to hold on and prolong love, often takes the shape of what is real.  So much so we think it must be supernatural.  It might even feel haunting.  We don’t stop to think that maybe it really is real.  Maybe it is human..  The perfectly reasonable, perfectly human need to love beyond the boundaries of death.

Some of you might remember a movie that came out about 8 years ago by M. Night Shyamalan called ‘The Sixth Sense.’  About a psychiatrist who, in the opening scene of the movie gets shot.  Then, it fades to black and the panel comes on that says, ‘two years later’ and we see that the psychiatrist has apparently recovered and has gone back to working disturbed children.  We are given glimpses how the shooting has changed his life.  That his marriage, once happy, now struggles.  That he has a new case that he is apparently obsessed about – with a young boy, who claims that he talks to dead people.  The psychiatrist does everything he can to cure the boy because – after all, it’s crazy to think we can communicate with dead people.  The psychiatrist believes, like most of the audience watching believes, that talking to dead people is akin to being haunted.  That no one – at least no one who is sane – would ever want to do that.   But he notices that as he gets closer to figuring out what is going on with the boy, his relationship with his wife becomes more and more distant.  Despite what seems like countless efforts on her part to communicate with him – to keep a closeness – an estrangement creeps in and begins to seal a barrier between them.  Until there is such a distance in their marriage, it almost feels haunting.  And we don’t realize until the last scene in the movie – that inevitable place within any story that reveals everything – with a wink because it is too late – that the psychiatrist had actually died in the opening scene.  The only one who was actually able to talk to him was the boy.  His relationship with his wife was growing more distant because she was learning to let go after he died.  She was beginning to stop thinking about him – stop talking to him and move on with her life.  But she spent years in that in between place.  Trying to reach beyond the boundary of mortality.  Trying to traverse into the realm of the dead to share the love within her that refused to die. 

Ministers – just like everyone else in our culture – notice this theme a lot.  It is a theme that is explored in several other movies, like ‘Ghost,’ and ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply.’  And in plays, like ‘A Christmas Carol.’  It is a theme that, if you think about it, is a fundamental part of many religions – experiencing a love strong enough to transcend dimensions.  Having someone understand our thoughts.  Our grief.  Having someone who is with us.  Who we can talk to.  Who still has something to teach us.  We are not immune.  Ministers understand this.  Just like everyone else.  Being weird is something else entirely. 

Our culture shows that we are drawn to death.  That we share a fascination, an ongoing connection with the dead, that needs some outlet.  The reason that observances like Halloween, All Souls day, or Dios de Los Meurtos (Day of the Dead) in Mexico exist is because we need them.  These festivals – and stories – are not just western culture – they are honored all over the world.  And they share a common theme – one closely related to the celebration of Samhien – the ancient pagen festival that celebrates the connection between the living and the dead. 

Samhien suggests there are separate worlds that exist for the living and the dead.  And, like planets in orbit, there is a time in the cycle where these worlds pass in close proximity to one another.  During that time of proximity, a window is forged between these two worlds creating an opportunity for something to be exchanged.  Some communication.  Some understanding.  Maybe some respect or gratitude.  Or even love.  Celebrations like Halloween – or ‘all hallow’s eve’ emerged, allowing us to make associations with the dead mirthful.  Commemorative church services for All Saints Day, festivals like Samhien and All Souls Day came about where people go to cemeteries with a picnic lunch and tidy up the graves of their ancestors, bring them their favorite foods and spend the day visiting and talking to them. 

It’s not so hard to understand.  Even for ministers.  When someone dies, and are taken from us, what is physical about them stops.  But what is timeless about them – the things we carry in our hearts, in our thoughts, even in our souls… these continue.  And we need some way of holding on to these connections - expressing them - lest they truly are lost to us.  Or we become lost in them.  We need a way carry what is lost to us: to hold on to what is eternal – to what continues to add meaning to our lives; and let go what can no longer be – the emptiness we carry, that drains meaning from our lives.

This is hard.  Especially for those who have just lost someone.  There is a lot of sorting.  Sifting through memories.  Not being sure of what we can hold on to without being haunted.  Not sure of what we can let go of without being haunted.

There are those who believe that, in this work, we turn to those we have lost to help us.  Spanish poet, Birago Diop, in a piece called ‘Invocation for the Dead,’ reminds us:
Those who have died
Have never, never left
The dead are not under the earth.
They are in our own restless trees
In our own groaning woods
In our own crying grass
In our own moaning rocks
Those who have died
Have never, never left
The dead have a pact with the living
They are in the [nursing] woman's breast
They are [the air for] the wailing child [gasping for breath]
They are with us in the homes we make
They are [beside] us in a crowds we turn to
The dead have never, never left
They [cannot leave]
[For they] have a pact with the living

The dead have a pact with the living.  What that pact is is hard to say.  Garrison Keillor once talked about how his dead ancestors were constantly trying to communicate with him.  He could tell because they would invade his thoughts in idle moments.  Haunt him with commentary about his reasoning or the choices he was making.   They would show up out of the blue, uninvited, like at dinner in a restaurant - and then say things from the dead - completely in character with who they were in life.  But because they were Minnesota Lutheran they would usually say things like, “I can’t believe the prices in this place.  You can’t really pay that much a meal.’  And, ‘don’t try to talk with your mouth full.’ 

We can laugh because although most who experience the loss of a loved one know that it is more poignant than that, the struggles more personal.  We all know that the various personal idiosyncrasies that made them significant to us, remain clear.  Thoughts of them are triggered whenever a familiar place, or activity, or keepsake calls their uniqueness to mind.

But we vary when it comes to whether those memories are healthy and hallowed for us, or whether they are haunting.  Whether we should keep them as a daily part of our life or whether we should stuff them away.  How do we sort through and what do we keep of our losses?

Many of you, I know, have a box in your house.  It could be in your garage, or your closet.  But if it’s the kind of box I mean, it hasn’t been opened in a while.  It is the kind of box that when you walk by, it calls to you.  Or reaches out to you.  If it’s the kind of box I mean, there is heaviness to it, like the air around weights it down.  Opening it makes you feel a tinge of discomfort.  Maybe even panic.  Like there are ghosts inside.  If it’s the kind of box I mean, it seems a little haunted.

But it’s not.  It’s just filled with stuff that you’ve lost – people you’ve lost – that haven’t been sorted out.  Thoughts, feelings and memories that haven’t found their place.  Ministers are weird – and slightly uncomfortable to be around – because you know they will eventually ask you about that box.  It’s the one they want to talk about.  It’s the one they want to see when they come over after a loss.  Especially when there is grief involved.  Because even losses that happened long ago, can help keep us from experiencing the loss we’ve recently been handed.  They can certainly help keep us from experiencing the joy recently been given.  Ministers are very comfortable in prompting you to go through these boxes.

But we are not immune.  Don’t be messing with my boxes.  Don’t be asking about my stockpile of pictures, keepsakes, reminders.  The ones gathering dust in my closets.  The ones that I don’t open because they haunt me.  Don’t ask me about those.  That’s uncomfortable. 

Which is exactly what I was for the last six months as my friends were calling me.  ‘Open those boxes,’ they asked.  But not in those words.  The words that they used were, ‘Come to the reunion.   But it was the same thing.

Some of my teenage friends from thirty years ago organized a reunion of LRY – YRUU folks.  The Unitarian kids I grew up with in my church and in my district.  The kids who went to the camp, like The Mountain, in California, called DeBenneville Pines.  All people with whom I found much of what was important to me.  And amongst whom I lost some important things as well.  I saw the list of people who would attend.  And realized I love many of those people.  But I also realized they would recall for me the people I wouldn’t see there.  The people who couldn’t be there.  People who I lost.  

One in particular, a girl by the name of Karen Salinger.  The first girl I kissed.  A girl who, even when we were eleven, had the grace to know how simultaneous attraction and absolute terror could co-mingle when we stood next to one another at the campfire.  Who when I reached out to hold her hand, among all those people, had the grace not to scream out, “Great mother of God, what are you doing?” but instead, quietly held my hand for a few minutes while we sang.  And then endured one very awkward, but wonderful kiss. 

Camp was a special place for us.  Because we were so young, and lived so far apart, what moments of connection we did share happened there.  And in the years that followed, as our lives grew apart I knew she struggled.  She reached out to me a couple of times.  And though, like her, I had enough grace not to scream, I didn’t have enough to know what to do. 

It hurt me a great deal when I learned, at the age of 17, she had taken her life.  Though our relationship was more like any innocent summer camp romance, there were still a lot of good – and a lot of difficult memories to sift through.  Images that I, for twenty five years, put in a box and stored in the closet. 

So when the calls started coming in asking me if I was going, I made a lot of excuses.  The kind of excuses people know are excuses.  But many of my dearest friends encouraged me to sort through my hesitation.  Sort through what haunted me.  Sort through my boxes.   They said to me sort of the same thing Garrsion Kiellor’s ancestors said to him, “I can’t believe the prices you are paying for this.  No one should have to pay this much.” 

I did end up going.  I even preached.  And, I preached about how much that place, and those people – all those people – meant to me.  And how much I had lost when I tried to stuff those difficult parts away.  I talked about how easy it is to end up like the psychiatrist in the Sixth Sense – that when we deny ourselves access to what really happened to us, we are the ones who end up dead to the world.  And all our relationships end up becoming estranged.  

My friends realized that ministers encourage others to do this work because it is the only way toward whole-ness.  It is the only way to reclaim joy and meaning.  To sort through the boxes and not let them get sealed up and gather dust.  They were ministers to me because they know that ministers are not immune.  Just weird.  Like everyone else who knows love, experiences loss and learns to love again. 

The dead have a pact with the living.  It may feel like they haunt us.  But that is usually because packed them away without getting from them the gift of grace they have for us.  They still hold the memories - the stories - we need to hear – to tell - in order to heal.  We are haunted by grace – and we will continue to be – until we are willing to turn and receive the grace being offered.  Turn and reclaim the stories of our loss.  Turn and invoke the dead, that we may rediscover the wholeness of our living.  

In a moment, a bell will sound.  We invite each of you to take a turn speaking the name of someone who you have lost, whose memory has helped you, in this past year, re-claim a sense of wholeness.  

Copyright Wardswords, 2005