death

The Wind Blows Where It Wishes

/ erikamorck / 2 Comments

A Memorial Sermon for my uncle, Chuck Morck

based on John 3:1-16

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”   Most of us know this beloved verse in the Gospel of John by heart but many may not be familiar with the full context of this Gospel passage. The full passage with the back and forth between Nicodemus and Jesus reminded me of conversations with Chuck – not all of them mind you – but definitely the ones that stick with me. Especially the words…

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8)

The wind blows where it wishes… Sounds just like something Chuck would say while philosophizing. Furthermore, Nicodemus reminds me of Uncle Chuck. You see, Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews. Not just a ruler – but a highly esteemed ruler of a group who were often at the brunt of Jesus’ most critical denunciations for their hypocrisy.  And yet, Nicodemus was a different sort. Nicodemus would take a stance opposite those prosecuting Jesus later in the Gospel. Like the wind, blowing where it wishes, Nicodemus took a contrary view believing that Jesus was the Messiah, sent from God. He was a biblical contrarian of the purest sort. 

Chuck fancied himself a contrarian. It was one of his favorite ways of describing himself.  He made his “riches” buying stocks that were falling when most investors were selling. Bad news in the market was “good news” for Chuck. He enjoyed disagreeing with people and expressing opinions that were – different. He delighted in a good debate. For the most part – the only time I recall Chuck chuckling was when he went against the grain in a conversation. He had a knack for telling it like it is from the “fact” that he hated my mom’s cooked carrots to the other “fact” that I needed to put on some weight. Sometimes this knack rubbed people wrong and may or may not have contributed to his mostly solitary life. That doesn’t mean he didn’t have a social life. I had the good fortune of working with a former sales colleague and very good friend of Chuck – who filled me in on his exploits as a much-desired catch in their social circle.  Sure, he was an odd duck – but a good man, he told me; disagreeable by definition, cantankerous for sure – but a truly good man. 

Like the wind that blows where it wishes, Chuck lived his life his own way. Perhaps he had to – being the youngest of four brothers.  The wind took him in different directions and supplied him with stories for a lifetime. He would become a king of the road and a master of investing – and an expert on all matters of frugality and simplicity. He truly was a self-made opinionated solitary man. 

He also loved to play tennis – embodying the back and forth of a good debate on the tennis court. He was a deep thinker and would surprise you out of the blue with remarkably intelligent insight on all sorts of matters: economics, horse racing, philosophy, politics, religion and even romance. He was a wealth of career advice and was thrilled when I began working for a financial advisor! Along with politics and market news, we would have deep conversations about religion – often leaving me frustrated in my earnest faith with his conviction that “they” – meaning pew-sitters – were all a bunch of hypocrites.” And yet – he never shut me down. Much like the Pharisees of Jesus day – he peppered me with questions I couldn’t find words to answer – and so we left them hanging for both of us to ponder.

In his last days, I longed for a final conversation – but that just wasn’t possible. I wrestled with the thoughts that Chuck was not “right with God” at least by my definition. I prayed that he knew that this life wasn’t it – that so much more awaited him. And so, I admit to crying tears of joy and yes relief, when his hospice Chaplain Dana relayed to me one of their last conversations. She had inquired as to his spiritual state, where he was in terms of his journey and if he believed in God. Chuck thought a moment, and then with great confidence said “I am a Christian.” and then they prayed together. 

Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). Most people take the road that is well-traveled and that road, Jesus said, leads to destruction. It leads away from meaningful and eternal life. Few people take the road that is less traveled, the road that Jesus said, leads to meaningful and eternal life. The Christian way is by its very nature contrarian. 

Baptized by the Spirit at birth, Chuck took the path less traveled.  I can’t help but think now, that those sometimes-frustrating faith debates with Chuck were divinely inspired. Chuck made me think differently about the church and my faith – he made me question, wonder about, and hold less firmly to ideas that were of the church but as I read the Bible with clearer eyes – not of God. 

In His sermon on the mount, better known as Beatitudes, Jesus said that his followers are blessed when they are poor, when they are hungry, when they weep, and when they are reviled and persecuted because in God’s future they will inherit the kingdom, they will be filled, they will laugh, and their reward will be great in heaven. Jesus also said that those who were rich and full and lived to be well-spoken of did not have much to look forward to in the future. In other words – all those hypocritical pew-sitters Chuck waved his hand at may have some re-thinking to do. The way of Jesus is very much a contrarian way to live.

Much of Chuck’s outlook on life was contrary to my way of thinking – and yet as I think on much of what he said over and over again – never mind his temperament when saying it – it reflects the way Jesus would have us live. That Chuck chose to live alone rather than in community should not negate the depth of insight he had on the ways of the world. 

“The wind blows where it wishes…

It’s easy when you are different, solitary, independent, contrary – to get blown in the wind – to feel unknown or cast away by the world, by others, or lost to oneself. I imagine there were times like that for Chuck. I imagine there are times when you feel that way too. But no matter how buffeted by the wind, no matter how far we drift, no matter how alone we may walk – there is One in this life and world to whom we are never lost, from whom we can never become unmoored or cast away. We are never left behind or cast away by Christ.

In Christ everyone, every single person, is loved, called by name, and claimed as a beloved child. Jesus is the one for whom our differences make no difference. “I will never drive away anyone who comes to me,” Jesus says. Not anyone, not Chuck, not you, not me. There is not enough difference in the world to keep us apart from the love of Christ.

“(N)either death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:37-39)

Chuck’s contrarian ways in this life and world and his firm conviction of faith in death, show us that no matter how different we are, how much we question or profess to be ambivalent to, or refuse to be a pew-sitter for – nothing can separate us from the love of God. He is the witness that in Christ our differences make no difference and that we are never truly or finally lost. The promises of today’s gospel (John 3:1-16) have been fulfilled in and through Chuck’s life, and they are being fulfilled in your life and mine. All shall be well. 

God wastes nothing of God’s creation. I no longer wonder about the meaning of the times I spent with Uncle Chuck, the conversations we had and the questions he gave me about life. I no longer wonder what his life might have taught me about mine. I am willing to bet he taught you something about yourself and your life as well. Maybe he encouraged you to enlarge your life, gave you something to think about that hadn’t crossed your mind before. Maybe he encouraged you in your own independence. Maybe he was generous to you in a way you weren’t expecting.  Maybe he gave you the opportunity to care about and help him – giving you the gift of giving sacrificial love. Maybe there was a word, an eye twinkle, a shared moment that you will forever cherish that connected with your heart and left you feeling not so different after all.

None of that ends simply because he is not sitting here with us in his lazy-boy. Those things are just as real and present today as they were when they happened – maybe even more so. Life has changed, not ended. So, I will listen to his life – for what he might still have to say to me. Maybe you will as well.

Yes, the wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit – So it is with Chuck.   For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

 Let it be so. – Amen. 

Finishing Well

/ erikamorck / 2 Comments

The days are getting longer! Have you noticed this with as much delight as I have? Dare I say another long dark winter is almost behind us? Nah, I know better than to tempt Mother Nature’s whimsy like that!! But I must admit, as I stood in quiet awe watching the sunset the other evening at almost 6 pm, this long dark winter seemed like just a blink. Oh, I know we still have weeks if not months of winter ahead – at least in my northwest neck of the woods – but the swiftness of time passing caught me up short.

As I write this, I am in the midst of planning the memorial service for my uncle; my father’s youngest, and the last of the four Morck brothers. He was preceded in death by his parents, two half-brothers, and his brother – my dad. He had a long, very unique – life; and while I mourn his passing, I am glad he is relieved of the burdens of this world. He was a frugal bachelor and didn’t leave much behind – except for our memories and his special brand of wisdom.

The four Morck brothers. My dad is on the far left. My recently passed uncle – 2nd from right.

With his death, I have this heavy sense of ending. He was the last of a special generation within our family – a direct connection to the grandparents I never knew and all the history and lore of a Norwegian Danish family making a life on the cold high plains of eastern Montana.   With that generation of our life as a family behind us, all my brother and I have left is the fabric of our very beings. Since neither of us have children, it is an odd feeling – being the last remnants of a family. There is a loneliness that creeps into the soul and a weightiness in the realization that “this is it” – it all ends with us – this chapter in the “epic” tale of the Morck family.

When someone close to us dies, our own death always feels more imminent. We tend to examine our own lives a bit more meticulously.  If I joined Mom, Dad, and my uncle today, would I be satisfied with how my book of life ended, with how I ran and finished the race?

That evening a few days ago, as I stood in the stillness and watched the sky darken in the west and lose its rose-gold hues, it dawned on me how much life I have lived in the 7 years since I felt my mother’s embrace, and 6 years since I heard my father say my name – one last time. At times it is all a blur as I reckon with changes to my life I never before could have fathomed facing on my own and yet somehow, I did.

And as I mark the end of my uncle’s life, seeing and recounting his journey in retrospect – it is hard to fathom that his race is over. Though some days seemed like an unending struggle and time passed excruciatingly slow, how did we get to his finish line so fast?  Where did all the time go? 

The fastest race we will ever run is the race of life. Our time is fleeting, the most important facets of life become mere flickers of memory as days become weeks, weeks become months, months become years. Though we may say we are winning at life – the race itself has only one ending – one we don’t want to reach – and yet we keep running it – chasing after some prize just beyond our reach.

To run a race and finish well you have to be intentional with your training and intentional with your run during the race. You must be cognizant of those around you and any obstacles you might encounter. You must stay in touch with how your body is performing the tasks you are asking it to and keep your focus not just on the finish line but on every step you take – lest you trip on a rock or stumble on a pothole. Those of you reading this who also happen to be runners know how easy it is to get lost in your head once the lead in your legs gives way to the runner’s high-inducing repetitive strides.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is mt-marathon-2.jpg

The race of life is no different. It must be lived with intention if you want to finish well. But in a world of constant motion and monotony – it too is easy to get lost in the rush of it all – to give in to just doing, doing, doing for the sake of doing.  Until we are caught mid-doing and forced to reckon with reality, reckon with time, and reckon with mortality. Reckon with our reason for being.

And what is that, really – our reason for being? If we are not careful, that question alone can send us down a rabbit hole. It can be unsettling when your reason resume is less succinct or weighty than you imagined it would be; when you realize that life has taken you “off-course” or at least off the course of your intentions.

Too often, I have let others define my reason for being – or worse – what I think others want my reason for being to be. Too often, my daily intentions simply become reactions to what is happening around me in my rush to get somewhere. It is easy to settle into the complacent comfort of taking each day as it comes rather than shaping my being each day for what it could be.

It takes a concerted effort to define our lives – to live with intention. Because, to live intentionally requires us to do one thing. One thing that can seem abhorrent, even irrational, in our quest to finish well. Any guesses as to what that one thing is? Hurry up – time’s a wasting!!

The answer is nothing! Doing not a thing! And that is why it is so hard to live intentionally and with reason. The thought of doing nothing – of simply being still – goes against the laws of energy and drive and every notion of success – within us!

And yet, when I get lost in the woods, my first instinct is to run to safety as if in a race against time. But survivalists will tell me NO, that is the last thing I should do. Instead, I must stop, be still and take things in. This isn’t a race against time. It is time to connect to my surroundings and myself. In other words, stay put and “get a hold of myself.”

Stillness grants us breath amid the breathlessness of life. Stillness calls forth our inner voice so we can hear and follow it. Stillness invites us into a place of rest and reflection instead of rapidity and reaction. Stillness stirs us to contemplation which births our most worthy intentions.

Stillness invites connection to ourselves and to others. It helps us find our center point, and take stock of our life in the moment. 

I spent years trying to outrun stillness. For those of us used to running through the paces of life, racing through thoughts of things to do and things left undone, racing past feelings that we don’t want to feel, running from the commitments made that we struggle to keep and our relationships that need more of us than we have to give – stillness can be an uncomfortable, even scary state to find ourselves in.  But no matter how quick our cadence in the race of life, life always seems to catch us if not pass us by – sometimes taunting us at the end.

Ironically, it is those very things we are running through and from that hold the key to unlocking the answers we seek – our reason for being – the greatness we are capable of – the meaning of life – if only we would connect, reflect, listen, take stock, breathe and be still.  As Blaise Pascal put it, “all of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room.”

A life without stillness is a life rushing blindly towards its end.

As I contemplate the life of my uncle, and the lives of my parents – how they gave life to life and where they struggled to do so – it helps me see where I want my intentions to be. Appreciating and treasuring relationships, engaging with community, not just getting up each morning but showing up for life and for those in my life, doing meaningful work to the best of my ability, enjoying God’s creation and being the creative being God purposed me to be, and finally, honoring my life with time to be still and take it all in – taking all of God in.  

Doing so will help me center my thoughts and emotions in Christ as I am reminded of God’s transforming love for all of us. Through this time of stillness and looking up to God, how I view the world, myself, and the situations I find myself in will most assuredly be changed as I align my reason for being and what my intentions are to Him.

Time well spent. There’s no need to rush. I’ll get to the finish line soon enough. 

Go and find stillness – welcome it into your life and finish well.

Let your light so shine!

Accepting God’s Blessings

/ erikamorck / 2 Comments

“Exercise is a CELEBRATION of what your body can do, not a PUNISHMENT for what you ate.”


It has been a life-long journey for me to arrive at this life-saving epiphany. And yes, I do mean life-saving. You CAN exercise yourself to death – I am living proof of that – by a sheer miracle and the grace of a God whose purpose for me had yet to be realized.

But even nearly dying couldn’t shake this mindset from me. It is a hard habit to break. It took 25 years after “death” came knocking the first time for me to truly embrace this concept.

As someone whose sense of self was, for the longest time, based on the approval of others, I never felt worthy enough or deserving enough – even at one point – for food. Proving myself through exercise – the one thing I knew I excelled at – became my measure. Miles ran, calories burned, sit-ups slammed, squats burned out – I counted everything – because in my eyes – I didn’t count.

Living like this is not living. Living like this is akin to dying to life – every single day. It left me with a broken body and an empty core.

I continue to see my hip replacement much like Jacob’s wrestling with God during his longest night. Jacob’s life was one of never-ending struggles, fears and anxiety that led him away from God. When he came to a point where he could struggle no-longer he met his greatest challenge yet – God’s blessing.

In all my “faithfulness” – I have struggled – endlessly – to be who God wants me to be – to earn the ultimate approval. But here’s the thing – we can never earn God’s approval – we can only accept it as a true gift.

And it is a true gift – what my body can do today – and who I am as a child of God. How much fuller life is when I celebrate who I am and what I have accomplished with Him than when I wrestle over who I am not and what I have failed to do without Him – always looking for approval from a world that most likely sees me very differently than I see myself.

Accepting God’s blessing is the hardest most freeing thing I have done. It has changed my life, how I live it, and how I share life with others.

Let your light so shine!

Fading Away

/ erikamorck / 2 Comments
A stormy drive

It has been five very long and very short years since I last heard Dad say my name. He knew, for a moment at least, that I had made it home. And with that his journey home began.

5 years ago, tonight, after the longest, fastest drive of my life across this great big state that held his heart, I sat at my Dad’s side – holding his hand willing him to open his eyes just one more time. I’d heard him say my name one last time an hour or so before. It was just a whisper over the annoying din of an old western movie playing on the TV. I will never forget the sound of his voice – it jarred me so. It was not the voice I wanted to remember my Dad by. But that aural memory of my father that I want to hold on to oh so badly – is slipping away into the ocean of noise created by THIS world. Why didn’t I save ANY of his phone messages????

I would not have expected to be in this austere room facing his ending just a few days prior but there I was looking at the shell of the man who with our wonderful mother, had created for me and my brother, lives we wouldn’t trade for anything.

In the last hours of his life- as his body was shutting down, betraying him every step of the way – he seemed so meek and so willing to go on his way while I wanted him to fight, FIGHT with all his might to stay with me. But I could tell he was at peace – and finally –  he gave that incredible gift to me  – to be at peace with the way things were going to be.

I still struggle with how his life came to a close. But that struggle does not come close to the mighty love I have for him still.

I have thought about my last moments with Dad a lot lately – moments I didn’t have with Mom when she died. As someone who is single without children of my own – I wonder what my last moments will be like. Morbid yes, but as I watch death take hold of so many lives of late, it is hard not to wonder about things like that.  

What a blessing it was to share his last breath and commend his spirit to the Lord. To lay my head on his chest for one last heartbeat. Those last moments were the worst moments of my life. I wanted to die with him right then and there and yet, at the same time felt raw and alive with the wonder of the liminality of life. That experience is a gift in itself. I am not afraid to die anymore – of the process of death – yes – terrified – but dying – not so much.

I am so thankful I was able to be with my Dad to send him home. My heart breaks for who don’t get to say the same goodbye.

I’m grateful for their momentary visits now and then, but I can’t wait to see Mom and Dad again.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” – John 14:27

In the Shadow of the Cross

/ erikamorck / Leave a comment
May be an image of nature, grass, twilight and sky

Jesus: “In the shadow of My Cross, you sit. My body and life are missing today. Gone.

What was is no longer and what will be is not yet. You’re not only wondering about what is next but if there will even be a next…”

***

I know this day well, as I suspect many of you do too.

It was the day after my mother died and again, the day after my father died.

It was the day after my marriage ended – in a courtroom far less holy than where it began.

It is the day after all you lived for now is no longer.

It is the day after death. Where hope seems beyond grasp and clarity only brings despair.

A part of your life has died. A part of you has died.

Today is the hard day. Today is the painful day of initiation by reality.

The day we realize again and again that it really did happen. This is our new reality.

And it brings with it feelings: grief, sorrow, hurt, fear, anger, guilt, and shame – feelings so magnified they consume us. The torrent of our tears leaves us exhausted and depleted.

Anyone who has been on the journey of life for a good distance is cognizant of what a great loss can do to upend your world.

I’m not going to try and paint a pretty picture here -the day after changes you, forever.

Normal will never look the same again. Joy and beauty and happiness will never be the same again. Nor will pain. Life simply will not be the same again.

You won’t be the same.

Great loss forever unsettles you from the life you once knew.

***

Jesus: “Today you are in the shadow of My Cross. The Cross that will transform you. The Cross I turned from an instrument of death into the Tree of Life. And in so doing I made living for tomorrow possible. A tomorrow where you are no longer imprisoned by your losses – no, they become your story of life. A new life. Tomorrow, your life begins again as it does every day in Me, not apart from your losses but through them. You will grow and live a new life in the light of My resurrection and My life.

I promise you this:

“I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanliness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.” -Ezekiel 36-24-28

Let your light so shine!!!

I Believe in Life after Birth

/ erikamorck / Leave a comment

A sermon on Mark 13:1-8

November 14, 2021

Let us pray,

O God, you teach us to hope for a better world and place our trust in you. Give us the courage to keep hoping and trusting even when all seems lost. Give us the strength to carry on even when we don’t know where we are going. Give us patience to wait for your timing. Give us creativity to work towards a better world with You. Surprise us with better days. Amen.

Grace and peace to you, dear friends in Christ from God our Father!

Autumn is by far my favorite time of year. Of all the seasons we are so fortunate to observe, however long or briefly, autumn’s nature feels most promising to me. I relish the hidden beauty in the dying that takes place in this quieting season. Autumn brings a sense of comfort and calm after the rush of growing and maintaining summer’s vibrant splendor. But as is so often the case in life, suddenly the warm days with gold and rust-hued pleasantries disappear. Almost overnight the golden glory in the trees can be stripped away, and the lollygaggers are left to wither and shrivel in a boring brown descent to the dead of winter. The vibrancy of life interrupted by the suddenness of death.

We are midway through the season of autumn, but we have reached the end of the church year, and this will be our last foray in Mark – the Gospel that began with a bang – now we take leave of equally so! In two weeks, we will begin to prepare again for a birth.

Yes, life is a continual series of – endings – that give way to seeds of new life. As writer Parker Palmer puts forth “The hopeful notion that new life is hidden in dying is surely reinforced by the visual glories of autumn. (Indeed,) what artist would paint a deathbed scene with the vibrant and vital palette nature uses?”

Unfortunately for us, life apart from the rhythms of nature is rarely so poetic.

I remember the day I woke up in the ICU unable to move freely but able to clearly hear the hushed and anguished voices of my parents. I remember the day I lost the job that I loved, that had defined me and given me a place of recognition in the community. I remember the shock of my mother’s death, my father’s cancer diagnosis a month later, and his death a year after that. I remember the day my marriage ended, and I remember (all too well this damp stormy morning) the day I broke my foot – bringing an abrupt end to my life as a long-distance runner.

With each of these events, one of the great temples of my life was thrown down. The stones that I had built my life upon and around no longer stood. My life would never be the same again and in those moments, I felt completely lost. Each stone or pillar that crumbled took away my sense of certainty, identity, and my place in this world.

Believe it or not, whether you have painful Lego bricks underfoot or not, we are all master architects. We’ve been employed in the trade from our first recognition of ourselves as independent beings. Our area of specialty – temples. Temples of persona, relationships, beliefs, institutions, roles, reputations, and dreams, and sometimes even illusions. Stone upon stone we build them with the idea that these great structures will provide us meaning and direction, identity and value, security and order to our life and our world.

The temple into today’s gospel served much of the same purpose to the Jewish people. More than just a magnificent building, it was the center and anchor of Jewish life. It provided identity, structure, and meaning – the same as do our temples of today.

As a quick recap, when we were last in Mark, Jesus had just given new sight to the roadside beggar on his way to Jerusalem with his disciples. He has since entered Jerusalem to much fanfare (think Palms and donkeys) but it has been pretty much one confrontation after another with the religious authorities since that festive day. Herodians, Pharisees, and scribes – aligning themselves in various and surprising combinations – trying to trap and discredit him, even at times plotting his death. Jesus has been squaring off with his opponents, sometimes with parables and sometimes calling them out quite blatantly. He denounced the seemingly righteous scribe, called out the exploitive religious leaders of the temple, and raised up the poor widow who gave all she had to the temple coffers, easily exceeding the righteousness of those giving what they thought was just enough to satisfy their obligation.

Now, Jesus and His disciples have  left the temple – for the last time until his trial and execution – and all this disciple can muster in response to what he has seen Jesus do is a “by golly gee whiz wowzers” of an exclamation about Jerusalem’s main attraction: “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings.”

What the disciple saw was an architectural marvel. Likely the biggest, boldest, and most unshakeable symbol of God’s presence he could imagine. Massive stones that held religious memory and bolstered the people’s identity. Like our Capitol building, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and yes even our iron Jesus out front. The massive gold and marble stones served as a potent symbol of spiritual glory, pride, and worthiness. What took the disciple’s breath away and likely everything he had just witnessed Jesus doing and teaching as he gazed at the temple, was the sense of religious certainty and permanence those glittering stones displayed to the world.

Jesus doesn’t quite see things the same way. He sees ruins. He sees the rubble, destruction, fragility, and impermanence such trust and value in the temple and its broken systems will bring. “Not one stone will be left here upon another,” Jesus tells the stunned disciple. “All will be thrown down.”

Today’s passage from Mark is often alluded to as “The Little Apocalypse.” Called the Olivet Discourse, it is but a snippet from a larger teaching of Jesus here on the Mount of Olives where he speaks of the last days and his second coming.

Jesus stuns his disciples with his ominous foretelling of the last days and His second coming. But his words were not intended to lead his followers (including us for that matter) to speculate on when the last day and his second coming would come to pass. Rather, he meant to encourage them and us to live lives in such a way that we are always prepared.

Too often we think of apocalypse as the end of the world – a time of fiery judgment and something to fear. Some might say we are in the middle of one now. It certainly feels that way – earthquakes shake the foundations of our world while fires scorch her surface, floods overwhelm our cities, while water is nowhere to be found. A sense of scarcity leaves us empty and constantly searching, our own nation is turning on itself while wars of power and rightness and the rumors of such wars divide and fragment the unity of our lives and relationships. Some aspects of our modern culture perpetuate the us versus them judgment day belief – think the Left Behind series that was popular for a while or tune into any cable news talk show.

My own concept of apocalypse was formed by family friends who preached fervently the need to repent and that “those” people were surely damned on Judgement Day.  When the TV movie The Day After premiered in 1983 – maybe one of the last movies the whole country watched together – it left the 11-year-old me terrified of the imminent nuclear apocalypse – I was sure that our end was soon, and I was terrified that I might be away from my family when it came. But it was not the end – thankfully our instantaneous disintegration did not come to pass – but many other ends in life certainly have.

Apocalypse is actually something quite different – not nearly so lethal but at times may be a bit disconcerting. As theologian Debi Thomas writes, “An apocalypse is an unveiling. A disclosure of something secret and hidden. To experience an apocalypse is to experience fresh sight. Honest disclosure. Accurate revelation. It is to apprehend reality as we’ve never apprehended it before.”

Jesus knew how dire the consequences would be for his followers in the days to come and that to reach his followers he had to stun them to impress upon them how important it was not to shore up their lives in something as temporal as the temple. A temple that would indeed fall as would the entire city of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 AD just 6 years after its completion – fulfilling this prophecy from Jesus and destroying any sense of place the Jewish people had.

Think about the day the walls of one of your temples were thrown down. Maybe it was your own job loss or divorce or the loss of a loved one; a cancer or other life-altering diagnosis. Maybe it was when the tables turned and you became the parent to your own parent. Was it the time someone you loved and trusted betrayed and hurt you? Or that painful day the business you worked so hard to establish closed. Maybe it was the day you realized that you no longer had control of your life but were instead controlled by addiction, fear, anger, or prejudice.

When my certainty in life has been toppled as it was in every one of my own great temple-crumblings – my ensuing bewilderment has always led me into a state of discomfort and disillusionment. In the wake of our apocalypse – we are given fresh sight – we see. See the truth and reality about our self, our life, or our world that we have long denied, ignored, forgotten, or simply refused to see.

In her sermon collection, God in Pain, Barbara Brown Taylor argues that disillusionment is essential to the Christian life. “Disillusionment is, literally, the loss of an illusion — about ourselves, about the world, about God — and while it is almost always a painful thing, it is never a bad thing, to lose the lies we have mistaken for the truth.”

It is always a painful process to see our manifestations of self topple and be confronted by the reality and truth revealed in that fall. Any reflection on our past reveals as much and reveals that it will likely happen again. There is always some kind of spectacle that distracts us from what matters, from what’s urgent. We are no different than the four bewildered disciples sitting before Jesus that day, preferring to be the master architect of our next great temple or reconstruct the one that has fallen.

Jesus knows this and so he warns his followers and us not to be led astray, but to be alert and watchful for the allure of those promising instant gratification, easy comfort, or quick fixes. To not let the next shiny thing that makes us feel good or takes away the hurt capture our devotion but rather be present and attentive to what is actually taking place to be aware of what God is doing.

When we sense the stones and pillars of our temples beginning to shake, the temptation is to shore up the foundation, add some mortar, make it stronger. We’ll do anything to avoid the pain, but this inevitably makes the destruction even more painful. Pain does not always mean something bad is happening – (I’m told childbirth is the evidence of this.)

In those moments, Jesus can see what we are not able to. I’m not suggesting God causes or allows death, pain, or disorder to happen to teach us an important lesson or make us better Christians. That is not the nature of the God I know or trust. The God I know has stood with me amid the rubble and the remains – reminding me that this is not the end but the beginning. The unveiling of something new.

Unfortunately for this sermon writer, Jesus announces the apocalypse but does not provide the disciples or us a tidy wrap-up to his teaching. Rather, he tells us disorder must take place, chaos will reign, there will be pain and suffering, and our temples will fall – because they need to fall. He leaves us not with answers but some mighty big questions to ponder:

  • What are the temples of your life that need to fall?
  • What lies and distortions have you mistaken for the truth about yourself, about your world?
  • What truth and reality do you most need to face?
  • How might God be working a new birth in you right this very moment?

We often associate the radiance of springtime with the beginning of life. But something first had to die – come to an end – so that a newer life, fed and strengthened by whatever has been lost, could come alive in its place. It is in the radiant dying in autumn and the barren sleep of winter, that the seeds for the new life born in spring and lived in summer, are first imagined.

Life is not diminished by its ending. It is made more organic, more wholehearted, more resilient, and resplendent. The endless interplay of darkness and light, the dying and rising, the endings and beginnings, the autumns and springs of life remind me that everything is forever being made new.

Everything alive in the world and in us is made up of things that have passed before us. Nature is a never-ending apocalypse.

Apocalyptic days confront us – God never does. The apocalypses of our lives force us to decide between reality and illusion, between life and death. We have confidence that God stands firmly in and for our life. Apocalypses help us examine where we put our trust. Know that God never loses sight of us. The day our temples fall is the day we face our own fallibility and impermanence and see the perfect permanence of God. We face our temporal nature but discover God’s eternal nature. Something must die away so that we can know the joys of the birth pangs. Our God ensures that there really is life after birth!

Thanks be to God!   Amen

Let your light so shine!

 

 

 

 

Jesus Turns Death into Life

/ erikamorck / 2 Comments

A sermon on John 11:32-44 for All Saints Sunday

Let us pray.  Help us, oh God, to become comfortable with mystery, accompany us as we wrestle with stories that are beyond our ability to comprehend. Meet us in our belief and in our questioning, in our hope and in our despair. Share in our grief and show us the new life that is around us always so that we too may say, Come and See the new life, the light of the world, and the glory of God. Amen.

Grace and peace to you friends in Christ, from God our Father.

Death. It interrupts life as we know it and changes everything – for good.

It is the elephant in the sanctuary this morning as we gather to celebrate the saints in our lives – all the saints – those who have died and those who have yet to die.

It is as Isaiah writes, the shroud cast over all people – from our very first breath. 

What do we do with death? What do we do with something that is so prevalent in our lives of late, that we fight against from the moment of our birth, and yet know that no matter what, death is certain. What do we do with that? 

I’ll be honest with you. I was daunted by today’s Gospel story. As I sat with the readings for this morning, I even asked Pastor Pete if the alternate gospel reading from the Gospel of Mark was an option…. Because, how could I offer you the good news of the raising of Lazarus when I myself recoiled at the story in the face of death?

You see, this was the gospel story that my pastor in Billings suggested for my Dad’s memorial service almost one year to the day after my mother’s. It was an awful time of death in our lives as a family and the grief and disillusionment my brother and I felt was immense.  All I could think of at the time was “yeah Jesus, where have you been? If only you had been here, Lord.” 

Fast forward to my final LPA (Lay Pastoral Associate) training retreat the October after my father’s death and something our leader Pastor Jason said as we went through the section on ministering to the dying, death, grief and the services that follow. He reminded us that the funeral or memorial service is for the living – not the person who has died – for they are beyond the joy and honor any service could bring – they are with God! It is those of us left behind that have to learn how to live with death and go on in the aftermath.

As I sat pondering what I could possibly bring to you today, those words came back to me and I began to see why my pastor had suggested this particular story to my brother and me. It wasn’t because he was super busy and was pulling things out of a pile of proper funeral readings, it was because he knew how broken my brother and I were.  He wanted to help us through our “if only’s” so we could go on with life after death. He wanted us to see our story through the heart of God. 

As a writer and lover of words, the Gospel of John has always been my favorite gospel –  I love how John reveals Jesus Christ as the Word through which all things were made.  That God chose Jesus as his messenger to tell us about himself. Jesus is God and the revealer of God the Father. Creation is God’s general revelation and Jesus Christ is God’s personal message to us. 

Today’s gospel reveals something for every human being who has ever lived – including the saints. Today’s gospel highlights the reality of the loss, grief, and sorrow experienced with all forms of death – not just the loss of a loved one:  the loss of a dream, the loss of a marriage, the loss of direction, the loss of meaning and significance, the loss of a job, the loss of health, the loss of one’s identity, and sometimes the loss of hope and faith. But it does something more – it reveals to us the nature of God in Christ Jesus.

I think there is a part of each of us in the characters who experience the power of Jesus outside Lazarus’s tomb. There is Mary – whose heart, wrenched by grief, gives voice to our anguished lament, perhaps even our accusation: “Lord, if you had been here…”  Could Mary represent all those who come to church today heavy in heart, the grief of their loss still fresh to the point of being overwhelming?  Because grief has no timeline nor concept of the right time. 

Could Martha be each of us still coming to church after all we have been through?  Martha whose faith seems so incredibly resilient in the face of great challenge and who confessed moments earlier in the verses preceding today’s text that her brother Lazarus would “rise again in the resurrection on the last day “ and then continued her confession in the one who promised her life here and now yet  tarried while her brother died exclaiming: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world!”

And at times we are Lazarus – at least I know I am –  stuck in the tomb of grief,  surrounded by the stench of death, and unable to break free and escape from the ravages of the dying parts of life until he, like we, literally embody the promise of Jesus and the central message of our faith – God turns death into life.

In each of these characters, we see the ultimate miracle at work. God is in the business of turning death into life. And we learn a little bit more about just what the glory of God is all about. It is to be fully alive, to be abundant with life. Jesus said it himself: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

We see that God is more powerful than what scares us the most. 

We see the deep sorrow of grief transformed into a most relieved and elated joy. 

We see abiding friendship and deep love.

We see that even when we think we have lost everything –  that there is nothing to live for – it is never too late for a new life with God. 

We know all this by faith and by faith we know that God is love, we know God forgives all our sin, and we know that God turns death into life, and yet…

And yet, we are left with that unspoken uncomfortable feeling of doubt – as we wonder where Jesus  – the one we know works miracles – where is Jesus in the face of our tragedies, in the relentless death march of this pandemic, in the lives of our young people who are so broken by life they chose death? Where was Jesus and his miracle of life for all those we are remembering today? Where is Jesus in this very broken world of ours?

In our questioning, we see that what we most wish for, plead for, long for, pray for so often doesn’t come true. We see that death is still here and death is certain. And we wonder about God’s arbitrary mercy for us.  What do we do with that?

What does the story of Lazarus have to do with the very reality of death in our life? 

Lazarus is not a story about avoiding pain or denying death. Jesus didn’t go about his travels holding walk-in clinics banishing illness, hunger, and general malaise. Jesus didn’t go to Golgotha and cut people down from their crosses of death – nor did he avoid his own. The death rate in our community is the same as it was at the time of Jesus and for Jesus – 1 per person – 100%  of the time. 

Jesus healed, helped, taught, and Jesus loved. And he shows us by raising Lazarus that death doesn’t have as much power as we think it does. 

In the theology of John’s Gospel also known as the story of signs, Lazarus is the seventh and final sign pointing us to who Jesus is,  and through Jesus,  who God is.  

Jesus turns the water into wine and we see that in Jesus we have abundance. Jesus heals and we see that in Jesus we are not captive to our limitations or illnesses. Jesus feeds 1000’s with nothing but scraps and belief and we see that when we give generously to others anything is possible including new sparks of life. Jesus gives sight and we see there is insight and vision to be found in a life with God. 

Lazarus reveals that life in God is more powerful than death. God helps us to go on even when it doesn’t seem possible. When we are in our worst moment, God moves us forward.  Times that should destroy us instead truly do make us stronger. All of us here today attest to this great mystery and promise of our faith in Jesus. We can be broken and whole at the same time.

Even at the grave, life goes on. Yes, we know it does. We cannot escape death nor can we escape God’s promise of life abundant and the power of life over death. Theologian Karoline Lewis writes that resurrection is not just our future but our present reality. Martin Luther reminds us that in our Baptism we with all our sins and evil desires must die daily and that we should daily rise as a new person to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Resurrection can only come through death. It is in the dyings of life when our full humanity comes to life. In truth, life is born through death. We experience these dyings more often than we – at least on the surface – realize. Ideas, plans, and philosophies die back to engender new ones. When we graduate high school and college that season of life dies as we enter the next stage of life in adulthood. When relationships begin and end, when we marry, when we have children, when we leave a job or a neighborhood, when we begin a new endeavor or pursue a different direction, a part of us dies. Must die. Must end. These dyings are passages to something new, something wider, something deeper. With each of these dyings, we are given the opportunity for new life; they allow us to let go and lead us to discover new directions, new purposes. With every ending, we are given a passageway to something more. 

Episcopal priest  Father Michael Marsh writes:

Mary, Martha, and Lazarus stand before us today as saints. Through their lives, they bear witness to our own experience of sorrow and loss. Through their lives, they bear witness to the Christ who called them out into a new place. And they now join him in calling us out into a new place. That is what saints do. Through the power and love of Christ, they call us out of our grief and loss wherever that may have taken us. They guide us to the one who is resurrection and life, to see the glory of God and the light of a new day. (1)

As living saints, we are strengthened by Christ to call those around us who are bound by grief and darkness to new life – with a love inspired by Christ. 

I have grown to love this story. It reflects the truth I know in my own life. Life after death does go on and through it, I have come to know more fully the joy of God. I do not deny the darkness, but I choose not to live in it. I know that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness. That is good news. Jesus turns death into life.

Thanks be to God!

Amen. 

Let Your Light So Shine!

  1. https://interruptingthesilence.com/2009/11/01/a-sermon-for-the-feast-of-all-saints/

Loving My Mother and Facing Myself, Anew

/ erikamorck / 3 Comments

I have come to dread the second weekend in May, for the sadness it brings, the shame I feel for the envy I harbor, and the stark truths it reveals about me and my place in this world beginning from my first exuberant breath to this moment as I write of yet another Mother’s Day – survived.

Ours was a difficult relationship, but then, the things that matter most in life are not always easy. Nonetheless, I know my mother loved me as deeply as any mother could love a headstrong daughter. While I often wished we could have a relationship like those my friends enjoyed with their moms, one filled with lunch dates, laughter, and dreams for tomorrow – I came to accept that those things were not important to my Mom. Of course, there were wonderful memories – or I wouldn’t feel so conflicted about our relationship still today. She was a wonderful Brownie leader, tender of tummy aches, and mom to the wayward kids on the block. We became best buds when it was just the two of us for a cold Virginia winter when my dad was away on an extended trip and schooling and my brother was away at college. But my best and fondest memories of my mother and me together all occurred before I was 13. And then things began to change. I was growing up and those changes meant the world would also have an influence on me. I can count on one hand the times my mother and I had a joyful, in-depth conversation about life. Those we did have quickly deteriorated into expressions of her fears for what would happen to me “if” or judgment-tinged commentaries beginning and ending with “you are so much better than that.” I knew much more about how difficult her life was than whether or not she ever believed in me.

Ironically, it was in the throes of my 7-year dance with death a.k.a. Anorexia, that she began to encourage me, to tell me that those who were “judging” me simply didn’t understand, that she was thin too and was the envy of her friends and sisters. Even as I laid in ICU with less than a 30% chance of survival if a miracle didn’t happen, she “fought” against the “system” that was “failing at every step” to save me. Defending me when psychiatrists suggested a problem, denying that there was something wrong with her daughter. When I finally hit rock bottom, faced down death, and accepted the journey to wellness outside of my mother’s realm she refused to accompany me. As I boarded the plane to travel to my saving place – Remuda Ranch – all 78 pounds of me and still in critical condition, my mother was at home refusing to see me off. I remember looking back down the ramp – and seeing my father and godfather standing together with their utmost love veiled by a dread that they might not see me again shadowing their faces. The same two men whose frustration with me often led to bursts of anger because they couldn’t understand – now stood behind me in love.

After 4 rides in an ambulance and 7 years in and out of the hospital with my final stay lasting from New Year’s Eve until Memorial Day, my mother still insisted there was nothing wrong with me. I so wanted to believe that. For once we had something we could share! But that very thing joining us would prove fatal to me if it was allowed to continue. I was gone for 4 months. During that time Mom sent me care packages of piano music for me to play on the ranch’s grand piano, new dresses as I “outgrew” the ridiculously small ones she had sewn for me because nothing in any store any where would fit my skeletal body, and she wrote me notes that reminded me of the lunch box notes she would write me when I was a child – before her depressive anxiety began to take over her life.

When I returned home from treatment, I didn’t have a cent to my name. Having worked and paid my way through college what money I did have was depleted by astronomical medical bills. Insurance companies didn’t cover treatment for mental illness back then. So, I returned to the family home to begin life anew. I had changed. I had grown. I had a new story and a new perspective of myself. My mother had not. This would be a point of contention between us for the rest of our life together.

I have been in recovery now for 26 years. I am 64 pounds heavier today than I was at my lowest point. Though it was a pivotal point in our relationship, I do not blame my mother for what I went through. Psychiatrists coaxed me to believe that it was my mother at the root of my problems but I never once placed that onus on her. My eating disorder was a manifestation of my desperate need to have some sort of control in my life and be good at something. I mastered both. According to the plethora of doctors and specialists who worked on “my case” and the numerous studies asserting Anorexia (especially as extreme as my situation was) has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, I am a walking miracle but not one without scars. My eating disorder ravaged my body. 7 years of starvation will do that. I would learn that I could never have children, that my bones would forever be susceptible to breaks, that I must always, always treat food as a medium for life and not something that could bring me pleasure or cause me distress, and that well-meaning inquisitive people would always find my weight to be an acceptable conversation topic. Exercise had always been and remains my means of escape, my coping mechanism, and my Achilles heel. Told by doctors that the fact I was a runner with a strong heart was the only reason I survived the starvation-induced cardiac arrests (plural) – I remained certain that I could never do too much of a good thing. This too has been a hard-learned lesson as I continue down the never-ending road of recovery – and one I am still learning – 26 years in!

Counselors told me I needed to set boundaries on my relationship with my mother but how do you set boundaries between yourself and the person that gave life to you? While fences make good neighbors, boundaries do not address the conflicts that created the need for them. No matter the strife between us, I always loved my Mom as much as I felt beholden to her.

Mom, newly home after a stroke.

Finally putting a physical boundary of 400+ miles between my mother and me with my move to the Flathead changed the dynamic between us. On visits home, we still engaged in rapid-fire from time to time but during our long-distance phone conversations, rather than constantly butting heads with me, my Mom seemed to relish the fact that though I was living my own life and she could live vicariously through me in her old stomping grounds. How comically ironic that I would end up where she once lived “some of her happiest days” as a young woman right here where I am now. Sadly, by that point in her health and our relationship, our conversations never ventured much past the surface.

Perhaps we both gazed at this view – 50 years apart.

As I reflect on 50 years as my mother’s daughter my heart aches for the young woman I was and for the woman she was too. To think we are solely responsible for who we are is naivete at its worst. As I struggle with my own place in life right now, I have wondered just what brought her to be who she became to be.

Since my mother’s illness and death, I have learned much about what is important in life and the lesson has been painful. Past conflicts between us remained a barrier to my heart and have raked my heart ever since. The fact that my mother and I could not realize a reconciliation of any meaningful depth fills me with deep regret. Why had I not pursued this with my Mom sooner? My hopes are such that the pain and anger we inflicted on one another disappeared into her lost memories as I am not sure she could comprehend the feelings I wanted to express. Part of me feels at peace in the simple sweet conversations that we did share. Perhaps that is God’s grace reigning over my ineptitude. I have learned that life is finite. Its seasons far too short for anger, guilt, pride, and selfishness to linger in our relationships. Storms will come and we do not know when or how they will end.

King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes:

“As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.”

Solomon was wise. Life is meaningless if we do not tend to what truly matters. All the fun, work, accolades, and treasures of life we collect along the way are meaningless. What matters are the relationships we have; that our hearts are right with God; that we resolve conflicts with those we love; that they know they matter to us; and how very much we do indeed love them.

Reconciliation with my mother was a selfish goal of mine. But how much more powerful and life-giving it would have been had I been able to make peace with my mother while she was alive. Perhaps it is best and all I can hope for that my Mom and I pursued the springtime memories of our lives as we walked through her final winter together.

I last spoke to my mother on my 45th birthday, 18 days before she passed away. It was a conversation I will never forget. Aside from the fact she was upset that I would be celebrating alone and didn’t have a special dinner date she just kept saying all she wanted was for me to be happy and would I consider coming home. I kept telling her I was happy but I had too many mountains left to climb to think about coming home – but that didn’t mean I didn’t miss her. I told her I loved her so very much. Her last words to me were: I love you and I just want you to be happy.

For all these reasons, Mother’s Day haunts me. This day of celebrating the gift of life that mothers give reminds me of all that I lost and all I will never be. There are times I see my mother’s nature of sadness in me – and it strikes a paralyzing fear in me that I might be following in her steps towards darkness. But I take comfort too, in that I am my mother’s daughter just as much as I am my father’s and my father loved her to the very end. As my Daddy’s girl, I know I will be okay. God has blessed me with tools of His light and my own life experiences to fight the darkness that robbed me of my mother’s best days.

One of Mom’s favorite songs was “His Eye is on the Sparrow”.

His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me. His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me. I sing because I’m happy; I sing because I’m free; His eye is on the sparrow And I know He watches me.

It has become one of my favorites, too.

Mom, I know we had our struggles as a mother and daughter but I will forever carry with me your sweet love of the joys of life, the tender ways you loved me through childhood, and your simple understanding of what is good. I will continue to strive to live the kind of life you so wanted for me – one that is happy and lived for the Lord. I never stopped loving you and I will always hear your voice and feel your love whenever a songbird sings.

And when I do, I will sing because I know you are happy, and I’ll sing because I know you are free. I’ll smile at the sight of every sparrow because I’ll know you are right here, with me.

Fading Away

/ erikamorck / Leave a comment

4 years ago tonight after the longest, fastest drive of my life across this great big state that held his heart, I sat at my Dad’s side – holding his hand, massaging his calf, willing him to open his eyes just one more time. I’d heard him say my name one last time an hour or so before. It was just a whisper over the annoying din of an old western movie playing on the TV.

I will never forget the sound of his voice – it jarred me so. It was not the voice I wanted to remember my Dad by. But that aural memory of my father that I want to hold on to oh so badly – is slipping away into the ocean of noise created by THIS world.

What seemed like just a few short days before I would not have expected to be in this austere room facing his ending – there I was looking at the shell of the man who with our wonderful mother, had created for me and my brother, lives we wouldn’t trade for anything.

In the last hours of his life- as his body was shutting down, betraying him every step of the way – he seemed so meek and so willing to go on his way while I wanted him to fight, FIGHT with all his might to stay with me. But I could tell he was at peace – and he gave that incredible gift to me – to be at peace with the way things were going to be. I still struggle with how his life came to a close. But that struggle does not come close to the mighty love I have for him still.

I have thought about my last moments with Dad a lot lately – moments I didn’t have with Mom when she died. As someone who is single without children of my own – I wonder what my last moments will be like. Morbid yes, but as I watch death take hold of so many lives of late, it is hard not to wonder about things like that.

What a blessing it was to share his last breath and commend his spirit to the Lord. To lay my head on his chest for one last heartbeat. Those last moments were the worst moments of my life. I wanted to die with him right then and there and yet, at the same time felt raw and alive with the wonder of the liminality of life. That experience is a gift in itself.

I am so thankful I was able to be with my Dad to send him home. My heart breaks for those, especially during this pandemic, who don’t get to say the same goodbye.

I love you Dad. Give Mom a big smooch tonight.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. – John 14:27

A Gift of Love

/ erikamorck / 2 Comments

February 15th, I took down my Christmas tree. As you might expect if you have read any of my previous posts, this is much more than a post-Christmas chore for me. I am emotionally invested in this seasonal activity of the embellishing and un-embellishing of my PE injection-molded pine tree. Highly invested.

The date for this activity is significant. My Christmas tree holds far more than mercury glass, crystal, and embroidered ornaments. Every branch is adorned with love and light and as such, it carries me through the darkest month of the year which, ironically, is also Epiphany, the season of light. Epiphany ended on February 14th this year- the day we celebrate love – and now we begin the journey of Lent.  “Lent” comes from the old English word for “lengthen” and refers to the gradual lengthening of days during late winter and early spring. Beginning on Ash Wednesday, February 17, Christians begin the 40-day journey to the cross which necessitates a stripping away of all the accoutrements we fill our lives with and get down to reflection, repentance, and preparing for Easter. Hence, it was time for the tree to come down – as much as I hated to see it go.

In the process, I got to thinking about how much life has changed since February 15, 2020, when I last took down my Christmas Tree of Love and Light. Changes none of us planned for, and unless you are an infectious disease expert, likely imagined. For me though, the past five years have brought significant changes and losses as each year passed and this last year was no exception. And, while I had sweet, heartwarming moments of family memories as I placed each ornament into the storage box, I couldn’t help but wonder who or what would be missing from my life when I bring out the PE injection-molded pine tree of love and light next Thanksgiving weekend. 

Robert Burns wrote despondently about the vagaries of life in 1785, ruing the calamity a farmer brought upon a field mouse’s nest as he plowed a winter-ravaged field – upending her little family and no doubt changing the entire course of her existence.Little did the mouse know when she awoke that morning to go about the business of securing nourishment and warmth for the day that her home would be destroyed by a farmer’s plow. Goodness, she had plans!

“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley, (often go awry)
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!”

Ah, the best-laid plans of mice and men…. The saying is so familiar to us it rolls off our tongues without a moment’s thought when a change of plans forces us to change the course of our day-to-day existence of lives well-planned. Think about it. Nature has been messing with even the most-prepared (or so we thought) of us. Brutal storms shutting down life as we know it – literally shutting down and freezing the entire state of Texas as I write this. Think of all the plans upended. And of course, there, lurking in the background is a year-old pandemic. Today, it is hard to have well-planned lives when the whims of COVID-19 are at play. You meticulously planned for a family road trip with every item on your to-do-before-leaving list checked off only to be on the receiving end of a contact tracing call the day of departure; graduations, weddings, and funerals were turned into Zoom events or canceled altogether; you don’t know from one week to the next if your child will be in a classroom or bedroom for schooling; or your business closed after months of lock-downs,  economic instability, and the eradication of your customer base; or your brother calls with news of your mother’s death. COVID-19 brought our mortality to the forefront of our thoughts. In an instant, all the plans you made went up in smoke and left you standing there in the dust.

Sometimes the change of course isn’t instigated by a one-off event at all but a gradual realization that your present life is not what you expected or wanted it to be. Moments and realizations like these often beg the questions: Why even have a plan at all? Who’s in charge here?

Working as I do for a former Marine in the financial planning industry, we have plans or as we call them SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures) for everything from scheduling appointments to writing reports to technology breakdowns to managing your portfolios to closing up shop for the day. If the power goes out, I can reference our handy three ring binder to find the SOP for working the old-fashioned way! While we like to expect that bull markets will reign supreme, we know that the very nature of our business is a roller coaster ride of change. Do we deviate from our written SOP’s? Certainly, no situation is the same, but by having some sort of plan in place beforehand we have a frame of reference from which to launch our response. This response provides us at least part of the answer to the second question: who is in charge here? We are because we know how to react on our toes. We have well practiced strategies in place.

Now, I will be honest with you, I have yet to find or write an SOP for life. Some will say the Bible is the only operator’s manual you need for living life – even a life lived in a pandemic – or perhaps – even more so in a pandemic. And while that is an excellent Plan A as a source of divine guidance, I need a Plan B for the business side of life. Thus, I am making sure I have a plan for my life when I am no longer “in control” of it.

One evening over dinner, after listening to a group of us share the goings on in our lives and noting how many of our plans and expectations had changed over the last several months, a dear, wiser, much older friend of mine took a sip of wine and remarked with a knowing smile that one of her favorite sayings was an old Yiddish Proverb: “Man plans, God laughs.”

Of course, this notion frustrates me to no end; yet, I know how very true it is. I like to be in control; but in the end, I know who is ultimately in charge. Nonetheless, my responsibility is to be prepared and react wisely to the changes that occur in life. My wiser older friend on the other hand is completely satisfied with this concept and I can tell that her life is richer because of it. The morning after our dinner gathering, I received a call that my friend’s husband had gone to bed that night and never woke up. In that moment, all of my friend’s reasoning and carefree logic she shared the day before came sweeping over me. As I sat with her later that day, she had a peace about her that was inspiring. We talked about her husband and the joys they shared during their 56 years of marriage.  Employed as I am in the financial planning world, I asked her, somewhat awkwardly, if they had “you know, made plans?”

 “Of course! We settled all of that stuff years ago,” she replied matter-of-factly. And because of those plans, during this sudden change in the course of her life, she could focus on just being.

One of the best gifts of love you can give your loved ones is an SOP for the end of your life. Don’t leave the burden of reading your now asleep mind to your family and don’t “not give a hoot” and let the state handle your affairs. I speak from personal experience having walked through the aftermath of the seemingly well-planned state of my parent’s affairs. Yes, I am talking about a will, I am talking about taking responsibility now for what you hope never happens but at some point, most assuredly will. Make sure all your financial accounts have payable on death or transfer on death instructions. Make sure your beneficiaries are up to date. Formally state what you want done with your possessions and have it legally documented.

One of the most satisfying parts of my job is helping a grieving spouse or the surviving children navigate through the financial details after a loved one dies. Being able to tell them they have nothing to worry about, that their loved one had everything lined out ahead of time and all I will need is a death corticate and a few signatures takes a very heavy burden off their already weary shoulders.

As the year unfolds for all of us, we of course hope for nothing but the best. When I hang my ornaments on my PE injection-molded Christmas tree of love and light next November 27th or 28th, I hope that I am celebrating all the wonderful people in my life and giving thanks for all the good times this year has been filled with. But I also know that I may be thinking about those I have loved and lost – or God forbid – they will be remembering me. I want to have that sense of peace that my friend had in the wake of her husband’s passing and I want the same for my brother should anything happen to me.

God may laugh when we make plans, but by having a plan we can laugh, cry or just be at peace right alongside God when our best-laid plans go awry.

“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.” Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin. – James 4:13-17

Let your light so shine!