“By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19).
Recently I had an intense practise in dying. No, I’m not sick or otherwise find myself on the “heavenly runway” ready to take off to higher places. I was sorting, discarding and packing for a move from one house to another, from one community to another. Not leaving active ministry yet, just moving. I’m only moving; yet at some level, it felt like an exercise in dying.
While I don’t hold a candle to my husband’s propensity to collect and save literally everything, I do cling to … words. Among all the unsettledness of moving, of letting go, of leaving, words are the hardest to part with for me, harder even than the physical structure that has been our home for 18 years.
Yes, words. I love words. Writing is playing with words, sometimes for hours on end. Words help me find and express meaning, depth, and purpose. Words give life to my dreams and visions. I use words to teach and preach, I use words to write and journal, I use words to express deep and hilarious thoughts. Words become flesh, over and over again.
Over the course of nearly seven decades of living, of which 30-some years in ministry, I carefully kept paper copies of countless sermons, workshop and retreat talks, Scripture commentaries, published articles and even a couple of books. Each one of these creations holds a piece of my soul; each one reveals what I consider precious, meaningful and of the essence.
But now it’s purging season; the arduous task of deciding what to keep and what to discard is all consuming, tugging on my heart and mind. Really? Should it go? Why keep it all? Well, there’s good reading all over these files of sermons and talks and articles. Somebody just might want to glean some wisdom and guidance tucked in between the pages.
But no, I will never use these words again in a public forum. All this paper to move … for what? So that the purging is left to my children? Well, maybe they’ll read my words and learn more about their mother who brought them into this world. Wishful thinking. They are creating their own horizons and their own expressions of meaning and purpose.
On and on goes the internal conversation as I turn yet another file over and over in my hands, resisting the temptation to sit down and re-read this treasure trove of words that have guided, consoled, and shaped my life. Then one day, in the throes of this “dying” practise, the heartache over discarding precious words took on a wider meaning.
On the eve of his diocesan Synod, my friend and colleague The Rev. Canon Scott Sharman shared this on Facebook page: “We have some sobering realities to face as a diocesan family of churches in these next few years, and probably quite a few things that will need to change and come to look different than they have for quite some time. We have some very tough decisions to make about what we can and should take with us into the future, and what we may have to carry differently or even leave behind.”
The sober reality of life is such; nothing is permanent, all is dust and to dust we return. As a church community we are engaged in a similar heart-wrenching task: sorting and reviewing, pondering and evaluating, and finally discarding and detaching from some long-standing cherished practises and understandings.
While the Gospel continues to be the timeless pearl of great price, the institutional and cultural packaging in which every generation wraps and shares it needs regular rigorous renewing and adjusting.
In one of his columns last summer (June 17, 2024), spurred by the death of a beloved friend and colleague, the prolific RC writer Fr. Ron Rolheiser wrote the following: According to the renowned mystic John of the Cross, we have three essential struggles in life: to get our lives together, to give our lives away, and to give our deaths away What is asked of us in the first two struggles is obvious. But what does it mean to give our deaths away?
In essence, it means this: How we die leaves behind a legacy, a particular spirit, which either nurtures or haunts those left behind. If we die in bitterness and anger, not at peace with our loved ones, ourselves, and our God, we will leave behind a spirit that is more toxic than nurturing.
Conversely, if we die reconciled and at peace with our loved ones, the world, and with God, then like Jesus, we will leave behind a spirit that nourishes, warms, consoles, and gives our loved ones sacred permission to be at peace. How we die colours our legacy, and that legacy is either a gift or a burden to those we leave behind.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and in the age to come. That is the only core truth we can trust in every dying moment, both in our personal lives and in the life of the church. As Scott says in his Facebook reflection, we follow the One who showed us that real glory comes on a road that leads through the cross and is renewed through breaking apart loaves of bread.
And so we can face the path with hope, believing that what we think is failure and death is really a call into a new and more beautiful way to be what we truly are.
As followers of Jesus, we desire to leave a legacy of peace in a spirit that nourishes, warms and consoles. With renewed hope and courage, I continue my sorting and reviewing, discarding and letting go, in the spirit of giving my death away in love and mercy, with thanks to wise words from others (see, words are amazing!) for helping me die to my own importance and to the urge to cling to all things temporal.
But I can’t resist: thank you, God, for digital files, and for online word-games!
“For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust.
As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.” Psalm 103:14—16
