.
Opening Words:
Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was often times filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine, the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that sooths your spirit the very wood that was followed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
— Kahil Gibran The Prophet
Homily:
We have gathered here today both to mourn the death, but more importantly to celebrate the life, of Betty Jo Jensen: a remarkable woman who was a great many things to a great many people, not the least of which was my mother. I know it may seem a little strange at first to those of you who didn’t grow up in the Unitarian Church, that we should both grieve and celebrate in exactly the same moment. But Life and Death are like that: so closely bound together that we routinely speak of them in the same breath as though they were somehow a single entity. A colleague of mine, the Reverend F. Forrester Church of the All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City, has even gone so far as to suggest that all religious belief and practice is simply "our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die" — an attempt to come to terms with this most fundamental, ironic paradox of existence. "Knowing we are going to die," Forrest writes, "not only places an acknowledged limit on our lives, it also gives a special intensity and poignancy to the time we are given to live and love. The fact that death is inevitable gives meaning to our love, for the more we love the more we risk losing. Love's power comes in part from the courage required to give ourselves to that which is not ours to keep: our spouses, children, dear and cherished friends, even life itself. It also comes from the faith required to sustain that courage, the faith that life, howsoever limited and mysterious, contains within its margins, often at their very edges, a meaning that is redemptive."
I often quote Forrest on occasions like this, and yet his words have never seemed quite so poignant as they do today, when I use them to describe the passing of a member of my own family. Because Death truly is the great leveler. It will come eventually to each and every one of us, and in a time of its own choosing. Death strikes down both the rich and the poor, both the young and the old, the saintly and the sinful, men and women of all nations, races, and religions; no living thing can escape its relentless pursuit. It can come suddenly and without warning; or can linger, slowly and painfully, for months or even years. We often attempt to bargain with Death, or try to cheat it for awhile; mostly, I suspect, we just try not to think about it very much at all, in the somewhat naive hope that maybe it we don't pay too much attention to it, it won't pay too much attention to us. But Death will not be cheated, and cares little for our bargains. Death is the universal fate of every living creature: indiscriminate, egalitarian, and undeniable.
When I was still relatively new to the ministry, I received a brief letter from a former parishioner of mine informing me, quite matter-of-factly, that she was dying of cancer, and inquiring whether I would be available to officiate at her funeral. Naturally I picked up the phone and called her right away. It had been several years since I had actually been her minister, but we had continued to exchange Christmas letters, and occasionally I would even run into her and her husband at various places around town. "I always got so much out of your sermons," she told me that first time we talked on the phone. "And now I'm kinda hoping that you can teach me how to die."
It's hard to describe the range of emotions you feel when someone makes a request like this. It’s not exactly the kind of sentiment you can easily buy on a Hallmark Card. I felt so sad, even guilty, that she should be dying while I was so vital and healthy; and yet so privileged and even flattered that she should invite me to be her companion in the process.
That certainly wasn't the last time, by the way, that someone has extended that kind of invitation to me. Ministers are often invited to offer "counsel and consolation" at the conclusion of a life; it is without a doubt the most difficult thing of we do, and whenever the invitation comes to me, I always feel somewhat inadequate to the task. After all, it's not as if I have any special expertise in the subject; it's not really something they can teach you in school, and it's certainly not something I've ever done before myself. All I really need to know about death I've learned from dying people, and it didn’t really take me long to figure out that by allowing me to minister to them, they were also ministering to me, and helping me learn how to be abetter minister for others, including now myself and the members of my own family. Death isn’t often pleasant, and isn’t often fun — but it can be funny, and sad, and frightening, and heartwarming, and intimate, and intense, and distressing all at once: the whole range of human emotion packed down into the touch of a hand, a single labored breath, a final heartbeat. There's something about looking death squarely in the eye that really helps you to get your priorities in focus. It's a pity that most of us have to be dying ourselves first before we can really see it.
And then it's over.
Except it's not.
Grief is an emotion we feel when we have lost someone or something that we were not prepared to lose. It is an emotion, not only of sorrow, but of regret: we mourn the loss of opportunity for further contact, and lament the things we wish we'd said or done, but will now never have a chance to say or do. Grief is a fundamental condition of the human experience, and the grief we feel at the loss of a loved one is only a preview of the grief we will experience at the end of our own lives, when we are forced to confront the inevitable loss of everyone and every thing we have ever loved. And on some level this is true even for people whose religious faith includes a strongly-held belief in the existence of an afterlife. Because even if you are confidently looking forward to spending eternity reunited with your loved ones in the presence of the Creator, you're still never going to have another opportunity to spend an hour just sitting with them on the front porch, watching the ocean and listening to the ball game, and waiting until it’s time for dinner. We mourn not only the life we lose, but the life we never will have again: the end of our opportunity to get a second chance.
And yet the companion of grief is often joy: a celebration of the life we have been blessed with, and a sense of gratitude for the things we have enjoyed. Death compels us to confront the preciousness of life, this arbitrary gift of the cosmos, which, though brief and fragile, has allowed us the privilege of speculating about its ultimate meaning and our place within it, of enjoying the company of others, the pleasures of our senses, the essential vitality of being alive. The French call it joie d'vivre -- the joy of living -- and there is nothing like the realization of one's inevitable mortality to create a deep appreciation for the things one has enjoyed.
I know for my own part, as I have said so many times this past month, it's difficult for me to imagine my mother being gone because I personally embody so many of both her faults and her virtues. Especially here at the island, I don't have to look very hard to see her handiwork all around me: from her quilting and her embroidery, right down to the furnishings of the house and the way the kitchen drawers are organized and the photographs on the fridge. After more than half a century's worth of experience as her firstborn male child, I generally feel like I can pretty much predict what she probably would have said about almost any given subject, and I can almost hear her voice right now telling me that she still has a few surprises in store for me yet, and that she's proud of me anyway. I've learned how to cook for myself MOST of my favorite childhood foods, I feel confident that I will continue to be able to draw upon the lessons of a lifetime's worth of her tutalage to figure out the things she didn't have time to teach me herself, and I certainly don't love her any less than I did when she was living. These things are much more tangible than mere memory. They represent a dynamic and palpable living legacy, which I will continually be able to touch and draw upon for as long as I live myself….
Pray with me now, won’t you?
Spirit of Life, Source of Love and Understanding, which connects us all, one to another, and gives our own lives meaning.... We have come here today to express our love for Betty Jo, whose love of life and all life's gifts has blessed and inspired us in so many ways. We mourn and grieve her passing, even as we cherish and celebrate our memories of her vitality, and our various connections to her: as a friend and neighbor; as wife, mother, sister... a precious member of both an extended family and a larger community, which together have been enriched beyond measure by her involvement and participation, and together now sadly miss her presence. We feel her absence, and so we look to one another to fill that void. Knowing she can never be replaced, knowing she will always be remembered, may we look to one another: to embody her spirit and to keep her vision and her inspiration alive. May we acknowledge all she has meant to us, and all she still means. May we recognize the influence she has had on our lives, and the influence she will continue to have -- through us -- on the lives of others. May we be grateful for the opportunity to have known and loved her, and to have been loved BY her. And yes -- may we mourn our loss, though not without taking some small solace from the realization that she is now at last truly and fully at peace, and free from all pain or suffering.
Eulogy:
Hi, I'm Erik -- Betty Jo's youngest son.
Twenty years ago, I moved out to the East Coast to a world that was much different than the one in which I was raised. And it seems that I have spent much of my time out there listening to friends and colleagues tell me stories about how difficult their relationships with their mothers were.
I hear how they were never there…
How they weren't very supportive…
That they were more interested in themselves than their children…
How they didn't care about them…
Or how, in some other way, their mothers had made their lives more difficult, or how their lives were screwed up because of their relationship with their mom
I always had a very difficult time empathizing with them or joining in in these conversations, because I had a great mother.
I can honestly never remember a time in my life when I felt like I wasn't supported, or that my mom didn't care.
Or that she wasn't there for me.
Or I didn't have something that I needed.
And this was despite fact that she worked, was divorced for half of my childhood, and raised me on her own when we didn't have a whole lot of money.
I had a great mother.
And I never really realized just how hard what she did was until I had children of my own and had to try to do it myself.
What she made seem so effortless is very very hard. If I have to fault her for anything. it's that she made it look so easy that I wasn't really prepared for how hard it was when I had my children
If I have to look back at her legacy for me, a number of things stood out.
She always provided.
When I was in college and we didn't have a lot of money, she would go down to the financial aid office every year to make sure that I would have enough money to go to school, even though asking for money went against everything she had been taught. And between that money and working part time and scholarships, I was able to make it through school without having to work full-time and I was able to get the education that was so important to her.
She kept me grounded.
When I went to work on Wall Street for the summer, they had folks who roamed the floor and made a living shining the shoes of the bankers at their desks. And all I could think was how extravagant this was. To have someone shine your shoes at your desk while you worked. At first, I didn't partake and shined my shoes at home. But one day, I decided to splurge and spent the $4 to get my shoes shined, and feel very important. I sat in my office and I called my mom on the phone while the man shined my shoes.
When she answered, she told me that she had been thinking about me, and how she was reading Bonfire of the Vanities so she could get a sense of the world I was living in. She told me about how decadent and extravagant the book was, and how Sherman McCoy would sit at his desk and actually have someone shine his shoes while he conducted business on the phone…and asked if had I witnessed anything like that.
I told her that I had.
And I remember how lucky I was that she had help me to get that.
She always had an ear to lend.
She was always available to listen when I had problems and concerns and to remind me to remember the way I was raised.
The way she raised me.
To be honest.
To act with integrity.
To never do anything that would embarrass your mother if you were to seen it printed on the front page of The Wall Street Journal.
And those were very high standards and very hard to live by in the world of Wall Street.
But I have always tried, because I wanted her to be proud of me.
I found myself talking to her more and more often as the years went by, and I will miss that most.
They say every cloud has its silver lining. This is a very sad occasion for me and my family. The silver lining is that we all get to see all of the other people in her life and know how much they too cared for her and to share our grief for this wonderful woman.
To share our grief for my great mom.
Benediction:
Our Benediction is by the 13th century Sufi poet and mystic Jalal ad-Din Rumi, who wrote:
I died a mineral, and became a plant.
I died a plant, and rose up an animal.
I died an animal, and I was a human being.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
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