Thursday, March 9, 2017

Come Fly With Me

 
I helped lead a celebration of life yesterday that helped me believe in the God I believe in.

It was for a woman named Margaret, and at one point in the service as I sat to the side and listened along with everyone else to her son's and two grand-daughters' memories of her life and love, and of what she meant in their lives, I was deeply aware of feeling blessed and privileged.  Of being included in a sacred recollection and gathering.  Of being on holy ground.

I have been wondering what it was that occasioned that feeling and awareness.  And of all the different elements of the service -- the music, the prayers, the readings, the meditation -- at that particular point it was the memory and gratitude that was being expressed by Margaret's son and grand-daughters for the ways in which she so completely and consistently loved the people around her without condition, celebrated them for who they were, and gave the people she loved space, permission, freedom and encouragement to become who and what and how they needed to be.

It's the kind of love we trust to be true of God.  The kind of delight in our uniqueness and quirkiness we believe of God.  The kind of divine encouragement and empowerment we long to know all our lives -- and don't always.

I used to think that my job at funerals was to offer assurance of God's gracious love for us after death -- especially for the one we were mourning, but also for all us, if we adequately believe and are prepared for the end of our life here and our passage to the hereafter.

But the more deaths I help people mark, and the more funerals and celebrations of life I help lead, slowly and surely I find myself drawn more and more to helping people recognize and celebrate the variety of ways in which God's gracious love is lived out in this life -- especially in the life of the one we are mourning, but also in ours if we take the time to remember and to attend to its possibility right here and now.

Two songs were chosen by Margaret's daughters to end the service and to lead us out of the chapel.

One was a quiet, meditative rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."  It's a much-loved, heart-felt prayer for a land somewhere beyond us, where dreams come true.  And I wonder if that's the way we sometimes see heaven and God's promise of the kind of life and love we long to know.

The second, in total contrast, was a boozy, loud, big-band version of the Sinatra classic, "Come Fly With Me."  Old Blue Eyes was Margaret's favourite, and that song was at the top of her chart.  It's loud, bawdy, and brash in its celebration of life and love in the here and now -- not what you expect at a memorial service.  But it's a freewheeling celebration of the here and now that includes a bold idea that maybe, just maybe, when we're together and loving one another as freely and joyously as we can, we can hear the angels cheering us just because of the way we are together -- right here and now, heaven on earth.