Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] In Cormac McCarthy's novel Cities of the Plain, John Grady Cole is riding his horse back to the ranch in New Mexico where he works. After spending a night in a brothel in old Mexico and falling in love with Magdalena, one of the workers there, he meets an old Mexican man on the road home. And this is what happens.
[00:00:27] McCarthy's in the cold dawn, the lights were still burning out there under the dark cape of the mountain with that precious insularity common to cities of the desert.
[00:00:41] A man was coming down the road, driving a donkey piled high with firewood.
[00:00:47] In the distance, the church bells had begun.
[00:00:52] The man smiled at him, a sly smile, as if they knew a secret between them, these two.
[00:01:02] Something of age.
[00:01:04] Pardon me, something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims and of the claims upon them the world passed, the world to come, their common transiencies above all, a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.
[00:01:34] I want to thank Jimmy for reminding me of this scene.
[00:01:38] Today we're celebrating All Saints and All Souls Day.
[00:01:43] It's also known as the Day of the Dead.
[00:01:47] It's a day on which we remember those who we've lost and loved, those who have gone on before us, those who have died and left holes in our hearts.
[00:02:01] I'm going to talk about my experience of love and loss and of death and of beauty, because I know in my bones that McCarthy is right.
[00:02:14] Beauty and loss are one.
[00:02:19] Flo died 18 months ago, on June 21st, the summer solstice.
[00:02:25] Her son Tanner's 21st birthday. 21st birthday.
[00:02:30] Tragic circumstances.
[00:02:33] A sudden, senseless, violent death that left me reeling.
[00:02:40] And I've talked about the feeling of utter disorientation that came with the shock of Flo going out for a bicycle ride one morning and not coming home, of sitting by her shrouded body on the side of the South Park Road on a hot summer afternoon, Mary and Jimmy at my side, howling at the sun.
[00:03:06] I preached about it. I've had conversations with many of you and with many others about that day and about the days since.
[00:03:18] If I'm anything, I'm a scholar, I'm a student, and I've been studying grief from the inside for 18 months now.
[00:03:30] I don't know what I've learned other than a person just has to go through it as best they can and that it sucks.
[00:03:42] And loving friends have sat with me, cried with me, laughed with me and helped me to mend my heart.
[00:03:51] And I have learned over time that McCarthy is absolutely right.
[00:03:57] Beauty and loss are one.
[00:04:01] I don't want to give you all the impression that I think my experience of Flo's death is unique, because I know that it's not. I've had so many beautiful conversations with people, many of you, who have lost loved ones since Flo died. And I look around this room today and I know that every, every single one of you have experienced the loss of someone who meant the world to you and that you did not know in that moment how you would face a world without them in it.
[00:04:40] And yet here we are, battered, bruised and alive in a world overflowing with beauty.
[00:04:54] Loss can open our hearts and our eyes and our minds and our souls to the sufferings of others and to the beauty of a misty, mystical, cool fall morning, November 1st.
[00:05:16] As much as it hurts, it's all beauty.
[00:05:24] Look around this church.
[00:05:26] Just look how beautiful it is.
[00:05:30] It's become our tradition once a year on the Day of the dead here at St. John's to celebrate all souls and all Saints, the Day of the Dead. By borrowing from our Latin American neighbors, friends, siblings, these traditions, these ways of honoring the dead whom we still love and who, in some mysterious way, are still with us, We're welcoming them back into the world today with a celebration that is loaded with symbology.
[00:06:11] The ofrenda in front of the altar and is an offering welcoming them back.
[00:06:17] There are photographs of them.
[00:06:20] There are candles, There is food.
[00:06:27] There are flowers to help us remember those whom we've loved and whom we have lost.
[00:06:39] The paper banners catch the wind of the spirit as it blows through the world and through our hearts.
[00:06:53] The pan de muerto, a sweet bread.
[00:06:58] The calaveras, sugar skulls and favorite foods.
[00:07:03] I meant to bring a piece of cake to put in front of Flo's photo because she loved cake, but I forgot. Sometimes we put toys or tools up there because they need them.
[00:07:17] No, no, not where they are, wherever that may be, as ways to help us remember the joy and the beauty that they brought into our lives.
[00:07:28] The elements of creation that are described in many traditions, including in our own Judeo Christian tradition, are symbolized in the decorations.
[00:07:38] The paper banners, the wind of the spirit blowing through creation. A pitcher of water to quench the soul's thirst.
[00:07:48] Candles, the fire of light, hope and faith. And I want to give a big shout out to Melody Schwabacher, who's not here today because she's not feeling well, and to Haley for leading the team in making this place so incredibly beautiful in our episcopal funeral service, the burial of the Dead, we say, you only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind. And we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return.
[00:08:28] For so did you ordain when you created me, saying ye, you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
[00:08:37] All of us go down to the dust, yet even at the grave we make our song Alleluia, Alleluia, alleluia.
[00:08:47] You've probably heard these words many times if you've been to an Episcopal or to many Episcopal funerals.
[00:08:56] And I've said these words every time I've officiated at a funeral.
[00:09:00] I certainly have tried to give my heart to them as I said the words, and I understand the belief that they were meant to convey. And even at the grave we make our song Alleluia, Alleluia, alleluia.
[00:09:22] Now I have to admit that I didn't really feel them on the day of Flo's funeral. It was too soon, it was too raw. I could not hear the beauty in these words.
[00:09:35] There is no grave where Flo's body is buried.
[00:09:40] She was cremated and her ashes were spread in the places that she loved.
[00:09:45] She loved the beauty of this world, and so do I.
[00:09:50] The earth, the rain, especially the snow, the wind, the light, all of God's good creation is where she and everyone that you've loved and lost now reside on this temporal plane.
[00:10:12] I have faith that their souls also reside on a much higher plane, in the arms of God, whom we know to be love.
[00:10:23] And today.
[00:10:25] Today we welcome them back for a day.
[00:10:29] Just for a day to be with us, to give us strength to face the future that we couldn't imagine without them.
[00:10:40] And then we'll let them go yet again.
[00:10:48] Because I have lived into beauty and loss and know that they are inseparable. Now I can say it and mean it.
[00:10:57] Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
[00:11:05] All Souls Day.
[00:11:07] I don't want to limit our celebration of all souls to only the souls of the dead.
[00:11:15] I truly want to celebrate all souls.
[00:11:19] Yours, mine, everybody's.
[00:11:27] So how's your soul today?
[00:11:32] Is that a hard question?
[00:11:35] Does it produce a little bit of anxiety, maybe pondering the condition of your soul?
[00:11:41] If it does, I'm guessing that you were taught somewhere along the line that you had to guard your soul, walking a straight and narrow path through this life so that your soul would one day go to heaven, and that if you didn't, well, that you were going somewhere else. When you died and your body returned to dust, Your soul is so much more than a scorecard or your ticket into heaven or hell.
[00:12:21] Your soul is who you are at the very deepest place.
[00:12:28] It's not your job.
[00:12:30] It's not your success or your failures.
[00:12:34] It's not what you believe or what you don't believe. And it's especially not what you think, because you are more than what you think you are more than what you accomplish or fail at.
[00:12:49] Your soul is the God given spark that animates you.
[00:12:55] It is your own.
[00:12:57] It is you.
[00:13:00] So how's your soul?
[00:13:04] Well, I'm here to tell you your soul is just fine.
[00:13:09] You may not feel that way.
[00:13:12] You might be confused, you might be angry, you might be grieving or experiencing any one of the thousand slings and arrows that life throws at us.
[00:13:24] But those are mind and heart problems and they're real. Or at least they feel very real when we're caught up in them. Which in my experience is most of the time our thoughts and our emotions are not our souls.
[00:13:43] I was caught up short when I read and preached on last week's gospel when Jesus told his friends that the first great commandment was to to love God with all your mind and all your heart and all your soul and to love your neighbor as yourself.
[00:14:01] Because it seemed to me that he was making a distinction here, that there are three ways of loving.
[00:14:07] Of course they're intertwined.
[00:14:10] I can understand how I can love you with my mind and I can feel how I love you with my heart.
[00:14:21] But how can I love you with my soul?
[00:14:25] How can I love God with that spark that came into this world with me and only me? And love that spark that came into this world with you and only you?
[00:14:39] How can we see with the eyes of the soul?
[00:14:43] How can we hear with the ears of the soul?
[00:14:47] How can we love with the love of the soul?
[00:14:54] Where, oh where are the souls of the departed?
[00:15:03] I don't know if I've got a language adequate to express what I feel about that, but I do know this.
[00:15:11] The soul that is me and the souls that are all of us are the bedrock of who we are.
[00:15:20] The soul is the fire that keeps us burning, the water that quenches our thirst, the earth that feeds us, the wind that blows us onward, onward through this life, through our deaths, and into a future that our minds can only imagine, that our hearts can either hope for or dread.
[00:15:53] To a place where our individual souls are reunited with the great soul who we call God, who we know to be love.
[00:16:06] Now, this may sound a little muddled because it is.
[00:16:09] I mean, I feel like I'm just beginning to explore this soul that I was born with.
[00:16:15] It's very mysterious to me.
[00:16:20] I do know that in the last 18 months, something has shifted.
[00:16:24] At first, the me that I thought was me got blown apart, and now it feels like the pieces are starting to reintegrate, but coming together differently.
[00:16:39] That might be my soul at work.
[00:16:43] Consider your soul.
[00:16:46] It's beyond thought, beyond emotion, and it's been with you since the day you were born.
[00:16:53] And it will be with you on the day that you die, when you leave holes in the hearts of the people who loved you.
[00:17:05] And it will live on.
[00:17:09] Cormac McCarthy had a pretty bleak view of humanity, and he would disagree with almost everything that I have just said about the soul.
[00:17:19] That's okay. I love you anyway. Cormac, where does the soul reside?
[00:17:27] Well, it feels like it's in my bones.
[00:17:32] A sure knowing that beauty and loss are one.
[00:17:38] Amen.
