Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, November 19, 2023.
The poet Mary Oliver once wrote a little essay about her practice of walking the harbor beach in Provincetown, where she lived, going there to simply notice things. Not because she thought she’d find something useful, but rather, because it fed her soul. “And I would be strong-souled,” she wrote. “The better to honor this world, and my little voyage through it.”
I hope that being part of this faith community helps you to be strong-souled. That coming here feeds your soul; offers you hope and consolation when you need it, and stirs up in you passion and vitality too. That we are like a gym for the soul, helping you to strengthen those spiritual muscles. So that you are strong-souled, for the living of these days. For yourself, and those you are journeying with, and for our world. So we are helping to heal and not to harm, to bless more than to curse. Though some harmless cursing can be useful at times. Just sayin’.
We just sang about giving praise and thanks for all that is our life. Our yearly ritual of Thanksgiving is all about gathering to give thanks for the harvest and our blessings, and it a good and lovely thing to do. But how many of us around the table on Thursday will give thanks for it all? Like we just sang:
For sorrow we must bear, for failures, pain, and loss,
For each new thing we learn, for fearful hours that pass:
We come with praise and thanks…
Most of us probably wouldn’t think to give thanks for our sorrow, to say nothing of failures, pain, and loss. No, we’re naturally more inclined to complain about our afflictions. And I’m not immune to that—just ask my wife. But the person who wrote these words is calling us to take the longer and wider view. To accept that suffering and grief are part of being human. To live into these difficulties, as best we can. To ask for help, and find companions we can commiserate with, and laugh with, along the way.
Rev. Serene Jones is a theologian and seminary dean who said something that has really helped to clarify for me what this journey of grief and mourning is about. She talks about making the transition from grief to mourning, what she describes as moving “from a place of sheer loss to a place of acknowledging the loss. And in mourning the permanence of the loss — it can’t be fixed — but also it creates a space, in mourning, for you to make sacred the pain so that the rest of your life is transformed by it. It allows the possibility of a future, mourning does” (listen to her here).
When you experience a traumatic loss, it knocks you down, down to the ground, and can immobilize you for a time. What she’s saying is that the process of mourning begins when you acknowledge that the loss can’t be fixed, and this hard but necessary truth-telling opens up a space where you can start to do something with your pain. And even, eventually, to make it sacred.
For me this is a new way of describing the process of mourning, and it feels liberating to think of it this way. Finding depth and meaning in the pain. Coming to see the loss as an invitation; to take it and work with it, and in the fullness of time, to make something sacred out of it.
Whether we would describe it this way or not, haven’t many of us done this in our lives? Learned from our losses, and been transformed by them? As the song puts it, “Because I knew you, I have been changed for good.” Haven’t the losses of life made many of us into what the theologian Henri Nouwen called “wounded healers?”
My friend Cheryle St. Onge is a photographer, and our children are about the same age. When they were little, I would hire Cheryle to be my assistant on photo shoots; helping carry gear and set up lights and problem solve. On day we were in the car on the way to a job and she laughed and said, “You know it’s great to be able to leave the kids with my mom, and get out of the house for a day, have some adult conversation for a change, and even get paid for it!”
Cheryle works mostly with a large format camera, and 8 by 10 inch sheets of film, mostly black and white. And this is by necessity a slow and deliberate and patient process of making pictures. Cheryle surpassed me in photography long ago; she was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship back in 2009. More recently, she found herself using her art as a way to mourn. This is how she describes what happened:
“My mother and I have lived side by side on the same farm for decades. Our love was mutual and constant. She developed vascular dementia, and so began the flushing away of her emotions and her memory. At first I stopped making pictures with her, then I stopped making pictures at all.
“Perhaps as a counterbalance to her conversations of why she wanted to die, of how she imagined she could die. And because I needed some happiness, some light in the afternoon, these portraits of my mother began… Made in the moment, as a distraction from watching her fade away. I would make a picture of her, then share that picture of her with others I love. Sharing the act of being in the moment, sharing the ephemeral nature of my looking and her seeing.
“Now, when I leave our home, when I leave my mother behind, people find me. They want to tell me their stories and they want to hear mine. It's a beautiful back and forth, much like a true portrait.. Because of the dementia, (my mother and I) have no conversations. But we do still have this profound exchange - the making of a portrait.
“She must recall our history and the process of picture making. Because she brightens up and is always up for what my children would refer to as the long effort with the long camera. That best describes sitting before an 8” x 10” view camera, on top of a tripod with its bellows extended out. My mother does her best and I do mine. And then in turn, I give the picture away to anyone who will look. It is an excruciating form of emotional currency.”
Cheryle’s mom Carole died three years ago, but their story, and those photos they made together, endure. They’ve been published in the New Yorker and The New York Times, and I’ll put a link with the sermon text on our website (click here to see Cheryle’s photographs, and here for the NY Times story).
You don’t need to be a professional artist to practice the art of mourning. You have what you need already—your heart and soul and mind. You have your pain, your loss, your memories. How might you honor the losses of your life? How might you make sacred the pain, so the rest of your life will be transformed by it?
What media might you use for your art of mourning? It could be anything—music, ink on paper, words or drawings, photos or paints or cut out images made into a collage? Maybe something made of wood or clay or stone? Maybe a tree or garden planted in memory of one you’ve lost, or a symbol placed when it will remind you of that blessing you now must live without. It could be as simple as a candle you light here, or it could be a way you commit yourself to living in the world.
Holding open a space for mourning, helping to make sacred the pain, this is one of the things we know how to do here. And we do that pretty well. We have rituals for remembering the dead, and caring for the living. We do this with words and with song, with hugs, and condolence notes, and food. Plenty of food.
I’m something of a traditionalist. Maybe you’re noticed. I love those old funeral hymns: Amazing Grace, Abide with Me, For All the Saints, and O God, Our Help in Ages Past. Which is based on Psalm 90, our reading today. For me, these old words and old songs provide an anchor of comfort and solace in a topsy turvey world.
Of course, there’s contemporary poetry that is as good as scripture, and there are some good new songs too. Like Blue Boat Home, which is adapted from a traditional hymn tune. We could use more of that adaptation and innovation, couldn’t we?
This is the communal part of mourning a death, and there is an art to that. But as many of you know, the real work begins when the service is over and the rest of your life lies before you. And this is the time when you really need companions. Whatever you might be mourning, you need a community. My friend Cheryle only started photographing again after several of her artist friends encouraged her to make pictures of her mom. You need a community, and you have one here. And I hope and trust you have other communities too.
The invitation, my spiritual companions, is to take up practices that will help us to be strong-souled; to see ourselves as the artists and theologians of our lives. Engaging with life as it is; being grateful, as best we can, for it all. Taking up the time-honored work and practice and art of mourning, making sacred the pain, remembering that you are not alone. That we are in this together. Trusting that grace does abide.
Now and forever,
Amen.