Rector's Reflection: The Enormity of the Circle of Life
Dear Friends,
A couple hours ago, family, friends and neighbors of Charlotte Ludington circled round a beautiful graveside setting in Sherborn as Charlotte was laid to rest in a sun drenched hillside surrounded by trees. The image of returning our bodies to the earth so that God might make something new of these earthen vessels of ours was poignant as we committed this beloved 99 year-old church member back to creation on the warmest of March days.
Last weekend, while memorializing Don, a dear friend and distant cousin, in Maine, I was comforted by the fact that when we visit his wife this summer, we will eat peaches from the trees he planted around their farm house, on a peninsula, jutting out into an ocean that smells of perspective and depth.
As a community, we are planning long deferred funerals this Spring, and we are braced against the death on the news in war zones, and we are hoping the death wave of Covid is coming to an end, and we are witnessing new life in babies and daffodils, and brave March forsythia, and impatient garlic shoots. And we know Good Friday is coming. And we know Easter always follows.
In a society where we too often sugar-coat death by whispering it's name or saying someone has "passed away" as if they've just moved to another state, it is good to acknowledge death, to make space for the love we call grief, to be filled with wonder at the circle and blessing of it all, to honor our beloveds who have died by speaking of them often, and knowing they are somehow, somewhere in the air we breathe, and in the daffodils, and the ocean. And also in paradise and glory, awaiting our someday arrival.
Yours in Christ,
Rector
