A dear soul from our church passed away this last week at 99 years old, and I have a sweet memory of her that I figure is worth sharing:
About five months after I started serving here at St Luke’s, I preached a sermon about loving God with our minds, and near the end of the sermon I invited the congregation to read or engage the arts more broadly, including in art or fiction or poetry.
The next morning, Dorothy (in her mid 90s at that point) wandered into my office and wanted to share something with me about the sermon. My experience is generally that people say they liked your sermon with a quick “thanks” in passing, and they disagree or complain by way of meetings and appointments. So I welcomed her in, gearing myself up for the latter, and not the former.
But Dorothy came in just to share with me some of a poem that she had memorized decades prior (if I remember correctly, it was when she was in college). And then she rattled off these lines from Thanatopsis, by William Cullen Bryant:
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.(full poem here)
Just a reminder to myself: People can surprise you.
May the faithful departed rest in peace and rise in glory.