Listening to my eulogy at the rehearsal for my funeral

 I recently had the experience of attending my funeral, via the imagination of my granddaughters. It was one of those experiences you could not think up or plan. The two masterminds were ages 8 and 6. 

We built a fort in their basement with blankets, cushions, pillows, etc. I was the bad guy they had trapped inside. When the fort collapsed on me, one of them said they needed to have a funeral for me. In enacting the funeral I was transformed from the bad guy to their real grandfather. 

The younger of the two, Ava, went first and said that I was "the kindest and nicest man" she had ever known, and how sorry she was that I was dead. That was very very nice to hear. 

The older, Lillian, began to recite the act of contrition, which she is learning for her first confession next Spring. She missed a few pieces of it, but basically she said something like this, 

"I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things. I firmly intend, with your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin. Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered and died for us. In his name, my God, have mercy"

I thought it was rather fitting, and I think she changed a word or to so that it would sound like it was coming from me. But it was sweet and true. Her way of voicing the most serious thing could think of at a very serious, though make-believe, event. 

Most of us will attend our own funerals, at least in body. This "rehearsal" was short and to the point and was just about as good as the one that awaits me down the road. I hope they both speak when the time comes. 

In the name of the Father

Pondering the Trinity

One recent evening I was reading the Easter story to my granddaughter, Lilly, who is three. During the time in the Garden of Gethsemane, we read that Jesus prayed. “Why was he praying?” she asked. “What do you mean, why?” I replied. “He’s God isn’t He? What was he doing, praying to Himself !?” In this simple sentence she laid open one of the deepest questions of theology.  

The truth is we don’t know. We believe that Jesus was fully God and fully Man. We can write books about that and talk in our Bible studies about it, but can’t ever understand it. God as man is a glimpse of what God is like and what we are to be as sons and daughters created in his image. His life and love and pain here was a tiny peek at his nature. What does it mean when God takes on all the suffering of the human body? Not as a punishment but as a redemptive act.   

I tried to explain to her that we know God in three ways, or that he shows himself to us in three forms, but dumb down the Trinity and you find yourself wandering from one heresy to another. Fortunately she’d had enough and turned the pages of the story book, to his arrest and death and then resurrection.  

What our talk reinforced to me, is what CS Lewis said so many times, one of the reasons Christianity rings true, is that it is not something we humans would have come up with. The very fact that at times it seems to not make sense bears witness to the fact that it was not man made. 

Lewis said...

“Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is

one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have

guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected,

I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing

anyone would have made up.”

A three year old heart felt the tug that something fundamental to this story is very very different from every other story she's heard. It has no flying ponies, or talking rainbows. But something even more incredible. A God who is fully one of us and fully God. You need not ask her if it is true, just look on her face and listen to her voice when she says "He's alive!, that's my favorite part". 

The small things become the big things

On weekends I volunteer at a hospice. I do little things like greet visitors, give tours, make coffee, answer the phone. Some days I do bigger things, comfort a family, be a companion to the dying, become their last new friend.

A few weeks ago I watched a one-year old proudly step across a room. She is my granddaughter and she is mastering the skill of walking. It reminded me of how common daily things we take for granted. A skill that it has taken her months to master she will quickly become accustomed to.

For many of us there will come a day when all these little things we think of as easy, become hard. Picking up a cup when thirsty and successfully putting it back down. Wrapping oneself in a blanket when cold. Not drooling on yourself. Being able to say "thank you", for a kindness. 

These are big deals on the front side of life and perhaps even bigger on the back side. All that time in between, we just do them.