Flame on

       This year has brought a great many changes to our family.  Mom ( my mother-in-law ) died early in the year and Pop has been declining in many ways ever since. They had been married over 65 years. The loss sinks in deeper with each passing day. The love and commitment, the joys and heartaches shared perhaps in some ways, taken for granted by both after so many years together. Now Mom has gone on to her eternal reward and Godly inheritance. Pop misses mom enormously.

       I do not like to think about death although I have grieved my own parents and a brother as well as too many friends.  I do find solace in the fact that they have moved on to a better place and are in the presence of their creator.  Still, there is a physical void and no longer the loving interactions we as humans value and grow accustomed to.

       One of the many joys of my religious training and especially from 'coming out' is the value and appreciation I hold for all the people that God has graced me with in my life journey.  Even things and experiences are appreciated. One important part of that appreciation is that just because something or someone has passed, I still revel in the memories, lessons they afforded me and love that remains. 

      In a worldly note in this regard, I think of the heavily modified Jeep Wrangler I once owned. Driving around topless in the summer, riding along the island beaches in the sand and running roughshod over rocks and mud in the mountains until I came away with a thick veneer of heavy mud on every surface. The Jeep was a source of fun and fellowship. I sold the Jeep years ago but all those memories and how they contributed to friendships and brotherhood is not gone. All the memories and lessons are still in me.

       The same can be said for the 20 years I spent in Colorado skiing.  Driven to the mountains by a professional obligation for continuing education, the joys of skiing and the friends I inevitably made along the way, I was loathe to stop the annual calling. But, knees not being what they used to be, the inability to keep up the restrictions of age versus extreme altitudes and new chapters in my life had me moving on to other things and warmer climates. Should I mourn the death of such fun?  Not at all. Those memories, lessons and fun are still in my heart.

        For the last 10 years of my own Dad's life, we spoke almost every single day on the phone if not visited each other.  Our early years were nil as he moved out of our house when I was five. Those later years yielded a relationship of a mature father and a good friend.  I still do mourn his loss. I miss him a great deal. But is the relationship we had diminished? Hardly, it still lives on and is cherished. The love is still there, the lessons are still there. The only real thing I mourn for a man that is enjoying his eternal reward is the physicality we humans become so attached to.

        The same can be said for so many people that has graced my life with.  Love is eternal and is not dependent on the physical aspects of life we cling to.  If this time of Advent is not at least a celebration of love and hope, then all the people we have seen gone are simply dead, buried and dismissed. We know that not to be so.  With advent we celebrate the hope and salvation of  the incartnation and in so doing keep the flame of love alive for all. 

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord for ever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.