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After my mother’s death I spent a lot of time staring at nothing in particular: staring out the window of my office, staring into the forested open space behind our house, staring up at the sky, or at my hands. And I spent a lot of time weeping. I wept in the shower, in my truck, in front of my computer, and at anytime of the day or night; sometimes waking up to cry, after crying in my dreams. I sometimes fell into despair over the loss, but I also fought for hope and joy in the midst of this distress. But mostly I just endured, in an earthly purgatory, not entirely in a pit of sorrow, yet not quite finding any heights of joy either. I found I had a strong urge to avoid the pain and the melancholy, a desire to distract myself with any kind of entertainment, or to attach myself to something, or someone, to avoid the pain of my utter interior loneliness.  Somehow though I resisted most of these urges, as I sensed a great opportunity before me now to seek my solace in God alone, and to place everything and everyone in my life, second to God. This of course is how it should be, it is a command of Jesus Christ that we have no love greater than our love for Him, but honestly up to this point I had never been able to follow this command; I loved many things in this life more than Him, as I made completely evident by how I spent my time, and what I thought about throughout the day.

I began to pray much more, in order to develop a deeper relationship with God, and as I did this I began to see a battle playing out within me for my affections, between every kind of idol, and God Himself. The more I sought God alone through my prayers, the more all of the things I had ever enjoyed in life fought to hold onto me, and direct my attention back to them. The loss of this most important person in my life though had a sobering effect on me, and allowed me to see these idols clearly; they were much the same as I had made my mother; she and they had become, in a certain sense, stumbling-blocks coming between me and God, keeping me from deepening my relationship with Him, preventing me from finding Him, and dwelling with Him.

Jesus made many difficult statements and among them is the one where He tells us that unless we love Him more than mother and father, or son and daughter then we are not worthy of Him. When my mom died, my entire world was shaken from the foundations that I had known and found comfort in, and now, as I wandered in a haze, somewhat aimlessly, uprooted, and without certainty, there was danger that I could lose my way, but also a great chance to realign myself according to Christ’s most difficult commands. I saw myself as a baby again with a chance to make God my new mother. I could step into a new way of life, and be a new person, because the bonds that had held me to the past, had been loosened; I was free now.

There are many fathers of the church, some of the same ones that helped choose which  books to include in Holy Scripture, that have written about prayer as our most powerful and effective means of developing a relationship, and a life with God. I began to read more of these writers, who wrote extensively about prayer, and stillness, and watchfulness as the central practices of a Christian. The volumes of the Philokalia, which are dedicated entirely to these principles, I began to read daily, and to put much of what I learned from them into practice. I read other books on prayer, and how to pray, and how to struggle when prayer is difficult. I began to make prayer my best friend, and to pray as often as I could, not just in the morning and night, and the times I had set aside during the day; but I found myself more able and focused on prayer of the heart, or praying without ceasing, at every moment of the day, as I’ve already mentioned earlier. I’m not saying that I became able to pray without ceasing every moment of the day, but rather that I made greater strides towards this goal, because I had become more aware of my desperate need for it. I began to see that prayer was essential to my life; that without it, my life would be wasted, my remaining time here on earth would be wasted, and in a very real sense, I would be lost.

As I considered how I should best spend the remaining time I have in this life, I began to confront, daily, the inevitability of my own death. With this fact clearly before me each day, things began to fall into place; God had to be primary, for there was no other logical, useful, or trustworthy entity, or thing, to dedicate myself in this life, or to put my hope for eternity. There is a long tradition in the Orthodox church, particularly among monks, to keep the knowledge of our inevitable death always in our minds; this can help us keep a proper perspective on the issues and problems of each day, give us a correct understanding of ourselves in relation to everyone we meet, increase our vigilance in our battle with our own vices, or passions, and foment a healthy and purifying fear of God, which leads to wisdom and purity of heart. Wisdom is its own reward, in this life and the next, and purity of heart, Jesus says in the Beatitudes, is the prerequisite for those who desire to see God; for those who wish to know God.

I oscillated often between the fear of death and the horror of it, with its cruel tearing away of all the beloved in my life, I faltered between this fear, and the fear of God and the joy that this leads to—the determination to live according to His commands, the repentance of everything repugnant to Him, and ultimately to a deep and abiding love for Him. On one hand I realized that at any moment everything could just suddenly dissolve and disappear, that nothing here had any genuine solidity, it was all just a vapor, and this disturbed me, but on the other hand this truth also drove me more genuinely into the arms of God and made me seriously consider the great possibility of eternity; eternal existence, which, if true, then spiritual considerations are much more real, and ‘solid’ than the materiality of this present, passing world.

I had always envisioned my life, and everything in it, to be like a screen before me, scenes from my movie that I was constantly stepping into, paths that led me ever forward into the pictures of my life. But now, with the fact of death present within me—my own, and that of everyone I held dear, suddenly this screen before me began to dissolve, and instead, I began to perceive my life as that of a passing landscape, viewed out the side window of a moving vehicle. Before, this movie which I was constantly entering, was my destination, but now I had a new, eternal destination ahead of me, which was more compelling than this movie of my life.

(to be continued)

~FS

The hospice nurse had thought my mother would pass away sometime around Easter of 2016 and had prepared my sisters and me for this probability. As it turned out however, she lived an entire year longer. Our mom’s deepest desire during her final years was to stay in the home she loved, and fortunately we were able to provide that for her thanks to the dedication of my sisters, several caregivers and the hospice team. I also did my best to help by flying into Santa Rosa every four to six weeks and staying for several days to a week, relieving others on the team, and doing other practical duties related to her finances and keeping up the house. When her health had begun to seriously decline, during the latter half of 2015, she had stopped sleeping in her bedroom, but spent mostly sleepless nights in her recliner in the family room. At the time, we expected she would return to her bedroom at some point in the future, not realizing that from this point forward her world would slowly narrow, at first to just the family room and the kitchen, then to just the family room, and then step by step she would draw further and further into a world predominantly of her own.

She was very unstable on her legs, and often needed to rest because her lungs had been compromised, due to an allergic reaction to mold in her house. Over the years her lungs had scarred from this reaction, but by the time the doctors finally understood the cause and the source, and after we had removed the mold from the house, the scarring had progressed to a point of no return, and it was only a matter of time before it would finally kill her. In the meantime, her lung function slowly and steadily declined. We moved an oxygen machine into the family room so she could receive greater levels of oxygen as the condition worsened. One late night she fell down on her way to the kitchen, and unfortunately she wasn’t able to call out loudly enough to get assistance, so it took her several hours on her own to make her way back to her recliner. After this traumatic experience she refused to leave her chair again, and we were more careful to have someone sleep in the family room with her throughout the night.

For several months she persisted in staying in her recliner around the clock, and she resisted all manner of recommendations, and persuasions encouraging her to move into the bed that we had brought into the family room for her. Caring for her in the reclining chair was very difficult, but she didn’t want to move. She had purchased that chair many years earlier, and it was comfortable and obviously very important and familiar to her; and though we had made the bed in a way that was very inviting, she wanted no part of it. It was very hard to watch the mounting health issues she was facing: the swollen legs, the bedsores, and the difficulty breathing, along with the troubles and trials of regular daily hygiene. Solace for us, and for her, came by caring for her, and practically speaking, with the assistance of small doses of morphine which she took each day.

There were so few things I felt that I could do to help her, I couldn’t heal her, I couldn’t reverse the course of her condition, I couldn’t really do very much in a material way at all, but the few things I could do I did with all my heart. When I was with her I felt a heightened level of attention, and my muscles were slightly tensed as I awaited any request she might make; sometime she might ask for some juice, or she might need a tissue, or to have some moisturizer rubbed onto her legs, or lip balm applied to her lips. Any of these requests were my opportunity to do something, finally, and I jumped at the chance. I never poured out a simple glass of juice with such attention as I did then for her, trying to make sure it was the exact amount she wanted, perhaps the right blend of different types of juices that she liked, into the cup that I knew she would like, and then holding it for her at just the right angle so she could place the straw in her mouth without too much trouble, or eventually placing it in her mouth for her, when she no longer could do that herself. I felt like I had been given a huge honor when I could hand her a tissue and then wait until she finished with it and could throw it away for her. I didn’t of course always feel this way, sometimes I was tired, or bored, or wanted to do something else, or just needed a break to get away from the sorrowful intensity, but many times, quite often actually, I did feel this way, because I loved her, and felt deeply that I owed her so much for everything she had done for me in my life, and simply because she was my mom.

At first I didn’t like rubbing moisturizer on her legs because they were in such bad shape, with the swollenness and the sores, but then I remembered it had been barely two years earlier while I had been visiting her that I had a nasty rash on my right calf and she took care of me and helped healed it. This seemed fitting to return the attention and the caring. As I did so, I reflected how quickly fading this time with her was becoming, how quickly our entire time had passed, though it was forty-seven years or so that we had spent sharing this life. Rubbing her legs would likely be among the final acts that we would ever have together. With this thought I began to enjoy it, and I began to infuse it with all of my attention and care once again. And when she asked me to apply lip-balm, I trembled a little as I touched her dry and withered lips, because they were beautiful to me, and I knew, as I rubbed them with my finger, that these lips which had kissed my boo-boos when I was little, and had spoken such sweet kindnesses to me throughout my life, would soon be departing, and I would have them with me no more.

I reflected on our past together and all the things she taught me, the things we enjoyed together, the comfort I felt in just knowing that she existed even if I wasn’t near her, and that if anything in life got too bad, or too difficult, I always had her, and could trust in her support, and in her loving embrace. I remembered how she had calmed me when I had missed the bus after months on the road and was hitchhiking back home from Alaska, after so many difficult nights without shelter and with little food, and how desperately I yearned to get home, and when my hope was faltering she steadied me. A simple phone call and a few minutes of hearing her voice was enough to give me renewed strength, and the courage to continue.  I remembered all the times I had picked up hitchhikers myself, or had volunteered to help someone, or gave money to someone in need, and how all of these kindnesses had been inspired by her example; the love she gave, the gift of her time to those who needed to talk or needed a loving shoulder cry on, how she had opened our home to all of those various people in need during my youth, and had extended herself in so many ways in the service of others. I learned about beauty from her through her love of classical music, her admiration for nature, and her gift for weaving. I always knew that if I found myself in a place or situation strange and uncomfortable, I could look to her and we understood each other. There was always an unspoken understanding between us even if words escaped us.

And so it was again, on my final visit with her. She had barely spoken more than a word or two at a time, for many months, and most of our interactions had been silent ones: holding hands, combing her hair, rubbing her legs. Although, one afternoon I picked up the hymnal she had beside her bed, and opened it to several of her favorite hymns, and sang them to her. By this time she kept her eyes closed most of the time so it was hard to know if she was awake or asleep, conscious of my singing or not, but still I sang to her. I was happy to be able to sing her a lullaby as she prepared for her eternal rest. It was early March, 2017 and I would be returning to my home soon, and though nobody knew for certain how much longer she would live, it seemed clear that she was close to the end of her life now. In a rare moment she opened her eyes and looked deeply into mine. She had clear blue eyes. Sweet eyes. I looked also into her eyes, and we spoke to one another, silently, from the depths of our being. She was saying goodbye. She wanted me to know that she loved me, which of course I knew, and she wanted me to know it would be okay, that she would be okay and that I would be okay. She gathered a great deal of energy to say these things, even if they were said without words and only through the language of her eyes, and it was energy she barely had, but this was her final farewell, and I knew she wanted to give whatever she had, to tell me these things, to help me; it was her final sacrifice of love for me.

When the time came to leave and return to my home, she was being cared for by her caregivers, as they were giving her a sponge bath. She hadn’t opened her eyes again to me after that last silent conversation, and I knew it wouldn’t be a good time to interrupt her, so I quietly left the room, picked up my bags and departed to the airport. Part of me wanted to say goodbye one more time, to touch her one last time, but I refrained because she had already chosen the perfect way to say goodbye when she gathered the strength to look into my eyes.

A few weeks later my sister called in the early morning to let me know that our mother had departed this life. I had been prepared for this, I had read numerous books about death and dying, I had prayed, I had visualized, and I had imagined, for most of my life, everything about this moment. It was the moment I most dreaded, that most worried me and filled me with apprehension; and now here it was. After I got off the phone I stared at myself in the mirror and I cried. Here standing before me was the world’s newest orphan.

(to be continued)

~FS

You may remember the story of how, when Jesus was washing His disciples feet, to teach them that they should be servants to each other, Peter first declined, because he felt it was beneath Jesus’s dignity to wash Peter’s feet, but then, when Jesus explained that if He didn’t wash Peter’s feet, Peter could have no part in Him; so then Peter said not his feet only, but that Jesus should wash also his hands and his head. The Chrismation portion of the liturgy, which follows directly upon the Baptism, reminds me of this story. Chrismation is the process of anointing with holy oil and is the mystery, or sacrament, that transmits the Holy Spirit to the newly illumined person. One might imagine it would be enough to anoint the person on the forehead and call it a day, but in this service the person is anointed on the forehead, the nostrils, the lips, the ears, the chest, the hands and the feet. As I was being anointed, each time, Father John would say, “the seal and gift of the Holy Spirit”. The power of the Holy Spirit, the gift that Christ sent to us to enable us to do all things for Him is given to the whole of us, and like Peter, I felt like I was being lavishly gifted, and it emboldened me to live zealously for my God, as the Holy Spirit was given to my mind, my heart, my ears which hear, my eyes which see, my lips which speak, to my nostrils which breathe the breath of life, and also to my hands which act, and to my feet which carry me about to do God’s will.

Following the anointing with oil, Father John then led me in a procession around the baptismal font while the choir sings a hymn related to our new life in Christ; along with the choir everyone together sings these words, “As many as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ, Alleluia!” This speaks to the new spiritual reality that the newly baptized no longer wears their garment of sin, but has instead put on a new garment, the light and power of the risen Lord; and with this, they proceed into their new life as members of the body of Christ, on their way into the Kingdom of God. Because this is a movement away from the old life, and a movement into a new life, with new gifts and new power, we are led in a procession, which embodies and symbolizes this new reality of movement into Christ’s Kingdom.

One final interesting moment during the Chrismation, which came as a surprise to me was tonsuring, in which a portion of my hair was cut off. I’ve always associated tonsuring with becoming a monk, and didn’t realize that everyone entering the Orthodox church is tonsured. Since our hair is associated with worldly beauty, and in a sense our worldly power, or simply our worldliness in general, the idea behind tonsuring is that it shows the underlying reality that we have sacrificed our worldliness for Godliness, and that by our choice and act of baptism and chrismation we have given our worldly beauty to God to be transformed and made new into His likeness, into divine beauty.

With the conclusion of the Baptism and Chrismation liturgy my entry into the Orthodox church was nearly complete; now I had only to wait until the Pascha (Easter) service later that night when I would be first to receive the light of Christ coming out from the altar and first to receive the Eucharist on Pascha morning. My confession had taken place the night before on the day the church participates in the death of our Lord on the cross, my Baptism and Chrismation happened on Holy Saturday, the day that the church participates in Christ’s entombment, and soon I would participate for the first time, with the church, as it participates in our Lord’s glorious resurrection.

As I’ve mentioned it was challenging yet rewarding to wait for so long, several years ultimately, before I could take part in the Eucharist during the Divine Liturgy. From where I stood in the choir though, I had always enjoyed the spectacle, as the church body, every individual, lined up and waited their turn to approach the chalice, and be served the bread and the wine, the body and blood of our Lord. Meanwhile, we in the choir sing the words, “Receive the body of Christ; taste the fountain of immortality”. I often reflected, as I sang these words, that there could be a double meaning to this ‘reception of the body of Christ’. The obvious meaning is that we are singing to all the people in the congregation as they approach the chalice about to receive the body of Christ broken and shed for each of us, but as I watched each individual approach the chalice—every unique person: old, young, tall, short, funny, serious, healthy or sick, joyful or sorrowful—I was also struck that here in all of these divinely created people, also was the body of Christ. Every Christian, every saint was made in the image and likeness of God, and through the actions of God, each of them are returning to Him again. So God too is receiving the body of Christ, because He receives each of us to Himself. I don’t know how theologically sound this idea may be, but I enjoyed the poetic beauty of it, and the wholeness and reciprocity that it represented. Somehow the idea of simultaneously receiving and being received is satisfying and feels supremely fulfilling. I tried to capture a little of this idea, of this feeling which I had mused about while singing and watching others over the years coming forward in praise and thanksgiving to receive the most blessed gift in all creation; I finally put the idea forward in the following words:

Incense coils upward

in long argentine strands

Angelic voices sing a joyous refrain:

“Receive the body of Christ

Taste the fountain of immortality.”

The hands of Christ serve

the body of Christ

from a golden chalice.

Each member called by name,

singular and unique.

Forming a line in quiet expectation

of the gift of eternal blessings;

a body numerous are

the servants of The King,

multiform, and manifesting His

infinite creativity.

Let us each put on

the eyes of thanksgiving

and the ears of obedience

and praise.

Laying aside all earthly cares,

let us settle into that peace

which reveals things

as they truly are;

without judgement

or condemnation,

but in the simplicity

of Godly revelation.

The Body and the Blood–

we receive,

and Christ receives us.

We are glorified by His glory

and deified by His divinity.

We come to the King empty-handed

and He gives us everything.

As I stood in line waiting my turn I felt a nervous excitement, a great anticipation and a curiosity. I wondered what it would taste like, how it would feel, would I do everything correctly? When finally it was my turn, and I stood before the chalice, Father John spoke my name, it was so personal and intimate; the body and blood of my Lord and Savior was being offered specifically and precisely for me, Francis John. I received it and returned to my place in the choir. My reception was now complete, and while it was joyful and extremely meaningful to me at the time, it wouldn’t be until some time later that the true power of it would come into clearer focus, and I would experience the life changing aspects of these mysteries in greater fullness.

(to be continued)

~FS