Though I didn’t do anything with the text last week, I’m still thinking about the question Kathryn Matthews posed in her weekly musings in the United Church of Christ’s Sermon Seeds about the grieving parents in the Passover story. How is this OK? How is any of this OK? How can God come along andContinue reading “Pandemic Prayers for Proper 19”
Tag Archives: death
Tell the Children
I sat there with my daughter in my lap turning the pages. Matt de la Pena’s book Love was sent to me by my cousin. She said it reminded her of me. So my heart was already in my throat reading this beautiful poem to my daughter. And then, I turned the page and sawContinue reading “Tell the Children”
A Simple Graveside Ritual
Graveside services are often very, very short. Some simple prayers are repeated by the presiding minister. Tears are shed, but there isn’t much else for the grieving family to do. There is nothing asked of them. There’s no action for them to take. What if that’s what the family needs most? They need something toContinue reading “A Simple Graveside Ritual”
Ash Wednesday
My sister died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. It’s a fact that has haunted these first few months of my own daughter’s life. She died before I was born but the memory is alive. I wake to hear my little girl breathing. I check. I triple check. I am careful to keep every blanket orContinue reading “Ash Wednesday”
Half-Baked Ideas for All Saints Day
On Sunday, I went to church. I sat in the pews to worship. But, before worship even began, there was a wave of sadness that fell over that gathering of God’s people. There were words of thanks offered, gratitude for the hospitality that had been offered earlier in the week in the midst of twoContinue reading “Half-Baked Ideas for All Saints Day”
Good Friday Came First
Before the alleluias get dug up from the ground, before anyone can look for the living among the dead, before Sunday can come, there will be a Friday. It is the order of things. It is the way that the calendar pages turn. Before there can be a Sunday to praise, there must be aContinue reading “Good Friday Came First”
Letters to Heaven
Every year, as January comes to a close and the calendar turns to February, I start to wonder about what I’ll say to her this year. I wonder about what I would want her to know about this year and who I am right now. Way up there in heaven, I wonder what I’ll tell my mother aboutContinue reading “Letters to Heaven”
The Things They Carried
Just the other day, I heard a story on National Public Radio about the objects that are being collected and preserved after September 11, 2001. Though I am a New Yorker, I wasn’t even in the country on that terrible day. I had planned to fly home that day. It was the day that I was supposedContinue reading “The Things They Carried”
Hang on to Each Other
I can’t quite stop myself from watching this video of the Vice President exposing his grief so tenderly and so honestly. I’ve watched it again and again and again. He’s talking to people who know grief. You can hear it in their laughter when the Vice President talks about those people who say they know how heContinue reading “Hang on to Each Other”
Normal People Don’t Talk about Death So Much
Does anyone really have that many stories about funerals? That’s what I was thinking as she told the third story. Was it really the third funeral story? I tried to retrace the steps of our conversation seated there in the convalescent ward. She’d said something about both her son and her husband. That was one andContinue reading “Normal People Don’t Talk about Death So Much”
Cooking with Elsa 