Sunday, December 12, 2004
Don't you worry about your mind
Don't you worry about your mind

You should worry about the day
That the pain it goes away
You know I miss mine sometimes

Three years ago tonight, Julia McNeely died.

If you're at all familiar with our community, you know the story. If you're really, really fortunate, you knew Julia. Young, amazing, wonderful -- like so many of our students -- and taken from us on earth hydroplaning on a lonely road in rural Mississippi.

Many times ... not always ... but many times, God gives us a gift in the middle of tragedy. It's the gift of clarity. In those days, weeks and even months after Julia died all of a sudden we knew what was important and what wasn't.

What wasn't was all the busyness that fills our lives.

What was was each other, love, friends, family, sharing life and lives.

But then life returns to normal for most of us ... or at least our definition of normal shifts and we get used to whatever it ends up being. And with it, we forget.

We forget what seemed so obvious then. We forget how to distinguish between what's important and what's REALLY important. We remember. We grieve occasionally. We even continue to draw inspiration. But the clarity usually goes away.

I remember a conversation I had with Rabbi Hyim Shafner after the car wreck that killed his friend and almost killed him. He talked of the clarity he had and how he was most afraid of the day that it went away ... that he forgot this glimpse of wisdom that God was giving him.

Don't you worry about your mind
Don't you worry about your mind

You should worry about the day
That the pain it goes away
You know I miss mine sometimes

It's really too bad that U2 decided to make Fast Cars the bonus track on the deluxe editions of their new CD ... 'cause I think it's just one of the most brilliant songs on the whole disc. It's about the process of grief and the ways we try to anesthesize ourselves with everything under the sun to fill the space that someone used to fill.

But in the middle of it are these lines. Don't worry about losing your mind. Don't worry about surviving the pain. Worry about the day that the pain goes away.

You know, I miss mine sometime.

I don't know if I've ever seen life as clearly as I did when Julia died. I don't know if what I was doing ever felt more important or more real. I don't know if I ever felt more human and yet at the same time more aware of the divine reality that permeates and extends beyond our humanity.

There was something real about that pain. Something that so obviously connected me to all that mattered in life.

You know, I miss mine sometime.

So it's the third anniversary of Julia's death. Tomorrow is the real anniversary ... of when we all found out. Of that terrible day into night at Rockwell House where we held onto each other and God for dear life.

Tonight we'll gather by the fireplace at Rockwell House ... just like Johnny and Julia and I did a few days before she died. We'll gather to remember. The group that does this gets smaller every year. Really, Johnny and Rory and I are the only ones left who really knew her well at all.

But as I reflect on Julia's' life ... and especially finally visiting the Africa she loved, I've reflected on it a lot this year ... I realize that the strongest connection to what is REALLY important, the strongest connection to the love of God that permeates life and is stronger than death is not mourning her death but being inspired by her life.

Three years have passed. I've gotten used to not talking to "somebody in a body" the way we used to talk. I don't have her picture in my pocket. I no longer spend time "documenting every detail, every conversation."

For me, that clarity exists not when I try to recreate the feelings around her death but when I remember her life. When I realize the chain of events that led me to Buduburam and All Souls started with Julia kneeling down to talk to a street child in Nairobi. When I remember the ways that, at her best, she always seemed to remember and remind me of what was REALLY important.

And that's the real and lasting gift. The first gift was Julia. The second gift was the clarity that God gave us in the terrible aftermath of her death. The third gift is the continuing inspiration and clarity God continues to give me through her memory -- and through the lives of so many wonderful people that God has seen fit to bring into my life.

In this season of Advent, of light breaking into the darkness and the darkness not being able to overcome it, there is no greater reminder to me of God's enduring presence with us and in us. There is no greater reminder to me of what my life can be ... of what is really important.


|
Mike at 12/12/2004 01:19:00 PM