Tag Archives: California

On Life and Death and Flowery Graves

Posted on January 26, 2014 | Leave a comment

My husband and I picked out our grave plots this last week. 

We have not been diagnosed with terminal illness, nor do we expect to die suddenly. Either of course might happen, but so far God has blessed us with many years of life on this earth and our ailments are part of natural aging, my sixty-six years, and my husband’s seventy-eight. 

But I wanted to know where my body would be lying. I did not want cremation, although many do and I respect their choice. It’s cheaper, to be sure. But I wanted “full body burial” as the Family Service Counselor described it at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Lafayette, California. I wanted to give witness, after I was gone, to the sanctity of life, even my little life; I wanted to join the many other believers who lay under this flowery field in the East Bay hills. Their graves lay neatly in rows, some with flat headstones, some with upright blocks of granite or marble that caught the light from the morning sun. 

It is curious how long I have put off this trip to the cemetery. It was always something I could do another day, another week, another year. But I didn’t want to leave these decisions to my sons and daughters; I wanted to personalize my sacred journey from earthly life to heavenly life. The word “cemetery” comes from the Greek, “sleeping place,” and I would give witness to eternal life and the immense love of God as I lay sleeping, awaiting the final resurrection. 

We followed our counselor, a young, endearing, and informative guide, across the broad lawns that were browning slightly from California’s drought and the wintry air, up the paths that parted the graves. As I stepped carefully, meditatively, I was reminded of other graves I have visited, in particular that of Raymond Raynes in the Mirfield Monastery in northern England. The monks’ graves in the garden of the Community of the Resurrection had been marked with simple wooden crosses bearing first names. We found Father Raynes’ grave and said a prayer of thanksgiving for his saintly life. Now, walking through the Queen of Heaven garden, I recalled other cemetery gardens: one beloved collection of graves on a hilltop on the Island of Lanai, where Cook pines rustled in the breeze high above, the sea far below; English headstones in the yard of St. Mary Magdalene, Oxford, untended, with high grass obscuring the stone slabs; the many churches we visited in Europe surrounded by their living dead, who waited for that last resurrection.

Here, today, in this country, it seems that churches do not sit amidst their dead, sheltered and sheltering their own past, but send the bodies to be buried elsewhere. There is a fear of morbidity, of corruption, of dying. Gravestones identify our birth-day and our death-day, with our lifetime equaling a long dash. We must admit, in a cemetery, that we are mortal. We must admit that the young and the good die and leave us far too soon. We must admit that cancer ravages and war maims and we mistreat one another. We must admit that we do not love enough. These are hard admissions in a world that values self-esteem, self-obsession. 

Queen of Heaven Cemetery sits in a gentle valley. I looked up to the low January sun and to the hills holding us so sweetly in the cool breeze. We needed to choose our gravesites, and I prayed for guidance even in this simple choice. We had seen the gravesites available and had weighed this and that – the sun, the hills, the trees, accessibility to the path. Should we face north, south, east, west? Do we want a bench? I gazed over the flowery field, the reds and pinks and yellows dotting the grass, the headstones seeming a comfortable and welcoming congregation of hosts.

Where should we be? Which plots? My eye rested finally on a statue with raised arms commanding the heavens and blessing the flowery graves. It was the Risen Christ. I bounded across the grass and stood before it, looking up to the powerful face that looked further up to the blue skies. Yes, I thought. I want to be under the arms of the Risen Christ. If anyone should visit my grave, they would see the Risen Christ alongside and over me and raising me to heaven with him.

And so it was that we found two plots a few feet from Christ’s right arm. And when visitors, if any should come, sit on the bench nearby they will see the Christ silhouetted against the blue sky and the golden hills.

I’m glad I didn’t put this cemetery visit off any longer. A curious peace and delight has settled over me since we drove away, having made the arrangements. For me, my own death makes my life even more meaningful, for the numbered days are just that – numbered. It is tempting to live as though this will never happen and many of us do this, acting as if today will last forever. But this is not reality. This is not the true way of things for humankind. So I am glad to have bracketed my days with this visit to Queen of Heaven so that each moment given me between now and my final visit is not wasted, so that each moment counts, just as it is counted. 

The field of flowers and their stones, winter’s grass waiting for spring’s greening, and finally the Risen Christ, his arms at once embracing heaven and earth, has entered my mind, unbidden, from time to time since then. The scene is a reassuring visitor, a happy moment that colors my days. It is a sudden, surprising burst of grace. For because I am a believing Christian, trying to be faithful, those arms, as they embrace heaven and earth, also embrace little me, yesterday, today, and tomorrow, forever.

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Shadowy Borderlands

Posted on January 19, 2014 | Leave a comment

I’m setting my next novel in Berkeley, California. Folks ask me, “What is it about?” and I am challenged to give a coherent, short answer. “It’s a story about a girl who witnesses a murder…” I begin. But then, of course, it is so much more, and where do I truly begin, I wonder.

In some ways the theme is about borderlands, the edges of civilization. I believe our own culture is slowly returning to a wilderness state, with the borders of law, manners, social behavior redrawn each day, shrinking. We have been living in a darkening age for some time, a twilight time, but the night seems to be falling swiftly.

Berkeley is a perfect setting for a discussion about borders, for it sits between parkland wilderness and bay waters. Fire trails protect the townspeople from the dry hills above and hopefully break a wildfire’s path. The hills have known devastating blazes that devoured communities, so fire is no small threat. But other threats lurk as well, with a rise in crime in the civilized cities that form a necklace around the San Francisco Bay. Berkeley shelters its share of crime with lenient laws that encourage drug use, theft, and other violent means of self-expression.

Berkeley is also set in a landscape of intellect and passion, of mind and matter. Here the University of California, one of the greatest schools in the world, has birthed major scientific discoveries. The arts thrive as well, those expressions of our thoughts and beliefs and deepest desires. And yet traditional core curriculum is crumbling, no longer requiring a study of the past to understand the present. Gender and racial studies replace history, as though a narcissistic self-examination of skin and sexuality will throw light on civilization and what it means to create and foster civil society.

Berkeley’s early beginnings were Ohlone Indian, then Spanish, then Irish Catholic, having been settled by an Irish farmer (James McGee) who gave land to the Catholic Presentation Sisters for a convent and school. The city was named  in 1866 after an Irish Anglican bishop, George Berkeley (1685-1753) because of a line in the following poem:

Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The first four Acts already past,
A fifth shall close the Drama with the day;
Time’s noblest offspring is the last.

from Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America

The first line became shortened later to the cry “Westward ho!”  The line also became the title and subject of a mural by Emmanuel Gottlieb Leutz (1861), which can be found in the House of Representatives behind the western staircase. The phrase and painting represent the idea of manifest destiny.

The “course of empire,” of course, was thought to be at one with the advancement of civilization. The British Empire was and is a civilization built upon classical and Christian traditions, laws and values. As these authorities lose their power and persuasion, civilization loses as well, and cracks and fissures give way to a crumbling.

This week is the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, when “time’s noblest offspring” – America – legalized the killing of unborn children. Since that day, 41 years ago, 56,662,169 unborn babies have been killed by abortion. And we continue the killing, with 1,382 lives – daughters and sons, nieces and nephews – lost yearly. January 22, 1973 was a watershed moment in our history, a time when we turned in upon our own people, to feed upon our own humanity.

It has been said that when we do not respect human life – the unborn or the aged, the infirm or the ugly or the handicapped – we encourage a culture of crime. We look out for ourselves, not others. We take what we can when we can as long as we can. Moral parameters become defined by legal boundaries; individual conscience does not matter. Soon it does not exist.

January 22 hits me by surprise each year, like a slap in the face, and I join in the crying of those who march upon the capitols of our land. I cry with them to return civilization to our once great and generous and loving country. I suppose the surprise comes to me each year because this memorial anniversary arrives so soon after the birth of the Christ Child in the humble manger, the child that would love us no matter our abilities, looks, health, age, no matter if we breathed outside the womb or not.

So we are as a nation in a shadowy borderland, a shadowland, between civilization and the jungle. A fire trail runs around our cities, but can’t always protect us from the blaze, the inferno of self. When such a trail becomes God’s fire of purgation, a cleansing of these sins through repentance and forgiveness, only then can we love as we are meant to love – love even the unborn, even our neighbors, even, even, even…

May God have mercy on our people, and may all victims of violence be comforted and redeemed by his great love.

 

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Fires and Floods

Posted on September 15, 2013 | 1 comment

We live at the foot of Mount Diablo, “Devil’s Mountain,” so when billowing smoke rose beyond the peak this last Sunday, we watched, waited, and checked Internet updates regularly. The fire raged on the other side, swallowing the dry brown grass, but only 10% of the fire was contained as darkness fell. It continued to grow, it seemed, far faster than it was being contained. By Monday the area burned had doubled to nearly 4,000 acres, and the containment figure was 20%. New crews arrived from distant parts, and planes and choppers flew overhead, dropping, we knew, waters to kill the inferno.

Horses were rescued, folks evacuated. Fortunately, no lives or homes were lost. And the fires never reached our home, never crested the mountain.

Not so fortunate were residents in Colorado along the Front Range this last week. As my son and his family were evacuated from their home in North Boulder by the National Guard, they watched a power station explode in the darkness. Roads were collapsing, bridges swept away. My son and family were safe, and the house too, on higher ground, is still there, at least so we hope and pray.

Fires and floods. No earthquakes yet, but who knows what tomorrow will bring. Mother nature isn’t always a nice or predictable mother. She can be ugly, brutal, uncaring. No matter what the Romantic poets thought about flowers and sunsets and ruins, nature is heartless. We build houses to protect ourselves from her wrath. We invent ways to light the dark when the sun no longer shines. We lay miles of underground pipe to allow easy access to fresh water that will miraculously arrive through faucets into sinks, tubs, and showers. We construct elaborate plumbing systems and dig septic tanks, so that with the push of a handle all uncleanness is flushed down a drain. Out of sight, out of mind.

We have watched other parts of the country suffer floods and fires and tornadoes, but this week, at least in California and Colorado, we experienced nature’s wrath firsthand. It is not the first time, for there have been floods and fires here before. But we are reminded again that we are little creatures. We think we are big, but we are small. In the twinkling of an eye, all can be burned, all can be flooded.

The fires have been doused here on Devil’s Mountain. But the folks in Colorado are not yet “out of the woods,” to use an apt expression. When we want to say we are safe, we say we are “out of the woods,” we are out of that natural wild world where danger and darkness lurk, where floods and fires threaten.

So this morning in church, as I fell on my knees before the sturdy altar and its sacred tabernacle, I gave thanks to God for God himself. There is nothing certain in this world but God and his great love for us in the midst of all this uncertainty. This certainty – this rock-solid faith – is the foundation of the Church, one not built on sand, one not swept away by raging waters or wild fires. And how do we know this? Because of a man who lived two thousand years ago who said he was God, and proved it by walking on water, healing the lame, giving sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, and life to the dead. And finally, conquering death with his own resurrection.

In today’s Scripture reading we listened to one of my favorite passages of Saint Paul:

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.  (Ephesians 3:14-19)

Rooted and grounded in love. Indeed, we are so rooted and grounded in God’s love that the natural world in which we find ourselves will not have the last say, will not, in the end, conquer.

The breadth, and length, and depth, and height… of the love of Christ… which passeth knowledge… filled with all the fullness of God. These are words of hope, words of certainty, rock-solid.

These are words that are super-natural, other-worldly, and of this I am glad.

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On Marriage

Posted on February 4, 2013 | Leave a comment

Much has been said about marriage of late, the right to marry whom we choose regardless of gender, the right to live as man and wife outside of marriage, the right to dissolve a marriage for any reason.

As my husband and I celebrate our thirty-first anniversary, it is difficult not to hear these wailings all around us. But these “rights” dilute my idea of marriage, encourage me to see myself as an isolated individual with no effect upon society.

This is a fallacy, the “isolated individual with no effect on society.” My story, my life, affects those around me;  every person’s life has such an effect. Indeed, as John Donne said, “No man is an island.” We are responsible to and for one another in many, many ways. But probably the most powerful way is how we value marriage.

I have come to see through the years that marriage is both a religious rite and a social rite. The role of Church and Temple have clearly defined marriage before God as a joining of two persons in one flesh, a joining that creates a third person, to form family; marriage is and has been so ordained since Eden and reaffirmed by Christ. Unions outside of marriage are considered outside God’s law, against God’s created order and thus a direct hindrance to happiness.

Let me first admit (full disclosure) that my present marriage is a second one, and that I have not always acted in accordance with God’s law, I have sinned and will sin again, no doubt. We fall, others fall around us, and our world is riddled with the pain and suffering of Adam and Eve. As a Christian, however, I confess and am redeemed; God picks me up and I try once again to live and love as he would have me live and love.

Marriage is, as God knows in his infinite wisdom, a proper concern of government. Marriage is a public matter, one that determines the future of the nation. Children thrive in traditional families, raised by a father and a mother in a committed relationship, publicly declared in the marriage ceremony. The State has an interest in the next generation – their health, their knowledge of right and wrong, their courage to fight for the State against foreign powers, their ability to teach these national needs to their children, the next generation. The State expresses this self-interest in its definition of marriage. It says, we will support and encourage this relationship through tax codes, through various benefits. We will support this definition of family because it will mean less crime on our streets, less welfare, less dependency on our national health systems.

Since the birth control pill became available marriage has been under attack. One could say it has always been under attack, which is true, since marriage requires sacrifice and selflessness, not mankind’s strong suits. But this little pill, produced for us in the ‘sixties, defined recreation, not procreation, as the primary goal of sexual union. If it feels good, do it, a slogan soon repeated in many areas of our culture, like a spreading cancer. Take what you want when you want it.  At first the ramifications of the pill weren’t obvious to many of us, for didn’t we now have control over our bodies? Wasn’t it a good thing that we could plan our families (and careers)? But the slide soon began, the slippery slope of sexual freedom.

Soon followed no-fault divorce, something I will admit I  found useful at the time, but something that weakened marriage further. Now the State stated that marriage was a flimsy thing and not so important after all – if a couple disagrees, they should split. Adultery was understandable, for the demands of “being in love” triumphed over the sacrifice of committed love.

After several generations of children raised with one parent, we find crime increased, school scores historically low, obesity raging and leading to other epidemics that will drown our health care system.

So marriage was in bad shape long before it was challenged by questions of gender. Even so, the government’s redefinition of marriage, passed in numerous states, may be the death blow to a future peaceful society. The question is not, why not two men or two women, but rather, why not three and one, or four and three, or sisters and brothers, or fathers and daughters. Why not, as one of our Hollywood greats said a while back, he and his dog? (He answered his question by saying the only reason why not was the difficulty of determining consent with regards to the dog.)

Thirty-one years ago at St. Peter‘s Anglican Church in Oakland, California, I stepped up the red-carpeted aisle to marry the man I wanted to commit to for the rest of my life. I was thirty-four, a divorced single parent with a nine-year-old son, and I was going to try marriage again. So, before God and country, and before friends and family lining the eighty oak pews, I pledged my troth.

The State had an interest in my marriage. I don’t think I fully understood, in February of 1982, why later I paused in the narthex to sign papers to be filed with the State of California. I knew that my son needed a father and that I loved this man by my side, to whom I had pledged my troth through sickness and health. So I signed my name on the marriage documents that would be filed in Sacramento. But today I understand why those documents were important, why Sacramento was interested.

Thirty-one years later, my husband and I, now both gray and worn, stood in our oak pew in the same parish church and stepped out to the red-carpeted aisle. We walked toward the altar, meeting the priest at the chancel steps, under the flaming sanctus lamp. There, before our parish family, our new rector, representing the Church, blessed us, praying words of unifying strength, a re-affirmation of the importance of our marriage, ’til death do us part.

When I gather with my extended family at Christmas and Easter, I see a mini society. Our children are adults with children of their own, and some of those grandchildren now adults as well. I have come to appreciate what God’s law means to our world. For state-sanctioned traditional marriage ensures that we teach his law to future generations, that we ensure our children’s children’s children will know peace in their country, peace coming from the stability of the union of a man and a woman in Holy Matrimony.

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