Journal of Sacred Work

   This will be a strange Thanksgiving for a family dear to my wife and me. On November 19, my friend Stephanie, only fifty-three years old, passed away after a year-long encounter with a cancer that attacked her brain (I hate to refer to cancer as a "battle" since when the afflicted die, it then becomes a "loss" – as if cancer had somehow won some kind of victory.)

   How will Stephanie's husband and daughter experience today's holiday? What memories will fill the hearts of her two younger sisters and her younger brother, none of whom have known life without her. What about her parents and friends?

   Whenever we lose someone we love, the texture of each holiday changes, doesn't it? We begin to recognize things we loved in the departed that we may not have appreciated during their lives.

   I wrote a remembrance for my friend that I share with you in hopes it will be universal enough to speak to you as well. It is called "Falling Away" because that is how we may feel about those who die from this earth.

Falling Away

Across the forest, leaves descend to the bed of their birth. Thinking you were evergreen, we search the woods confused to find you missing, our calls unanswered.

Who stole your laughter? Where is your bright intelligence?

Finally, we discover you in a hidden glen walking the moonlit path of our memory.

Strange how your strong voice can no longer form a word or bristle at the thorns of injustice.

Stranger still how you can no longer untie life’s problems for us with your skillful hands.

Hard to know our eyes cannot find your familiar face sitting across a table or by our side.

Harder still that your arms can no longer enfold us,  

Time for us to listen amid the windless woods, hear how we knew you, know that no pain can sear you any longer.

Time for us to remember that all leaves leave, that all stars fall, that you have exchanged the breath of the world for the sweet whispers of eternity.

Time for us to gather for a glad goodbye, to celebrate the truth that Love wraps you now & always in her precious embrace.

-Reverend Erie Chapman