A Reflection on Helen Yelton

A Reflection on the Occasion of

the Celebration of the Life and Death of

Helen Reid Poovey Yelton

February 23, 2013

All Saints Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC

Thomas E Wilson, Rector

Romans 8:14-19,34-35,37-39 Psalm23 John 14:1-6 

Today we gather together to do two different things which can seem contradictory but are really complementary.  We are here to say good bye to Helen Yelton and we are here to welcome Helen Yelton home and to have a meal with her. She has dies and we will not see her physical likeness again on this earth and so we give thanks for her life. In our tradition we believe that every time we celebrate communion, all those who we hold in our hearts are on the other side of the Table. Jesus is our host and Helen is the guest of honor. All are invited to come forward for Helen’s welcome home party.
 
Emily and Nancy  told me that with Helen's death, the family was struck with the poem by George Gordon, Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty.

She walks in beauty, like the night

   Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

   Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

   Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

   Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

   Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

   How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

   So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

   But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

   A heart whose love is innocent.

The poem is supposed to have written in 1814 when Byron saw one of his cousins across a crowded room attending a party while dressed in mourning clothes. The image of the party full of sparkling women all dressed up latest brightly colored Regency dresses showing lots of skin celebrating the joy of life set off by this woman dressed in the black mourning clothes, all covered up in the old fashions of the past honoring someone who has died, By the next morning the poem was written with its startling images of light and dark in tension and perhaps even complementing each other. There is the beauty of the light which is the visible beauty of the woman and there is the beauty of the dark, the hidden, the interior of this beautiful woman. The outer beauty, the light, fades but the dark, the internal beauty, is what lives even in the midst of death.

Byron's friend Issac Nathan collaborated with him to publish Byron's poems set to Nathan's music in 1815 in a volume called Hebrew Melodies. Nathan set She Walks in Beauty to the Sephardic Synagogue tune Lcha Dodi which is sung on Friday evening before the Shabbat services where the Queen of the Sabbath is welcomed as darkness falls into the beginning of the Holy Day of Sabbath, the Day of Rest. A candle is lit as a reminder that even in the darkness God is with us. You may notice that we have a candle lit, the Christ Candle, which is dedicated at the first service of Easter, which is held in the darkness before dawn on Easter Sunday to remind us that life does not end into darkness but continues into the light of resurrection.

It is fitting that this service that we do is on the end of the Sabbath Day and we remember the poem as we remember Helen Reid Poovey Yelton, this much loved Southern Lady, who did hold on to, and honor a lot of things in the past, the Daughters of the American Revolution, Children of the Confederacy, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Civil Air Patrol, who has now entered into her day of rest, where we will no longer see the outer light of her face but are reminded of the internal beauty which continues to live on in the lives of people who were touched by her.

The lessons for today also fit the poem brought to mind this entering of rest. Paul's letter to the Romans is written to remind them that nothing ever separates us from the light of Christ. “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The Gospel lesson for today has Jesus remind the disciples that he is preparing a place for them, for in his Father's house there are many mansions. There is the old Hebrew Song/Poem which we know as the 23^rd Psalm where the Shepherd, the Lord,

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name' sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

I remember when I was in my Chaplaincy training at the Hospital in Chapel Hill, one of the assignments was to write about our own death. I finished my writing with coming face to face with God who greeted me like my father used to when I would come home back from college. God, which seemed based on my own father would sigh as if to say I finally made it home, what took me so long- and then would come the recitation of the things about which I had fallen short. Later on I started seeing God and myself in a different way as the foolish father in the Prodigal Son who wrapped the wandering son up in loving arms, all over him like a cheap suit; rejoicing that they were fully together again.

I have this vision that as Helen died, Jesus turns to his friend Lord Byron and says; “George look, its Helen! And like you said, she really does walk in beauty.

'She walks in beauty, like the night

   Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

   Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

   Which heaven to gaudy day denies.'”

Welcome home Helen!