reflection on Jack Mann

A Homily on the Occasion of a Celebration of the Life of Jack Mann                      May 16, 2013 All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C.                                                    Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Lamentations 3:22-26, 31-33  Psalm 139:1-11.          2 Corinthians 4:16--5:9                       John 14:1-6

“All will be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well" (http://www.umilta.net/showinglove.html )

Jack and Dottie

 

I cannot tell you the number of people who wanted to speak today because of their love for and admiration of Jack. They wanted to talk about how he had opened up doors;  moral doors for them into a deeper dimension of service in this world to our fellow images of God, and/or practical doors into a better way of finding our way through the pitfalls of this life, and/or spiritual doors into the spiritual journey to the heart of God.

I have this understanding of why we are all here; we all have something in common, and that is that we are friends of Jack Mann, and we are ticked that he is dead. We want to make sense of his death.  After all, there are plenty of people we could name that the news of whose death we would rejoice, but God - why Jack Mann? 

There is an old Yiddish word for the kind of person Jack Mann is - I’m not going to use the past tense – Jack is a Mensch. It means someone who walks with integrity, who makes the world a better place because he is in it. Jack knows himself and the world he lives in quite well because he allows God to show him the mystery underneath both.  He is a man who echoes the opening line of the Psalm for today;

LORD, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar. 

I first met Jack ten years ago when he was the head of the search committee which recommended to the Vestry to call me here. My wife was a bit intimidated by him because he was polite but a bit stand-offish, this tall, slightly stooped figure, straight from central casting - all he needed was a long black frock coat and a Bible in his hand - he was taking this religious task so seriously. Jack has penetrating eyes that looks deep into your soul. He clears his throat to speak and starts off with a sigh to send a message that his listening silence is broken to say words you might consider well. He seems to have a built in BS meter which does not suffer fools gladly, and my on our first meeting my wife was so afraid I would blow the interview and that buzzer would go off if I relied only on my limited charm. We had been in the Episcopal Church for years and were leery of the outwardly Christian pseudo-spiritual people who insisted on prayer and use words like “listening to the Holy Spirit”, but who were narrow and judgmental and there was nothing loving inside. My first impression was that Jack might be one of those people because he seemed too good to be true.

Boy was I wrong! Yeah, he has a tendency to be sarcastic sometimes, and he does use the BS meter effectively on friends and foes alike, but underneath it all is a spirit of pure love, which is not trapped in cloying sentimentality but with the penetrating focus of claiming the space between him and another person as holy space. Jack does not waste time. I referred many people to Jack who were struggling with addiction, because he knows what it was like to spend half of his life with that demon and the other half in recovery to sanity. He figures that he had wasted too many years wrestling with his demons where people were turned into objects to be used to reach his own goals. The second half of his life he devotes to help cleaning up some of the mess that people who had that similar habit created.

I did not know that Jack; that Jack who lived in a hell on earth had died, for when I met him he was now living into the resurrection where God is present. Our faith tells us there are two deaths, and when we go through the first, the death to ourselves as the center of the universe, the second death holds no fear for us. For Jack, the first death brought him into a deeper sense of freedom and joy, into a deeper consciousness where he lived into Paul’s words from the lesson for today from 2^nd Corinthians:  “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day”.

I have two visual memories of Jack during worship services here. One was of his singing with full throat. He could sing so well - he may not hit the right notes or tempo - but he could sing with joy, which is all that matters. I also remember his head constantly moving during a sermon because he was listening and he would smile, look puzzled, frown, tear up, nod in agreement, or shake his head because, for him, listening to a sermon or a conversation was never a spectator sport.  It was a dialogue, and what was going on in his mind was reflected in his face. I always like the fact that the outside of Jack is congruent with his heart and soul. He has no need to hide.

I grew to depend on Jack as my social conscience and spur to deeper spiritual journeys. Jack knows that only the Inner Journey into the spiritual depth would take him to the Power that was greater than himself to do the Outer Journey of changing himself and the world. He warned that, without the honesty of the Inner Journey to hear the Holy Spirit’s call, all he would do is get worn out and bitter from chronic undifferentiated busy work.

When I came here Jack introduced me to his two friends, John Schultz and Dick Buchanan. John, Dick, and Jack were like the three musketeers, and they were the fathers of most spiritual study or servant ministry outreach in this church. Jack missed them both terribly when they both left their dwelling places here due to ill health in order to be closer to family and both died soon afterwards. But he continued their work for them. 

When Jack first started to talk about moving, I did not want to see him leave. I warned him about what happened to those two amigos who left their houses on the Outer Banks. I even suggested that I would put a curse on his house so it could not be sold. It is a good thing I am in the blessing business instead of the cursing business because it doesn’t work.  Jack by his life showed us we are called to walk this lonesome valley giving blessings not curses. He loved his work with Interfaith Community Outreach (ICO) and it works as a memorial to him, following the lesson for today from Lamentations:  "The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him."

John’s Gospel for today remembers Jesus saying, “In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”  Dwelling places are not on geographical maps; they are intersections of the human and divine which are here in this world after the first death and in the world to come after the second death. Jack lived and lives in what Julian of Norwich, a 14^th century English mystic, called the “ground of our beseeching”. 

Last week, Wednesday, May 8^th was the Feast day of Julian, and I remember a class Jack taught on Dame Julian years ago. But in my memory it is like yesterday, as he smiles broadly when he recited her favorite phrase she heard from God: “All will be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well".  Jack has died and in my imagination he recited that line the moment after he died. TS Eliot reflected on the impact of Julian on later generations in Little Giddings, the last of his Four Quartets:   http://allspirit.co.uk/gidding.html )

Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

When Jack left for Florida, the congregation gathered around him to lay hands on him to bless him on his way to continue his ministry. He was leaving this house to move to a different dwelling place. I believe that the animating spirit never dies but it leaves a residue behind with wherever and whomever it dwells. Jack’s legacy stayed behind in the Outer Banks, in this church and with us his fellow laborers in the Lord’s vineyard who love him. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Monk, in his The Art of Letting Go; Living into the Wisdom of St. Francis says,  “The common metaphor is that the liquid world is moving to solid, then to vapor, and eventually back again. Just wait a while. It looks like a death, a loss in each case, but in fact it is a becoming.”

oday we gather around the remains of Jack’s body and we bless him on his way to a new ministry, a new becoming. Jack’s body was defeated, but we who were touched by him inherit his spirit and are heartened by the knowledge that “All will be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.”

 In my imagination, when Jack died, the Yiddish angels in heaven saw him coming and said, “Oy vey, what a Mensch!” Jack continues his “becoming”, more and more a Mensch in this life as his spirit gives us an example and an experience of love in action. Thank God we still have him and he is free to be a Mensch with God.