a reflection on Julie Hamilton

A Reflection on the Occasion of a Memorial Service for

Juliette Watson Fowler “Julie” Hamilton

June 16, 2013

All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores                              Thomas E. Wilson Rector

Revelation 21:2-7     Psalm 23      John 6:37-40

Every time I went to Julie’s house, I violated the 10^th Commandment about coveting. Julie had this room off of the living room where she had an endless pool. It is a small pool where the swimmer swims against a generated current of water- always going upstream - getting exercise and getting stronger. One of my regrets is that I never tried out that pool because I did covet it so, but I had to remind myself, as I always do, be it an endless pool, or sports car, or any number of electronic devices, when I violate that commandment, (but to be fair, I only violate that commandment on days ending in the letter “y”), it – in this case, the pool- does not belong to me. It is something that gave Julie joy for, when she swam in that pool, she entered a different physical and spiritual dimension of presence. She talked about how she loved those moments of quiet exercise, and how she was able to swim through her frustrations without leaving home. I saw that she found peace there, and I thought if I used that pool I would be trespassing on her space – plus, on the less noble side - I was afraid she would show me up because she was in good physical condition.

She was tough! What she did over the years was push herself, constantly push herself, and when it came time for her body to shut down in order to die, her body kicked into overdrive and kept her alive long past anyone’s expectations. Every time I would ask how she was doing or how she was feeling she would respond that she was “fine”! She had to be tough for she had a lot of things to overcome, and she did. I think of that pool and how swimming against the current, never feeling sorry for herself and yet keep on going was a good metaphor for her life and how she faced some of the issues in her life. 

She was faithful in that swim against the current; faithful to her family, her profession, her friends and in her church. In a time when church attendance is down nationwide, she continued to come and give her treasure and her time. When I came to the church 10 years ago, I brought with me 19 years of being a faithful worker in religious institutions, and I had developed a hermeneutic – which is a fancy theological word meaning how I look at things - of distrust about institutions and was tired of keeping institutions afloat just for the sake of keeping them afloat. I talked about how the paradigm of the church was shifting, how I wanted the church to be less hierarchical and experience a more organic growth with parishioners going into themselves, discovering their greatest joy, and through that, discovering the spiritual gifts the Holy Spirit gives them, for God is not glorified by resentful, burned-out people. The hope is that the people would offer their gifts and the church would no longer say to newcomers “Here are the tasks that need to be done, do we have volunteers?” Rather we would need to find a way to use those gifts that they were called to give to live into a deeper spiritual reality

Julie, very nicely, thought I was out of my mind and maybe a closet anarcho-syndicalist. In her life, in her work, and in her churches, she had seen plenty of schemes come and go and she would play along, but she thought life was what you did, your job was one way what did to make the world a better place. Friendship was defined by what you did together rather than physical proximity for she was a friend she didn’t just collect them. Her church was the people with whom she worshiped God within the context of a community of the faithful.  And anything she could do to help it survive, grow, and pass on to future generations was what she would do. None of this contemplating on your own navel stuff for her; give her the job and she would do it. No moaning or complaining, and if it meant swimming against the current, so be it.

My favorite metaphor for God is the flowing energy of life that we are able to see in all of creation and my metaphor for life is contained in the Revelation passage for today, “the spring of the water of life.” We all begin in the energy of God, in the water of God’s love and placed in the water of the womb. We swim and grow there, and then one day we have to adjust to a whole new, unimagined by us in the womb, different dimension of God’s creation but in the same energy and stream of life, for when that water breaks in our birth, we follow the stream to join in the conscious world with others. We learn how to read the currents, when to swim against it and when to allow the river to take us into still waters, where we join with others. We have interludes with people and take streams when then we get separated again until we are all finally swept by the currents into a new unimagined different dimension of life, the sea of love which is God, and where we first began. T. S Elliot reminds us in his poem Little Giddings from Four Quartets: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. “

I know that some of you are getting tired of me repeating myself. One of the problems of a Priest who has served a church for a number of years is that parishioners know what he/she is going to say before s/he says it. Another problem is the fact that it is harder to keep a professional distance and say, “This is just a job.” Julie and I have been metaphorically swimming in the same waters for 10 years and it is strange not to have her here and continue to count on her. There has been a hole since she has been sick, and we will have to go around the hole because, God knows, she left a big one in the life of the church and in our hearts. The hole is not fatal but we will need to honor the scar. In the last month I have done five memorial services or burials, and I have quoted from Little Giddings each time. I used the metaphor of the river of life as well as that quote four times in the last two weeks. In the service a month ago I did not use the river metaphor, but instead, another quote from Little Giddings:

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.

From the defeat of Julie’s body, we have taken our inheritance of toughness and our consolation in the thanksgiving for her peace. She has left us a symbol, a symbol perfected in death of the tough woman who takes on tough tasks because she believes, with God swimming beside her and using all her will and strength, all will be well. She is with our Lord now, and “All shall be will and/ All manner of thing shall be well.” Today we come beseeching God in thanksgiving for her life and rest at the last. There is a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer on page 833 which was cribbed from a sermon by John Henry Newman, Sermon XX in Sermons on the Subject of the Day, and it is a prayer I say often at night before I go to bed and also when I place bodies and ashes into the ground:

O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows
lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is
hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.
Then in thy mercy, grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest,
and peace at the last. Amen.