Barbars Dunn Rhoads

Barbara Dunn Rhoads
February20, 1933-October 1, 2016

A Reflection and Poem in Thanksgiving for the Life of Barbara Rhoads

On the Occasion of A Celebration of her Life

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC

October 15, 2016

We come together today for at least 8 resaons:

We come because we loved Barbara Rhoads.

We come because we are trying to make sense of the fact that this good person, who we saw as a precious gift, who made our lives richer by knowing her, should be seemingly unfairly taken from our daily life by sickness and by death.

We come to see if there is anything we can do to “fix” this situation so we will be able to keep on going in a world that doesn't always make sense.

We come to give thanks for having Barbara in our lives.

We come trying to find strength to meet the days ahead as we face our own inevitable death.

We come as a faith community to show our trust in a power greater than ourselves.

We come to hear the words and sing some songs that comfort us.

We come to lay her to rest and give her to God's love.

We come because we want to cling to a hope that life continues on another level after death on this plane.

In essence we come to accept what we have to, to change what we can, and to be and have peace. We are saying with word and deed a prayer which is also known as the Serenity Prayer:  “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference,  just for today.”

This is a prayer that I used to pray with a group of people in a drug and alcohol rehab facility where I volunteered for several years as the co-leader of a group on the 2^nd and 3^rd steps of the 12 steps of recovery. The 12 step program is a translation of Basic Christianity 101 for addicted people who have been blamed, stigmatized, and hurt instead of helped by churches. The Gospel story from John for today has Martha as the representative of the church. You may remember how she had lit into her sister Mary for being a part of the problem when Martha was taking on so much work doing so much worrying. Jesus told her that she worried about too many things. Of course, Martha, being a good church-person, didn’t pay a bit of attention.

Addiction is not a problem to be solved; it is a condition in which addicts have to learn a new way of living. We humans, when encountering things that we have to “deal with”, feel most comfortable by asking two question: 1) Who is to blame? and 2) What is the solution?  In our fear of having to accept what we cannot change, we keep going back to the old ways that did not work before. The definition of insanity is to keep doing things that didn’t work and expect a different result. Dealing with changing ourselves is always a Spiritual journey.

Martha has a problem; her brother Lazarus is dead. Martha, unable to deal with the hurt of her brother’s death, something she could not control, asks the two favorite questions:  first, who is to blame? Martha answers her own question and says that Jesus was to blame because if he had been there Lazarus would not have died.  She moves quickly from blame for the problem to the second question and demands a solution. She tells him that since he had finally showed up, late, but at least did show up, he could get to work and fix things. 

He then tells her that there is a deeper dimension to life than solving problems. Dying is not a problem to be fixed; it is a condition of life to be entered into without seeing death as the end, “the final curtain,” but with faith, seeing death as a door into a deeper level of existence.

One of my favorite songs is a song that misses that mark. I read an article  that said a survey in England of 300 undertakers and 2000 other adults revealed that the most favorite song at funerals is the 1969  Frank Sinatra pop song, I Did It My Way. The article called it “a tribute to lifelong narcissism”. If you have never, heard it the first verse goes:

And now, the end is near;
And so I face the final curtain.
My friend, I'll say it clear,
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain.
I've lived a life that's full.
I've traveled each and every highway;
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

I love the song especially when I am in one of my narcissistic moods where the world revolves around me, and in my life, I’ve sung it often. One of the things I found working with addicts is that they would quote from that song a lot as they tried to begin the first step - to which I or the other clinician would say, “So how’s that working for you?” Yeah, they had done it their way, but recovery was learning a new way of living. The further along in their recovery, the less they quoted from it. The final verses give a clue: 

To think I did all that;
And may I say - not in a shy way,
"Oh no, oh no not me,
I did it my way".
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it my way!
Yes, it was my way.

To accept death as part of life is to live “the words of one who kneels”. Our healing from our fears of death begins when we start to kneel in prayer and accept the things we cannot change and change the things we can and have the wisdom to know the difference. We begin by sharing our memories and giving thanks for this wonderful complex person known as Barbara Rhoads.

Barbara was not a pushover; she was tough, and she could give as well as accept. Woe to anyone who crossed her for she would let you know in a way that made sure you would not need air conditioning in the near future when you were around her. Yet in the middle of that toughness, there was within her a life of caring for others and something greater than herself. All the while she made sure that she carried herself with an elegance that came from an internal style, but she carried herself standing strong enough as if she could handle a collision with a Mack truck. She was an Army wife for years and that is a tough job. Having moved often she knew how to make others welcome and herself at home. She got a plaque from the Army when Dave retired, giving her a lot of the credit for Dave’s effectiveness. She emptied herself out caring for her husband and family. She worked hard in this church, giving a lot of her precious time. My favorite memories of her were when she would see me and smile that killer floodlight smile and ask, “Now what do we do to help these people, or what do you need?” She was there to help, to make the world a better place, but not by demanding that she had to have it her way. When she said she would pray for someone in trouble, I knew she would do so, and not just by words but by action. She knew how to kneel before her God, having awe in God’s creation and being thankful for the strength of Jesus walking with her. She had the ability to see all of creation as holy, loving the deserts of the southwest and the waters of the Outer Banks equally. She lived as if the holy was in the space between people as a way of living on earth as it is in heaven. Heaven was not a foreign place to her - she experienced glimpses in her life

To her family, we give you thanks that you shared her with us in this church. We gather together to give thanks to God and wish her well on the next part of this journey, following her Lord into the deeper life.

On the morning after she died, I was trying to come to grips with her death and went over to the now silent house.  Dave, the Colonel, having finished his exhausting but loving tour of duty being  her caretaker, was now sound asleep because the woman he loved and I admired had found peace. This is the poem I wrote while I was waiting to go back later in that morning.

Barbara Rhoads

Arriving in early morning at dwelling,

finding silently empty of a caregiver,

ringing bell echoing off the furniture,

returning to car, thinking while driving,

remembering Barbara walking in room

smiling as she saw me. Then was light

coming flooding to everything in sight,

banishing for moments that felt doom

hiding in thoughts, but filling in grace,

unearning, unexpected like her smiles

stretching far beyond limiting of miles,

rising, rising to finish a long earth race,

hoping our days are always long enough

forgetting never her smiles in times rough.