A Reflection on the Occasion of a Memorial Service
for Jennifer Beckett December 16, 2017
All Saints Church, Southern Shores, NC Thomas
E Wilson, Rector
Lamentations
3:22-26 Psalm 46 2 Corinthians 4:16 - 5:9 John 14: 1-6
Jennifer
Beckett
I write poems to figure out what is
going on in life. On the day Jennifer Beckett died I finished a poem that I had
been working on as she entered her final days:
Jennifer
Beckett
Wait, you are not
supposed to die
‘fore outlive us
longing to be lover
so at all our funerals
you’ll hover;
that way, we would not
have to cry,
yell at God for
depriving us of you
and the care you so
freely showered
with a la-di-da laugh
that flowered
each shrug leading to
that hug true,
punctuating a word of
love and kiss
of peace and hint of
praise bestowed
as effortlessly out of
you joy flowed
that soul time spent
with you is bliss.
Come memory, flood us
once again
with Jenn’s laugh
soothing our pain!
One of the things happening in our society right now
is how we see things. We have been treated to disputes to something called
“alternative facts” which means that “facts” are the result of one’s agenda and
that which does not correspond to one’s agenda is “fake news”, a euphemism for
lies. Truth in this view is determined in how loud and often we parrot an
agenda and how many people agree with it. Jennifer Beckett did not lie because
she knew how to face facts with courage. She did not try to find alternative
facts but she could see beyond them and that vision throughout her life and
death is why we love her.
When I look at the world that I cannot make sense of;
besides poetry I look for a movie to give me a clue. The movie I look to often
is the 1946 French movie directed by poet Jean Cocteau; Beauty and the Beast. It is a move about seeing things with
imagination that requires the audience to enter into the imagination. Most of
you have probably seen a couple of animated or live action adaptations of the
story but I urge you to watch Cocteau’s film poem. You probably know the story
that when Belle meets the Beast she only sees what the audience sees; a
monster. The change is when Belle is able to see with her imagination into the
soul of the Beast and that vision changes both her and the Beast.
There
were many things I loved about Jennifer Beckett, but most of all she had
imagination. Wendell Berry in his 2012 Jefferson Lecture for the National
Endowment for the Humanities, “It All
Turns On Affection” wrote:
The term “imagination”
in what I take to be its truest sense refers to a mental faculty that some
people have used and thought about with the utmost seriousness. The sense of
the verb “to imagine” contains the full richness of the verb “to see.” To
imagine is to see most clearly, familiarly, and understandingly with the eyes,
but also to see inwardly, with “the mind’s eye.” It is to see, not passively,
but with a force of vision and even with visionary force. To take it seriously
we must give up at once any notion that imagination is disconnected from
reality or truth or knowledge. It has nothing to do either with clever
imitation of appearances or with “dreaming up.” It does not depend upon one’s
attitude or point of view, but grasps securely the qualities of things seen or
envisioned.
Jennifer
picked the lessons and the poems and wrote a reflection on Psalm 46 and they
all have the same theme of living with a vision charged with imagination:
from
Lamentations “to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord,
from Psalm 46: ‘Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved, and
though the mountains be toppled into the depths of the sea”,
from Corinthians; “We do not lose heart . . . for we walk by
faith not by sight” ,
and from John; “Do not let your hearts be troubles.”
This whole walking by faith business
is hard stuff because any sane person going through the same path as Jenn’s
life and struggle would be tempted to scream out that there is no God or at
least if there is a God, he, she or it is not at all up to the job of a first
class deity. There is loads of evidence that point to a successful case for
gross incompetence and breach of trust against the Supreme Being. Yet, each day
she pulled herself up to lower herself down to pray to give thanks for being
surrounded by grace. All evidence to the contrary, she saw God and gathered
strength from what seemed to many as the abyss, but she, to use Berry’s words,
“grasps securely the quality of things seen or envisioned.”
She would do this with nature as she
looked deeply with her imagination and found beauty and majesty, on the
mountains or the shore, even in the middle of what she called “Hurricane Alley”.
She did that with situations in her life as she shared in her reflection on
Psalm 46 which we read today. She did that with pets loving all sorts and
conditions of dogs. She did that with friends which is why she had so many of
them. She did that even with those who let her down which is the reason her
soul was not burdened with resentments, for she forgave promiscuously.
I would call Jennifer a Prophet
which why we read her reflection as one of the lessons. Prophets get a bad rap
in that we want to see if prophets can tell the future. Prophets were called
“seers”, people who see; they see not the future but rather into the soul of
the present. They hold up a mirror to a broken world and us and ask if we want
to live as part of that brokenness of that we might think again, change our
minds, or to use the Biblical term “repent” so that we will not be who we are
afraid of turning into, but we can rise to the holy vision that God has with
those who are loved
This church benefited from
Jennifer’s vision’s imagination. This church is called All Saints but even a
cursory examination of the people who attend here will see that it could as
easily be called “All Sinners” for we fall very short of being plaster saints.
But she looked deeper than surface reality and saw us wretches who operate
under the delusion that God is with us. As she looked at us, she demonstrated
the Quantum Physics theory proposed in the Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle
that the observation of quanta particles effects a change in those quanta
particles. She saw what was deep inside us and we moved to claiming into what
she saw.
In the Gospel lesson that Jenn picked
for today, Jesus has just heard that his friend Lazarus has died and he tells
his disciples not to be afraid. He was calling them out of the tombs of their
fears so that might go with his to call Lazarus out the Tomb of his earthly
life. I give God thanks that I was lucky enough to be around when Jennifer was
casting her gaze. I am a product of her imagination, a better person because
she saw clearly behind my posturing and, like Lazarus hearing Jesus, I heard
her calling to come out of my tomb of my own inadequacies and find joy in her
loving vision of me.
I wrote a poem of words I never got
around to saying to her when she was living on this limited plane of existence but
in my imagination I hear her listening to all that we have said and all we wish
we had said before time ran out:
Jennifer
Beckett’s Vision
Jennifer we so do love
the imagination in your eyes
looking into the core
of who we’d really like to be
with your love
reinterpreting all the things you see
lift us heavenward with
Shelley’s Skylark’s songs rise.
Not to a place up, or
out, where only good go to paradise
entering through some
mythical gates securely guarded
by Apostles checking
Big Book of how we’re regarded,
but heaven is when we
observe others as beyond price.
Your loving eyes
appraised us misfits, strays and dogs
wandering past you on
path; not really looking for you,
but rather bumbling
past the past but hoping for the new
Princess who might be
tempted into kissing some frogs,
giving us the strength
we joyfully transfused from time
spent in your loving
gaze loved beyond reason or rhyme
