Thursday, April 9, 2015

Robert, Bob, Bobby



A Reflection on the Occasion of the Thanksgiving for the Life and Death of Robert Strickland


Robert, Bob, Bobby

I am one of those people obsessed with movies, and I tend to think of movie metaphors when I try to make sense of people, places, and things. As I began this process of composing a reflection for Bob, I thought of the movie The Three Faces of Eve. It is an old Joanne Woodward movie about a woman who has multiple personality disorder. The tragedy of the movie is that she does not know that those different personalities exist within her, and the hope of the movie is that she is ultimately able to claim all the different parts of herself as a whole human being.

In the Christian struggle to understand the un-understandable idea of God, we have come up with this doctrine of the Trinity. We believe that there is an energy which has existed since before the beginning, and this energy of love spoke, and in that act of speaking, an explosion of love burst forth, creating suns, planets, moons, stars, galaxies, oceans, chemical elements, apes, aardvarks, great blue whales, snakes, mosquitoes, quarks, protons, humans. All the things we know about or imagine came into being. We called that energy metaphors like “Creator”, “Father”, “Great Spirit”, YHWH, Jehovah - you name it, we came up with names to name of the unnamable.   In our experience, we came across an expression of that energy which entered into human life and who we called “The Risen Christ” or “Jesus” or “Son”, which became a symbol of how this energy of love was connected to all of creation in and throughout history.  We also realized that this energy of love was able to give us strength through the very air we breathe, and we called  it “Spirit”, which was the same word for “breath”, and so we called it “Holy Breath” or “Holy Spirit”  or “Holy Ghost”. We then called it “Trinity” and made it a dogma because this is what we like to do - construct dogmas to explain the unexplainable and create divisions between people who might have different explanations.

We say that all of creation shares the same star dust from that initial Big Bang and even humans are created in the image of God. According to the doctrine of the Trinity, each person is created with these three different and yet connected parts of themselves: 1) the first “face” is “Creator”, the Worker,  who in work and love is able to build something in this life which makes the world a better place; 2) the  second “face”, the one who is able to walk with us and talk with us in daily life and use love to connect us to each other; 3) the third “face” is the one whose very being, spirit, is able to enter into the spirit of another in intimacy and change our lives.

Many of us knew the three faces of Bob, and that is who remember. This was not a disorder, as Bob knew and nurtured all three faces and integrated them into his personality.  The first we will call “Robert”. Robert was a worker.  He worked hard and saw life as a series of challenges to which he would bring his considerable talents. You could count on Robert to do things. He worked at school, after school, after graduation, in the armed forces, in America, in Asia, in Europe; Robert worked. He worked hard in his professional life and he worked hard to support his family, to keep up their homes, to raise his and Ellen’s children, and to be a good grandfather who would show up and support his grandchildren in their understandings of what it means to work and be responsible.

Now I am not as fortunate as some of you, and I only saw his work in Maine, Virginia, and North Carolina. He paid attention to detail, from planning and running worship services, writing up reports, keeping budgets, fixing properties. If there was anything that needed to be done, Robert came to mind as the person to ask. One of the saddest days of my professional life at All Saints’ Church was when I realized that Robert had moved to Westminster-Canterbury and I no longer had a Verger. I loved walking into a service and not worrying about it because Robert had been there to make sure it ran properly. Many times after Robert left, I would walk into church and find that something or someone was not there and I had to run around and try to fix things myself.  And for years after he left, we would send him the weekly bulletins to proofread and make sure we did it right.

The second face is Bob, the one who walks with us as a friend. You could count on Bob to be a friend. He was a husband, parent, fellow parishioner; yes, he was all these things, but he was also a friend to his wife, his children and grandchildren, his fellow members of committees, associations, churches, communities, neighbors, the homeless, and even, when pressed, to wayward clergy like me who entered his life. There was a phrase he would use - “let me help you with that” - and he would. He loved sharing work and play with friends, and when you played with him - and I would learn this the hard way -he would take the play VERY seriously.  But Bob would not take himself too seriously, as win (as he often did) or lose, he would laugh. He was good with friends and he was thankful for them. I remember when I saw him several hours after his surgery and he told me how good the hospital nurses and aides were being to him. He thanked them because that is what friends do, even if you don’t know everything about them, but you see them as a gift of grace in a broken world.

As a friend, Bob would be there to talk or to leave you alone. But even when Bob left you alone, he would leave, as he has this time, part of his spirit, and I call that “Bobby”. Now Bob hated to be called Bobby, but I realized that when Pat or I would call him Bobby, we were acknowledging that his spiritual presence had been part of our lives even when we were separated by miles or circumstances.  When I say Bobby was spiritual, I don’t want that to be confused with his church stuff, for the sad truth is that the Spirit has this habit of being pushed outside the religious institutions and into everyday life outside their walls.  When the Holy Spirit came on the disciples on Pentecost, it drove them out of the Upper Room in which they were hiding and propelled them into the center of town.

To me, being in the moment with the Spirit is to see the creation of God with new eyes, to hear with different ears, to taste with different faculties, and to touch with the depth of the soul rather than relying on our skin. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a 20th century Jesuit Priest, philosopher, paleontologist, geologist, and mystic said that “Matter is the spirit moving slowing enough to be seen.”

Let me give you some examples. I remember one day when I was on the porch of  their cabin in Maine, and Bob came out to see the fog-encased bay with the lobster boats sliding in and out of the fog bank. He stopped and looked and saw deeper than the pleasant scene.  For one brief moment, he saw with awe the mind of God.  We often get so used to seeing beauty that we don’t stop to see what the beauty points to. For that moment, we were transfixed by the wonder of God, and it was a moment of worship - without words spoken or rituals performed, but a prayer was breathed in our hearts. These minutes last only a moment before we try to analyze them, categorize them, and domesticate them.

I saw that look when I got him a bottle of expensive Scotch in New Hampshire on our way up to visit in Maine, and when he took the very first taste, there was an outward breath of wonder.  For a brief second, he was in the land of awe, but by the time he had finished the second sip, it devolved back into ordinary liquor.  We have a hard time living with  awe and wonder. It is like the first taste of the first real ripe tomato in the season or the first bite of sweet corn which contains the hints of full mystery of the divine.  

I remember times when he would talk about Ellen, or the kids, or the grandkids, and there might come a moment when he no longer saw them as nice accessories to his life but priceless gifts given by a gracious God.  You would hear a hitch in his voice and see a moisture forming in the corners of his eyes in divine thanksgiving.  

I remember when he was nailing a nail into the cross on Good Friday and he realized for a split second what it meant when the song says, “Where you there when they crucified my Lord? Oh sometimes it cause me to tremble, tremble, tremble.“  Or when he would read a note from someone who wanted to tell him that they were praying for him. Or when he would hold you in his arms for a split second longer than usual when saying good-bye or hello. It was in those moments that Bobby showed us what Jesus meant when he said, “Unless you become as a child you will not enter the Kingdom of the Heavens.” These were the moments when Bobby was alive in the Spirit, changing the world with thanksgiving, awe, and love.

Now there are many ways to remember Robert, and they involve working to make this creation a better place. Opportunities exist right outside our front doors. There are many ways to remember Bob and that is make a friend and to be a friend who can be counted on. There are many ways to remember Bobby and all of them are filled with awe and thanksgiving for the gracious God who gave us the opportunity to know and to cherish Robert, Bob and Bobby for much too short a time. Now we return him to the arms of the one who created this gift for us.


Robert, Bob, Bobby  (poem)

Triune tattered, rumpled, flawed, shining, gracious image    Rest
Robert, you tired, co-creating, and working image,
who we could count on to do work for/with us        Rest
Bob, you friend and lover, walking, listening image,
your hand, play, love, and time with us shared        Rest
Bobby, shyly hiding, empowering awe-filled image,
living Teilhard’s matter being spirit moving slowly    Rest
Brother, father, husband, friend, pilgrim journeyer
          blessedly returning to before the stardust            Rest
We left behind, holding our heart-seared memories
ask that our thanksgivings for you never            Rest

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