Thursday, January 18, 2018

Cynthia M. Slegel April 28, 1935 - December 27, 2017


A Reflection for a Celebration of Life for Cynthia Slegel             January 20, 2018
All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. Thomas E. Wilson Rector

Romans 8:14-19, 34-35, 37-39 Psalm 23 John 14:1-6

There is a very short one act play written in 1889 by Swedish author August Strindberg called The Stronger. It takes place in a café on Christmas Eve with one woman sitting at a table alone reading a newspaper when another woman comes in loaded with Christmas presents for her family. The other woman comes to the table and starts talking and the seated woman says nothing - for the whole play. The question is asked by viewers of the play “Which of the women was the Stronger; the one who talked or the one who listened?”

There is an old joke that goes: “The world is divided into two groups; one that says that the world is divided into two groups and the other that doesn’t.” One of things I believe is that we are all the same but, between the ones who tend to take space and those who make space, some tend to be stronger in one area than others.

Cynthia Slegel knew how to take space for she graduated from a prestigious school, she was a teacher who could teach children and control her classroom, and she was an effective Principal who could run a school of teachers of competing egos while managing to stretch a budget to make sure the children got the best education on things that mattered. The hardest job she had was being a Pastor’s wife - to put up with well-meaning but interfering advice and snide off-hand comments, guarding the secrets and foibles of congregants, putting up with Saturdays when Bob was trying to write a sermon for Sunday and demanding absolute quiet from three growing children and a wife who had to do things that there had not been time for during her work week, the dreading one more committee meeting with a stretched smile when yet another parishioner lamented the loss of the way things were done under a previous Pastor, and running a household of a demanding husband and three strong-willed children and making sure they were protected. In the words of a song of that time, she could “bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, . . . a woman W-O-M-A-N.”

I did not see that kind of strength often in my 15 years of knowing her, but I knew that I would greatly regret it if she ever saw me as a threat to her husband, children, or faith. The kind of strength I saw in her was the kind that made room for me in this community, at this church, and in her home. She was gracious and knew how to welcome in a quiet, understated way where the welcome was in the space between the words - the words she left to Bob, and the love she gave patiently away. I would periodically see the hints of a stretched smile as I would announce a bright idea I came up with to make a change and to which she would adjust out of loyalty. She had to do a lot of adjusting in her life out of love.

I remember the joy that she and Bob would have in welcoming people to the Outer Banks at the Visitors Center; it was a perfect job for them in retirement. They would come home filled with energy with Bob doing the “Hail fellow well met” kind of greeting full of words and Cynthia smiling and answering questions the visitors had. I remember visiting her at her rooms in Spring Arbor. The seats would be covered with knitting supplies and projects and piles of books from the library she had been reading that week. She would rush around to clear off a space for me so that I would be comfortable. She refused to complain because she did not want to burden me with negativity. She would do the same thing when I would visit her in the hospital. When I read the passage from John about Jesus saying that he will go and prepare a place for us in His Father’s House, I am aware of an image of Cynthia helping to make a space of welcome. 
 
I remember walking through the meetings of the knitting group and there would be all sorts of chattering and laughter as the women knitted away madly. I would call them the Madame Defarge Group, she was a character in Dickens Tale of Two Cities knitting at the guillotine, a representation of the mythical Ancient Greek Fates who handled the threat of life and would cut it short when it was time for someone to die. Their laughter was polite because they saw their work as the giving of life and hope as they knitted the prayer shawls for the people who needed outward and visible signs of the invisible prayers surrounding them and those they loved. Their knitting would be prayer, a loving prayer using their hands and hearts. Cynthia would be quieter than the rest for she was intent on making spiritual space for others. In this quiet spiritual strength, she faced all the trials that came her way, and there were many, yet she remained an embodiment faith of what Paul wrote to the Romans in today’s passage:
   Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine,    or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.


Today we give thanks for making space for us in her world in which there is strength to sustain us, we like the sheep of the shepherd who walk through this valley of the shadow of death. Bless you, Cynthia and bless you who loved her for we have been blessed by having her in our lives.

Pastor’s Wife
Now she sits quietly knitting something as a gift.
What it will be she doesn’t quite know, it begins
with a thought of love, figuring out outs and ins
and finding ways to repair all of the rips and rift
that so clogs her life as a pastor’s wife and lover;
the one chosen to silently pick up all the pieces
of unfinished puzzles; wrinkles causing creases
etching her face on top of ones of being mother.
Faithfully she keeps the secrets of those hurts,
of the parish pains for they are not her to share
with others as gossip, but only given in prayer
guiding her at both the center and the outskirts.
While husband is the one to get all the glory,
she provided the beating heart of their story.

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