The Next Day

 

The Next Day

Your side of the bed was empty this morning.

Last night you weren't there for me to kiss you,

and tell you again what I had hoped you knew,

in a ritual that for decades was habit forming.

I knew I should get going, work out at the gym,

but it seemed pointless without a morning tryst

as this sweaty lover telling you'd been missed

and his deep love was not just a passing whim.

Yesterday, you kept that deadly appointment;

feared, delayed and avoided, but now met.

I knew, of course, I'd have to give you up. Yet,

didn't do ritual prayers or anoint with Ointment.

I could not be your Priest, only a failed lover

who could not stop those angels to hover.

Bill Wadsworth

 

A Reflection on the Occasion of a Service to Honor the Life of Bill Wadsworth          June 19, 2023

All Saints Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC                     Thomas E Wilson, Guest Preacher

           Lamentations 3:22-26,31-33    Psalm 23      1^st Corinthians 13         John 14 1- 6

Being more fully in retirement, I have been free to do a lot more things outside the context of church services. I have a chance to read more things that aren't outwardly theological. One of the things was a study of the Rings of Saturn. The rings of Saturn are not solid, but they are collections of dust and pieces of rock that are all floating in space so close to one another, held in dynamic tension one to another, by this field of energy. This field of energy values all of the pieces of what we would call debris to create a thing of beauty with each piece having its own place of honor. The scientists suggest that this field of energy has been going on for something like a hundred million years and will probably last for another hundred million years.

As I thought about those broken pieces in the Rings of Saturn, I realized how, those broken pieces are a metaphor for our human life, indeed all of creation. The 11^th Century Chinese Philosopher of the Song Dynasty, Zhang Zai, wrote in his Western Inscription:

Heaven is my father, and Earth is my mother

and even such a small creature as I finds

an intimate place in their midst.

Therefore that which fills the universe

I regard as my body

and that which directs the universe

I consider my nature.

All people are my brothers and sisters, and

all things are my companions.

We are broken pieces connected to each other by a force much larger than our selves; dust and rocks in a mighty River of energy. In my own view of my life, I see myself surrounded in a river of energy from my birth to the time when I am emptied into the much larger sea of God's love. I think is is one of reasons so many of us are drawn to, or move to, the Outer Banks; we are aware of a power greater than ourselves; Life in a River of Love emptying out in the Sea of God's grace.

Maybe, like the dust and rocks we might be tempted to have a delusion that we are the center of our universes; thinking we the masters of our lives and have no deeper connection to our neighbors and no higher power through we live and move and have our being. So obsessed by our own private universe, we are unable to see the greater beauty in which we are privileged to live.

If you have trouble with my scientific explanation, let me quote a source of knowledge, whose birthday was yesterday, Sir Paul McCartney; “Life is an energy field, a bunch of molecules, And these particular molecules formed to make these four guys, [the Beatles].”

However, we are not meant to be mere voyeurs of our time on earth watching what molecules or God does. I came across a statement this last week; “God moves in his own mysterious ways, but a great deal of the time he moves through us.” Bill Wadsworth was not one of those who was just here for the ride. He came to be used as a vessel of love. Many of us here have know moments when we were gifted to drink deeply from that vessel we called Bill.

The family chose the lessons for today because they knew that they would remind us of Bill's journey. The 23^rd Psalm tells us that we are not alone on this journey; there is a guide to trust. Lamentations remind us that God's love in new every morning, even in the darkest days. Paul's 1^st letter to the Corinthians reminds us that we can hang out acting religious all we want; but living into love is that which brings God's Spirit into our daily lives. John's Gospel reminds us that with Christ we are already on the way

Bill, by example, showed us how to love and to live deeply. There is a poem by Mary Oliver in her book, New and Selected Poems, for which she won a National Book Award for Poetry in 1992. Over the decades I go to this poem when I have friends that have died and I come to the last line and I say “Yes!”

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Bill was not on earth to be a visitor, he was here to enrich us. I loved moments when Bill would come to meet me to talk over someone, or something, for whom he was concerned. I knew it was important because he was very careful with his words. He would look down and chew his bottom lip to give him time to search for the spirit to lead his words. Prayer is not about reciting the right words, but it is about entering into that right spirit who is greater than ourselves. The space between us was made holy because he was taking the time and energy to sanctify these moments. He would talk about someone who needed help, asking me if I could guide him or to join with him to help someone else. I cannot remember him asking for something for himself, but he was inviting the River of God's love to flow over and through him and us.

Bill was not perfect, none of who are pieces of stardust are, but he did know how to love.

Bill Wadsworth

Bill, when he and I would take to talk

In those moments which he chose to

Leave behind all mere pleasantries,

Looking at a space between our souls;

Would begin chewing on his lower lip,

And almost prayerfully, as if the Triune

Divine was so present, connecting those,

Saturn Ring-like pieces, one to another,

Wounded and broken, yet following

Our Savior's promise to be with us,

Releasing both of us to be of His body,

To “not simply having visited this world”,

Having been made free to live more fully.