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| 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 2nd
and 3rd 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.
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.
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.
