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
