Pastoral Care for the Anonymous

Last Saturday it was a baptism; today it was a funeral. Neither involved lives that I had heretofore known. Strangers, opaque in anonymity, reaching out for help. I'm not sure how they keep finding their way into my pastoral care; it's not like I advertise free Saturdays. It is also true, of course, that neither is truly anonymous. They are well-known to families of people -- parents and children, neighbors and grandchildren, classmates and co-workers and doctors and friends. Illness they had in common; cancer -- one battling it, the other succumbing to it. Anonymous, then, to me, but known to and beloved by others.

The funeral preparations started out comically enough -- a call from a funeral director; a family without clergy connections; a son from out-of-town who wanted the best for his mother who, "er, uh, would like to visit with you a little before deciding for sure whether you'll be involved."

"You mean I need to audition," I translated.

"Well...yes," the funeral director admitted. I could tell she was embarrassed. We've worked together more times than I like to count. Serving a church with a sizable elderly membership, I have single-handedly pronounced benedictions over acres of cemetery real estate. The funeral director knows me, but the bereaved son does not, and that, I could appreciate, was what mattered. So, I phoned, we sat down the next day, and apparently I passed. Perhaps it was the bow-tie or the maybe the Texas twang; perhaps it was that I didn't drool and could form complete sentences -- or perhaps he was, by that time, simply desperately resigned. Whatever might have given him permission to exhale and relax, we moved forward from there. Stories, memories, laughter, tears. A single mother, a tough and determined Iowa lady; a woman who rolled with more than her share of punches -- a divorcee, a widow, a veteran of three kinds of cancer, and more.

And before very long, she wasn't anonymous at all; hardly, to me, even dead. Though I had never known her, she had come to live in the fertile relational space between us; in the lives touched and animated by devotion, by determined hard work and protective, encouraging, embracing love; and she had come to live in the moment of amazing and profound grace that invited me into the stories past and now unfolding in eulogy, hymn, prayer and farewell. And I was humbled to be a part. Honored and blessed.

May the Lord bless you and keep you;
May the Lord's face shine upon you and be gracious to you;
May the Lord look upon with you a smile
And give you peace.

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Sustainable Cooking and Living

"You are fortunate that your chef has stayed with you," I commented to Innkeeper Dave as we finished coffee after breakfast. Jason, the chef, had come to this Vermont inn from Napa, having already cooked for royalty in the Colorado mountain resorts, according to Dave.

"He's doing what he loves to do," was Dave's simple response.

What he went on to describe was a network of relationships the chef has developed with local farmers, ranchers, distributors and customers. He has come to know the preferences of repeat guests -- no salt for this one; extra spicy for that one -- and visualizes the faces of those for whom he prepares each plate. Different from cooking for a series of tickets the machine spits out in the large restaurants, this is personalized cooking based on the people involved. He knows exactly where his food has come from and by whose efforts, and onto whose place-setting it will be handed, and assumes respectfully the sacred part he plays as creative culinary intermediary.

He could be in a "mega-restaurant," but life and satisfaction for him are apparently in the personalization made possible in this more intimate setting.

It reminds me of a comment I recently heard made by Sam Wells, Dean of the Chapel at Duke University. After introducing us to the story of a couple facing significant challenges, he concluded that "what they need is the church. And I pray they find one small enough to meet their needs."

Not one large enough, but one small enough.

Like the kitchen of a small inn in Vermont, where the chef knows the farmers, the food they produce, and the stories of those who will eat it. I'm thinking that Chef Jason could teach a few things to churches, businesses, civic leaders...
...and, of course, me.