The Prodigal Cat and a Word to the Wise

In a sort of feline parody of the parable of the prodigal son, first the cat was lost and then it was found.  In this story, however, the father was a mother, there wasn't really a grumpy older brother -- unless it was me -- and the resulting emotion was less about amazing grace and more about relief.  But the "lostness" was no less traumatic.

Late Saturday morning, to start at the beginning, we gradually became aware of a stirring stillness.  After calling out his name, looking in every room and closet and cupboard and finally the garage without results, we were left with no alternative but to conclude that Lori's mother's cat (would that make him my "cat-in-law"?) was missing.  Despite there having been only the thinnest of opportunities for him to escape that morning, we could conceive of no other explanation.  Henry the cat was gone.  No collar.  No tag.  No microchip.  No real prospects of finding him.

Though we continued to reexamine the nooks and crannies of the house, we widened the search -- walks around the cul-de-sac, emails to neighbors, and eventually into ever-expanding sorties through the nearby streets and neighborhoods, knocking on doors, talking to whomever might be out and about, and peering over fences.  Lori and her mother consulted the experts at the police department and the Animal Rescue League -- even Craig's List -- and finally started the hopeful (some might say "wishful") process of creating a "Lost Cat" flyer we could post around the area.

More driving through the neighborhoods, more calling out his name, more searching through the house -- this time descending to such extreme possibilities as the oven and the microwave.  Nothing.  Eventually and mercilessly the hour arrived when the in-laws would have to begin the journey back home -- empty-handed.  Choking back anticipatory grief and fighting off despair, hugs were exchanged, car doors were shut, and the car backed out of the drive.

Later in the evening, one of Lori's sisters emailed pictures of the missing for us to add to the flyer.  The cat had now been missing 12 long and tiresome hours.  Past our bedtime, we were hovered over the computer, Photoshopping cat pictures into cropped portraits we hoped might catch the eye of someone who had seen something.  Studying the most recent printout, Lori casually looked over to Barrington lounging nearby...

...and froze.  Next to Barrington was a cat.  Turning to me with widened eyes and hushed voice, she said, "I think I'm seeing a mirage."  After a careful approach and a literal pinch, she concluded that this was not a figment of her imagination but the actual AWOL cat who had apparently been somewhere in this house all along.

Now a day or so after the fact, I've been reflecting on the lessons I might constructively learn from this experience.  I can think of lessons I might commend to others involved, but that's not my place.  "Believe" was the word ornament the cat had knocked off the tree downstairs before his disappearance, and I suppose that could be one lesson to take to heart.  I had certainly lost all hope of finding anything more than pancaked fur on some nearby roadway, and there is, I suppose, something to be said for not losing hope.

But perhaps the best I can take from all this harrowing afternoon, however, is the simple admonition to value and pay attention as best you can to every minute you can.  They are numbered, after all, and you never know what might be slipping out without your notice, potentially never to return.

And on those rare occasions when you get a second chance, offer a prayer of thankful praise...

...and then drop whatever you were doing and as fast you can go get a collar and a tag.

The Desperate Pursuit of Something to Complete

Thunder and lighting swept in during the night, birthing a Saturday gloomy, chilly and wet. Like a new convert drifting back into a bar, it was a difficult backslide away from the springlike days just ended. As dreary as it has been, the shivering rain made it easier to spend the morning at the church in a visioning retreat. Reaching deeply and squinting forward, the group of us did good work. Hospital visits followed -- one, where a stroke was ruled out, and the other where heart problems aren't the concern after all.

And then John finally died. "Finally" here is not toned with dismissal or impatience. This was a dear and beloved man who man whose body, in old age, simply wore out. Death, in his case, fit that pastoral but still somehow cerebral assessment of "blessing." Under hospice care for a week, John had lingered, languished, and slowly, ever-so-slowly dissolved into death. His family, constantly at his side, holding his hands, slipping ice chips between his lips, calling his name and trying to adjust their minds to the inevitable, were tired. It was, in that biblical sense of the word, "time."

Vision, illness, death. Rain. I came home and dismantled the pipes beneath the bathroom sink. Running slow -- if perceptively at all -- for quite some time, they undoubtedly needed attention. But just now I had some desperate attention I needed to pay to something I could I could take a wrench and a pipe snake to -- something that had a good reason for stinking and making a mess apart from simply "that's the way life goes." And once the pieces were miraculously back together it felt good, if only for a moment, to watch the hot water swirl in the bowl and then simply go away.

Plumbing is not my long suit, but it was nice, for a change, to see something fixed. It will clog up again, I know; but for the moment I did something I can check off. The hospitals will still be there tomorrow, filled with loved ones impaled on ambiguous symptoms. Visioning is always about planting seeds of trees in whose shade we will never likely sit. And tomorrow we will plan a memorial service for John -- only the beginning of an indefinite process of reweaving the fabric of life absent his thread. But at least I know how to remove the trap beneath the sink.

It's raining, and it's Saturday, and somewhere in the tangled intersection of grief and hope, I'm wondering if the neighbors have any sink problems I can tackle.

Losing Petals, One at a Time

There was another funeral yesterday. In a congregation with a large percentage from the "World War 2 Generation," funerals aren't uncommon. But the ones we have been having lately have been for pillars -- ones on whose shoulders the congregation is supported, if not actually the building. Yesterday's service was in that category -- a faithful disciple who was on the search committee when I moved here 14 years ago, who has participated in every Bible Study I have ever taught, who has served as an elder, spiritual mother, organized countless funeral lunches, and whose devoted volunteer contributions to the administrative side of congregational life can be fairly represented by the fact that she had her own office. She came to staff parties. She had her own set of keys.

And hers is only the most recent in a string of deaths in our congregation the pain of which is too numbing for tears.

It is, I am discovering, one of the great liabilities of a long pastorate. It would have been emotionally simpler to move on after a few glad-handing years -- before I fell in love with so many people; before I allowed them to work their way into the very cellular structure of my heart. But it is much too late late for that. I came. I grew roots. I fell in love. And as a result, I have been here long enough to feel whole pieces of myself go away as caskets are lowered in the ground.

There has to be some mental, emotional, spiritual adjustment to make that would change this net effect. Surely there is a way -- short of disinterested aloofness -- to react to these deaths (what, after all, are perfectly natural eventualities) in a healthier, less traumatic way. Surely there is a way to find grateful reverence in these grievings to such a degree that what remains is a celebration of the gifts they have brought to my -- and our -- living and serving; that what is internalized is a holy appreciation for, and integration of, the contributions they have made to my experience of the world, rather than this silencing, debilitating sense of depletion.

Surely there is a way.

I just haven't yet found it.

And as a result, with every death I feel more and more like a stem whose flower is one-by-one losing its petals. How long before I become merely a thin and naked strand?

What I am expressing is not despair. Only grief. I am not hopeless -- about myself or these beloved dead. They, I trust beyond a sliver of doubt, rest secure. And I know -- and experience -- myself to be held secure, with human hands and divine ones. Theology is not the problem. It's my heart.

How often can it survive the breaking?

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