Posted on

Dear St. Anthony

We are blessed with some great readings this week. In addition, we will celebrated my mother’s favorite saint – St. Anthony – later this week.

I remember when we were kids and anything was lost – car keys usually since it was hard to lost a giant phone attached to the wall – mom would begin her prayer… “Dear St. Anthony, please come around. Something’s lost and can’t be found.” She would repeat the prayer again and again and, eventually, that which was lost was found.

I still use that prayer and I know so many of you do as well. As the children get older and the problems seem bigger, I find myself using the prayer for inanimate objects as well: mental health, a calming spirit, a good attitude, kindness – all those things that can get lost while we are not paying attention. I pray, too, for lost people – those I love but whom I must move out of my life for my own sanity. I pray for lost friends with whom I have lost contact because I think social media is a colossal waste of time. I pray for those with whom I work, those alongside me in the field of ministry, and those with whom I live and work and play.

We can all get lost, I suppose, overwhelmed by life and everything on our lists. It’s nice to pray for each other, hoping and longing for that which is misplaced to be recovered and made whole.

St. Anthony of Padua, pray for us.

Posted on

Amazing Song. Amazing Grace.

The song, Amazing Grace, turned 250 on New Year’s Day.

I know that because I saw it on the news, read it in the paper, and heard it on the radio – all sources of information that, growing up, we took as gospel. Today, many of us listen and watch with suspicious eyes and ears, confident that the announcer has an agenda, a sponsor, and puppet strings he or she cannot even see.

I miss a world without the constant barrage of news. But that is another story.

When I was a child, my mother would have CBS Sunday Morning on in the kitchen. From the time I was nine years old, Charles Kuralt told stories, interviewed guests, and took us places we would never go on our own. After spending nearly a quarter century on the road, Kuralt joined Sunday Morning and had a way to tell a story that drew the viewer into learning something new  – something they never would have bothered with – were it not for his southern gentility and distinct, deep voice. He was convinced that people were generally good, that our country was an idea worthy of the messiness, and that everyone had a story to tell.

On a particular Sunday morning decades ago, I was in the kitchen with my mom and Kuralt was telling the story of Amazing Grace. Not its history, but how it had inspired people through the years. I don’t remember much of it, except that the singing was mesmerizing. We stood transfixed, my mother and I, staring at this tiny television we occasionally had to smack to get to work, listening to the words, the music, the lyrics. I wish I could remember who was singing. It was towards the end of the show and when the music faded, Kuralt came on with his signature, “I’ll see you again…next Sunday morning,”

Today, I enjoy CBS Sunday Morning via YouTube. Jane Pauley replaced Charles Osgood, who replaced Kuralt back in 1994. Mom is gone, so is Charles Kuralt. We do not have a television in the kitchen and we no longer are tied to cable or a schedule. Progress, I suppose.

So a few weeks ago, I saw the YouTube entry about Amazing Grace and quickly clicked it. Jane Pauley introduced a story about Amazing Grace and its big birthday. As reporter Ramy Inocencio told it:

Sung an estimated 10 million times each year, “Amazing Grace” marks its 250th anniversary this New Year’s Day. It was born not of American Black spirituals as some believe, but across the Atlantic, in the tiny English market town of Olney, some 60 miles north of London, with lyrics older than the Declaration of Independence.  

I suppose the song has always held a special place in my heart because of that Sunday morning so long ago. But its simple lyrics are ones that everyone can understand and appreciate. I was lost and now am found, blind and now I see. We can all relate. It can give us all hope.

Just after Charles Kuralt left Sunday Morning back in 1994, country singer Kenny Chesney sang the song at the funeral of my big brother, Jim. Years later, I got to hear the Irish Tenors sing it live. The same with Mary Chapin Carpenter and Josh Groban. Every time I hear it, it takes me back to that Sunday morning in the kitchen, fills my eyes with tears, and warms the depths of my heart, filling an emptiness I forget is there.

Yes, it has been recorded hundreds of times by hundreds of people. But for my money, no recording tops Judy Collins.

This week, find a quiet spot. Click the link below and close your eyes. Let the words written by a slave-trader turned abolitionist and the music added decades later by a Baptist minister, fill the room and warm your heart and soul.

Though many dangers, toils and snares... let the echos of the grace that is all around you each day, carry you away.

Let that grace fill you with hope and lead you home.

Ready?

Let us pray.

Click here.

 

Posted on

The End Of An Era

I actually yelled out loud when I got a text the other day. The receptionist at the cemetery where my parents are buried called to tell me the marker was in for my mom, who died in December, (which isn’t what made me yell). As I was looking at the picture of my mom’s new marker, I received a text from my little brother announcing the news that Angela Lansbury had joined mom and dad. I called out, “No!!” And eventually started laughing as my coworkers came running, thinking something terrible had happened. 

It had, but not in the way they expected.

Let me explain.

I grew up in a family that loved movies. My parents were the first to get a Betamax and, though it was the size of a small car, the quality of the video tapes was great and we enjoyed watching movies together every Friday night and Sunday afternoon. When the local theater hosted Sunday showings of all of Alfred Hitchcock‘s movies for a semester, we were there. One of my mothers favorite movie stars was Angela Lansbury. She loved the music from Mame and would start playing – and singing, “We Need A Little Christmas” long before Thanksgiving. She could watch, The Shell Seekers again and again. 

I was 26 years old when I moved out of my parents’ house. I stayed an extra year or two because I could not rationalize paying rent for an apartment and I wanted to buy a house. Plus, my parents had requested that I stay while my brother was sick. I think we all knew how that story might end and it I do not think my mother was ready for any more upheaval. So, a year and a half after my brother died, I bought a house and went out on my own. I made a deal with my parents that I would come back every Sunday night to watch Murder, She Wrote. It was a habit that had started several years earlier and, as busy as I was with work and ministry and graduate school, it was a promise I kept until the series ran its course.

My father would have to watch Murder, She Wrote in the other room. I think it’s actually how his den became his den. He would appear in the doorway within the first ten minutes of the show with a grin on his face like he had just eaten the last piece of pie. He had already solved the murder and wanted to announce the results of his brief investigation. My mother would, sometimes playfully sometimes forcefully, yell at him to get out and go back to his cave. He would chuckle to himself as he walked away, sometimes muttering, “I know who did it.“ He was almost always right.

If I could not make it home for a particular episode, mom would tape the show so we could watch it another time. Invariably, she would miss the ending or tape over something someone else wanted to see. In those days, if you missed a show, you missed a show. To this day, I do not know who killed one of the ladies at Loretta’s beauty parlor.

When my wife and I started dating, Maureen invited me to go to a special event at the Kennedy center. The city of Atlanta was hosting a night with Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, as a means of enticing meeting planners to choose Atlanta for an event. Maureen was invited and it seemed like a great opportunity for a free date and time to spend together, so I drove from Delaware to Washington for the evening. (The thought of doing that now makes me want to take a nap.) It turned out the evening with Sarah Ferguson included a special guest. The special guest was Angela Lansbury.

The two formidable women sat on stage and talked about family and the struggle of living in the limelight, something about which both knew well. Angela Lansbury‘s husband, Peter Shaw, had recently died so that was a topic of discussion, moving the audience to tears. The great star of stage and screen told stories of finding work in Hollywood, being a woman in a man’s world, the stars with whom she had shared the stage, the influence of her own mother, and the decision to move her family to Ireland so that her two oldest children could get clean from their use of drugs. They moved to the town in Ireland that my great grandfather had left nearly a century before. Another connection.

At the end of the evening, we were invited to a VIP reception. Maureen and I walked in and sat down at a table for three in the corner, leaving one empty chair. We were not quite sure what to expect and the food had not yet been delivered to the reception, an ironic scene considering the attendees were all meeting planners. Shortly after we sat down, Angela Lansbury walked through the door. She was much taller than I thought she’d be. She was unaccompanied and, spotting us in the corner, and for reasons I will never understand, walked directly to the table and sat down with Maureen and me. 

At first, there was silence. I remember Maureen and I looking at each other, wondering what to do. Then I decided to jump in. I took the chance to tell her what she meant to my mother and my family and me. We talked about my father having to watch Murder, She Wrote in the other room, to which she playfully replied, “Well, dear, we tried not to make it too difficult.”

We joked about why anyone would ever hang out with Jessica Fletcher because, as my dad always pointed out, “Everywhere she went, someone died” and she laughed when I questioned why the townsfolk never made her the sheriff. 

We talked about my coming home after leaving to go out on my own. We talked about family. We talked about parents and I got to thank her for creating a connection between a mother and her son. It wasn’t a long conversation and just before one of the hosts came to whisk her away to sign autographs, she took my hand and thanked me for sharing the stories. She signed my program and off she went. It was not as much of a brush with fame as it was an encounter with an old friend. Though we had never met before that moment, she had been a part of my life for years.

Murder, She Wrote, that cute little television show is now available to stream and it seems so quaint given everything else that’s available online. Still, it will always remind me of a simpler time, the love of parents, the meaning of home, and a brief encounter with a great lady. 

Rest in peace Mrs. Fletcher. Give my love to mom and dad. 

Posted on

Amen

Mom died shortly after last week’s post was published. My eldest sister texted a question and because I was driving, I returned the text via phone call. The answer she was looking for was irrelevant and she said very simply that mom was gone.

“Good,” I said, as Maureen took my hand and started to cry.

After what I had witnessed the previous 72 or so hours, I was relieved. The pain had ceased, the screaming had turned to silence. She was, at last, at peace.

The last week has been an emotional one but I am still waiting for that breakdown; the flood of tears, the ache in my heart, the agony that comes from the loss of a parent. Mostly, I have been overwhelmed by shame and guilt for the way I let mom be treated these last several years. The reality is that my younger sister is troubled. Her behavior is not rational. She is dishonest and manipulative to a point that is almost comical – if the repercussions were not so serious.

And I didn’t do anything about it.

Sure, I discussed it with my siblings. We texted one another about our frustrations. We shook our heads and wrung our hands. We would take turns challenging her and calling her to account, only to have our lives threatened, our children ridiculed, and (in my case) being told I was banned from the facility where she had warehoused mom among the demented and inept. She had held mom hostage – emotionally, spiritually, and physically – and I rationalized that my hands were tied because mom had chosen her as power of attorney.

So there are two kinds of mourning going on – one for a mother I loved, who raised me and challenged me and supported me. Another for a sibling I surrendered to and in whose presence I hope to never find myself. Someday I will be able to separate the two but for now one loss taints the other and I find my anger focused on my own lack of action.

Life is complicated.

Years ago, when I was in the Holy Land, at a hotel in Bethlehem, I was on the phone with my mother. I was about thirty, unmarried, and calling to check in and share a bit of the journey with her. Suddenly, the power in the whole town went out and sirens blared. Knowing just enough to be scared, I crouched down in the phone booth and relayed what was happening to my mom, thousands of miles away.

“Really?” She said, “The power is out…” Then a pause. “It’s fine here,” she said, suddenly oblivious to the miles and the ocean that separated us.

That simple phrase, “It’s fine here” became our rallying cry for the rest of the trip. Twenty years later, friends still quote it to me.

In the stillness of the morning, sitting here all alone, I imagine that’s what mom would say right now. Forget the guilt. Forget the past. Forget the pain that comes from knowing you probably couldn’t have done anything without permanently fracturing the family. Forget it all. Just remember the love, that she tried her best as a parent and, when appropriate, as a friend. Wherever she is, the response would be the same, settling my nerves and reminding me once again…

“It’s fine here.”