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Sermons: Signs of Life
Rev. Kathleen Ellis
18 July 2004
There are a lot of books telling you how to manage when you retire. What most
people want is one that’ll tell them how to manage right now! This morning I’ll
be talking about the “in-between-time” of life, beginning with a story about a
funeral and ending with stories about connecting generations in meaningful ways.
First, the funeral. A few years ago I was asked by a family to work with a Roman
Catholic priest in planning a funeral. The man who died was not a member of any
congregation, but his daughter was Catholic and his son was Unitarian
Universalist.
Brother and sister were firmly devoted to their separate spiritual journeys and
they both had ideas about how the funeral should go. They had an equal need for
an appropriate expression of their religious beliefs. The service was held at
the Catholic Church. The priest and I knew each other through the local
ministers’ association. We did not exactly work together, but in parallel, and
we agreed on the order of things. Our respective parts came together in some
ways but they clearly came from a different perspective and with a different
objective.
Where we clearly harmonized in our remarks was in the matter of community.
Friends, colleagues, neighbors, and acquaintances brought a collective message
to the family that their loved one had made an impact on an interlocking
community through his wife and children, his work, and his love of gardening.
People were reminded to tell one another about the good they do while they are
living. They were all encouraged to stay in touch with the family long after the
casseroles are gone, the dishes returned, the flowers wilted, and work resumed.
But let’s move from death to life. Velma Wallis recorded the story her mother
had passed on to her. It’s called TWO OLD WOMEN: AN ALASKAN LEGEND OF BETRAYAL,
COURAGE AND SURVIVAL. The story is based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed
down from mothers to daughters for many generations in Alaska’s upper Yukon
River area. The two old women, both complainers, are reluctantly abandoned by
their starving tribe during a brutal winter famine. Left to their own devices,
the women must either survive the winter alone or die trying. Their friendship
and the hard work of survival got them through the winter. When the tribe
returned in the spring the old women were alive and well. They made it! There
was great rejoicing and forgiveness and reconciliation. The women were enfolded
back into the community where they remained for the rest of their lives.
Another book I would call to your attention is ANOTHER COUNTRY: NAVIGATING THE
EMOTIONAL TERRAIN OF OUR ELDERS. The author is Mary Pipher, who also wrote
REVIVING OPHELIA and THE SHELTER OF EACH OTHER. Mary Pipher is a psychologist
and a Unitarian Universalist. ANOTHER COUNTRY explores the complex relationships
among families today when our elders begin to need more help. She distinguishes
the “young-old” from the “old-old.”
Young-old people travel around the country in their recreational vehicles, keep
up with hobbies, maintain their physical activities. They volunteer in a full
range of jobs; they greet us at Wal-Mart and Goodwill with a smile. Young-old
people are happy to be whatever age they are—65, 80 or 104.
Old-old people begin to lose their health, trade their homes for rest homes,
become more isolated, and may suffer from dementia. They have attended entirely
too many funerals of their friends, so that few people know how they were “way
back when.” One woman Pipher interviewed compared life to a game of dodge ball.
“In random fashion, people are hit out of the game, one by one, and then your
time comes.”
The older we get the more we notice that aches and pains and injuries and
illness do not heal so quickly as before and may even become a permanent part of
our lives. Therefore, the old-old may—soon enough!—be ourselves. They may be our
parents or grandparents or great grands. We may have siblings or children who
need extra care. At the same time, adult children often have children and
grandchildren of their own or school to attend or a career path to worry about.
All of us are fully aware that families are supposed to take care of one
another. But how? According to Pipher,
the Lakota believe that if the old do not stay connected to the young, the
culture will disintegrate. [And I’ll read that again: “ . . . if the old do not
stay connected to the young, the culture will disintegrate.”] [To continue the
reading, “We are seeing signs of this disintegration in our culture. Children
watch television instead of hearing stories. They are frightened and unruly,
numb from hurry and overstimulation. Teenagers run in unsupervised gangs.
Parents feel isolated and overwhelmed, and elders go for days without speaking
to anyone. No generation’s needs are truly met. Segregated societies are
intellectually stagnant and emotionally poisoned. Only when all ages are welcome
into the great hoop of life can a culture be a healthy one.”
When we live far away from our families it takes a special effort to stay in
touch. A number of Live Oakers—Caroline and Roe Mackey, Perry Statham, and Mary
Pritchard, to name a few—have done a lot of traveling lately to be with their
dying parents. My husband visited his dad in Illinois every month until his
father died a few years ago. Gill lived in a nursing home in a small town where
everyone knew him and would take him to church, bring him cookies, and just
check in on him. Every church needs helping hands and caring hearts. Margaret
Mead said that our deepest human need is to have someone who cares if we come
home at night.
Some people move to be closer to family members. To have at least one relative
nearby can be quite comforting. Others have close relatives within the rough
triangle of Houston, Dallas or San Antonio—not so far by Texas standards. But
possibly the majority of us live quite far from other family members. How many
of your feel geographically isolated from family?
. . . . . . . . .
It’s not just geography that keeps us apart. It’s also the same old stuff that
makes family members fight among themselves for years. The generation gap may
widen because of the different languages we speak: Words and phrases like
“depression,” “just war,” “gay nineties,” “making love” and “courtship” all
conjure up an immediate image that depends on when and where we grew up. Is it
the Great Depression or a psychological term? Which war is just? How gay were
the 1990s recently, or the 1890s a century ago? Making love in a 1930’s movie
was to exchange sweet words over cocktails. Is courtship simply an old-fashioned
notion?
When distance of any kind keeps us apart, it helps to get past the language to
the underlying feelings and values. Figure out what you’re able and willing to
do, both physically and emotionally. That might be to write once a month or call
once a week. If it’s hard to be with your parents for emotional reasons, limit
the length of visits and be sure to have an ally somewhere in town or accessible
by phone or email. It makes a huge difference.
Before my parents died, my two sisters and I each traveled to visit our parents
in Jackson, MS, on a rotating basis so that one of us would be present and check
in every month. One of the most important contributions I made was to find a
telephone jack way under the bed in the guest room where I could install a
phone. Soon we could have our private conversations with spouses and friends and
let off some frustration. We also kept a large poster for coloring and a supply
of markers under the bed!
As for communication with one another, we kept a large three-ring binder under
the bed with divided sections to make observations and to record whatever we had
done during our visit. We described medical appointments and what the doctor
said. We made a list of resource people like plumbers and bankers and friends
who could help. We included a list of phone numbers in the neighborhood and made
sure one of them had a spare house key. One section in the notebook was called
Next Steps, to alert the next sister about things that needed to be done. Copies
of important documents were kept there, too.
When decisions needed to be made, we tried to consult with each other and also
to give choices to our parents. They did not want us to tell them what to do but
if there were a couple of options that would work, we tried to let them choose.
Sometimes we recruited close friends to suggest options. It’s a lot easier to
hear advice from a friend than from your own child. We would also gain another
perspective by talking with friends of our parents.
If you can’t visit the elders in your family, you may be able to take care of
bills or insurance claims or send money to hire relief if another relative is
the primary caregiver.
If you live far away from next of kin or you don’t have any, you can find ways
to connect with elders near where you live. They probably won’t irritate you as
much as your actual relatives do! You won’t push each other’s buttons by falling
into the same old family patterns.
If you’re an elder, you can find a way to connect with a younger generation.
Leonora Montgomery, a retired UU minister in Houston, hosts an annual Young
Women’s Luncheon. She invites all her teenage and young adult nieces,
granddaughters, and daughters of friends to her home to find out what interests
them these days. She has taken each grandchild separately on a special trip and
takes great care to keep up with their activities and challenges. She gives lots
of advice along with a healthy dose of values.
It used to be that the generations literally depended on one another for life.
Pipher pointed this out when she wrote that:
Before the pioneers came, the Native Americans of the Great Plains survived the
harsh winters by having grandparents and grandchildren sleep beside each other.
That kept both generations from freezing to death. That is a good metaphor for
what the generations do for each other. We keep each other from freezing. The
old need our heat, and we need their light.
To learn from the old we must love them, and not just in the abstract but in the
flesh, beside us in our homes, businesses, churches, and schools. We want the
generations mixed together so that the young can give the old joy and the old
can give the young wisdom. As we get older, we sense more the importance of
connecting old to young, family member to family member, neighbor to neighbor,
and even the living to the dead. In connection is truth, beauty, and ultimately
salvation. Connection is what makes life bearable for us humans.
For everything that is taken away—health, money, or companionship, for
example—everything that remains becomes as precious as a single rose. I am
reminded of these anonymous lines which speak to the resilience necessary in the
face of hard times and the importance of beauty as well as sustenance.
If of your mortal goods you are bereft,
And from your slender store two loaves of bread alone are left,
Sell one, and with the dole,
Buy hyacinths to feed your soul.
Food for the soul can be more valuable than bread alone. There are some basic
things we need at any age:
--work that is real & relaxation: as simple and as important as story telling
--respect for individuals & opportunity to form/maintain relationships: as
gentle as a child’s soft pat on your back and a lap for her to sit on
--self worth: as basic as repeating an affirmation to yourself each morning
--and the beauty of hyacinths to feed your soul.
Pipher’s final chapter suggests ways she has seen to dissolve the boundaries of
age segregation that begins as early as preschool.
In one town, children formed weekly partnerships at a rest home beginning with
kindergarten age. Each child was paired up with an old person and they played
games together. One week it was miniature golf; another week it was bingo. The
kids learned how to push wheelchairs and how to slow down. The elders got to
love the kids unconditionally, even the ones with a cleft palate or a case of
extreme shyness.
In a college town, international students went to nursing homes to practice
English. But really, it was because they miss their grandparents. Many of them
come from countries where the old are important and honored.
In the early days of Live Oak, services were held in a nursing home. In Waco,
the UUs go Christmas caroling every year at several nursing homes. In College
Station, our children went to a church member’s nursing home to sing songs, play
the piano, and just interact with the audience. The residents were eager to meet
the children and tell them stories.
In College Station we also had a covenant group for graduates of Dwight Brown
Leadership Experience. Part of our covenant was to prepare a worship service to
take to nursing and retirement homes in the area where one or more of our
members lived. Though most of our audience would probably never have attended a
Unitarian Universalist church, we brought UUism to them—and they invited us
back! These are some of the ways to generate community that’s larger than our
own.
We who have made friends with our elders have been blessed. We who have made
friends with children have stories to share. A Chinese saying teaches that “We
cannot help the birds of sadness flying over our heads, but we need not let them
build nests in our hair.”
From birth to death we reach out across the generations in a fabric of
community. Congregations are among the few places in our society in which people
of all ages interact in a meaningful way. May we find ways to shake out the
nests, loosen our thinking, and find ways to live until we die.
Amen
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Copyright
©2006, Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church.