Being Present when it is HOT!

WOW – feel it?

It is HOT! Very Hot, has been for the last two or three days. In this heat is hard to imagine doing much. Today the good folks who came support Stacy and her mom Jane and Laura Bonnett’s memorial Mass were treated to unbelievably HOT temperatures in the church and in the Hall. Allow me to offer the family’s thanks and gratitude for your care, concern and support…and for your ability to take the heat! Someone once said, “If you can’t take the heat, don’t tickle the dragon!” Well thank goodness you all were brave enough to tickle the dragon and come out for this very important moment in this family’s journey.  

Despite the heat we had a fitting farewell for Laura Bonnett and it was good to be present for such and important moment. Christian Paulton did a wonderful rendering of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. As I watched him, Margita Lange, the Choir, Jeff the chef, John and Jean, Valerie, the readers,  and Stacy (doing everything – including ringing the bell) going about their responsibilities I was taken by how much they all care about doing things well, when one would really not blame them for being distracted in this heat. Ralph Waldo Emerson mused that “Coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities.” This was certainly evidenced by the people for St. Mark’s by-the-Lake today as they were present in every way for Stacy and her family. I am so very proud of the ministry that the people of this parish have taken on. People really do care for each other in a wonderful way.

I have perhaps shared these words of Henri Nouwen before, but they bear repeating here now as they are a reminder for me of what people here provide for each other: “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.”

Thank you people of God for being present in every way – even when it hurts!