here. I’m trying to hide them. I’m sitting next to a young mom with an eight-month-old boy. Cute. Both mom and boy. Warm exchange of information. “I have five grandchildren.” “Yes, all in Portland.” “Yes, how good they are all nearby.”
She didn’t ask and I didn’t say how many children I have living in Portland. And I try to avoid revealing the thought of how much l ache to have had four grandchildren in Portland plus one just moved to Birmingham.
And the tears just started to flow. They slid down my cheeks like the occasional raindrop slides down the windowpane eight inches away. I turned toward it so that the young mom next to me will not see and will not ask and I will not need to explain. Explain pain. Pane. My Kleenex is wet, frayed, balled. Bawled.
I don’t want her to see me and ask for the story. For a young mom, your death is a horror story, a too easily imagined impossible possibility. I don’t want her to think about it. So I hide. I’ll hide for a while in theology, huh Pete, that long proven useful means of avoiding life. Okay, I am getting a little sarcastic.
There is nothing quite so powerful as your death, Peter, to force us to face our theology.
Take Linda for example. The other night, as you may have noticed, she said she was angry at God. “Of all people, why Peter?” she complains. I deeply appreciate her complaint, but I’m not afflicted with that question. I guess I noticed long ago that there are no exemptions granted good hearts like you, Pete, to the general laws of gravity and motion, and the damage likely to occur to any head caught between an irresistible force and an immovable object. I think you must have unwittingly assumed an exemption based on your thriving, hearty, lusty, raucous love for God’s gift of life. When Linda or anybody else asks, “Why Peter?” I say, because you didn’t buckle your seat belt.
Yes, I know I’ve often pointed out to others that about half the psalms are complaints to God about God’s mismanagement of fairness issues. I love the passionate, candid anger of those complaints. A long time ago when I heard Walt Brueggemann talk about Ps. 35, my anger-stress induced hemorrhoids disappeared. Right, Pete, so much for the healing power of the Word!
But with your death, I am so convinced that God grieves with us that complaint is not in me. Except toward you—and that too is fading, Peter, as I feel you are grieving as well. We love you Pete. We grieve with you as well as for you.
Love, Dad
God Does Not Take
April 23, in flight, later
Dear Peter,
I’m still taking refuge in theology. Fortunately only a couple of people have suggested that God “took” you, Pete. I hope nobody uses that kind of profanity around Chelsey.
Of course I know people who say such things mean to be kind. But what blasphemy. God as kidnapper. For what? To take you hostage in order to teach us a lesson, demand a submissive faith, only then to renege on the contract to give you back?
Yes, I can see death as God’s servant. Years ago James Weldon Johnson’s preacher poet spoke eloquently of that. When the suffering is too much, God calls Servant Death.
But that’s different from the notion of God taking you for some divinely foreseen, inscrutable purpose. This is not to say, thank God, that God does not invite us to find some life-giving values in your death. Fred is not the only one, for example, who is now committed to buckling his seatbelt. I am sure there will be many more much more profound redemptive values in your manner of death—although a life saved from your fate would certainly be a wonderful redemption.
God does not will everything that happens. But I trust that in everything which happens God works with us for life-saving good. Yet for all the redemptive good we may find from your death, I would rather have you alive, Pete.
There is such burden-lifting helpfulness in those opening lines of our United Church of Christ Statement of Faith: “God calls the worlds into being.” God calls, invites, evokes, and creation says “yes” most of the time. But as toddlers, you and Tim and Sarah too illustrated the truth Hosea had noticed: “When Israel was a child, I loved him. Out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them the more they went from me.”
So God is like a good parent—like you were to Chelsey, Pete. God calls, cajoles, encourages, warns, affirms—but does not coerce. Sarah said it so well the other night: “God does not intervene; God invites. Invites all drivers to wear seatbelts, especially husbands and fathers.”
God knows we say no to God a lot. Remember that Jacques Barosin portrait of Jesus Mom gave me, which I always had hanging in my office? A picture of Jesus with tears in his eyes, looking out over the city of Jerusalem. When I get home, I’ll look at it again.
Love, Dad
Recalling Then, Recognizing Now
April 23, later, in flight
Dear Peter,
I am still on the plane. The captain just pointed out Glacier Park off to our left.
Remember that trip? You and Tim playing around the portable bear trap cage in back of our campsite? And remember how on the way there, in some campground in Wyoming, you characteristically made friends with a couple camping in a big powerboat they were towing to Lake MacDonald? And sure enough, thanks to you we spent a marvelous day on their boat, with each of you kids taking a turn at the wheel. It was such a great time that after about six beers, the boat owner and I each finally confessed to our occupations: me, clergy, he labor-union organizer. Neither of us had wanted the stereotypes of those jobs to spoil the day. Maybe your love of power boating came from that time, Pete.
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