Call My Name

This one hits so differently this year.  Honestly, everything hits differently now.  Making coffee, going to sleep, waking up….nothing is the same. 

Bruce and I hadn’t found our way to one another quite yet on this date twenty years ago.  That would come a month later.  All of that possibility was just in front of me….all of that love….and I didn’t know it yet. 

I often take the time to reflect on my vocation on this date each year.  To remember what it felt like to stand before God and the people I loved and the people who represented various faith communities and make audacious promises.  Promises about faithful service and study and sacraments and living and about loving the people God had called me to serve alongside.  I’m going to do some of that reflection later this week. 

Today I’m going to go pick Bruce up.  Rather, I’m going to receive his remains….now composted into soil.  And not all of him….some of him will go to the forest in his beloved PNW and nurture trees and plants.  But some of him will come home with me and some will stay with the kids and even though that’s not really him, it’s a tangible thing….something we can touch.

Then I’m going to have lunch with my friends who have been kick ass friends for a long time.  You might have heard what they had to say about all of this at the memorial service.

Then I’m going to go hug my grandbabies and eat dinner with them and play and laugh and sing and probably read some books.

That’s enough for one day.  Even an ordination anniversary.

I do always reflect on Mary Magdalene on this day as well; it is her Feast Day and I chose this day with great intention for my ordination.  (I’m glad the Bishop was available!)  I’ve written and preached extensively about how the Church tried to diminish her and how she was the apostle to the apostles, the first person Jesus entrusted with news of his resurrection.  Blame him for “lady pastors”, those of you who cite Paul. 

But today I am captured by the part of the story described in John 20: 11-16:

  ¹¹ But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb, ¹² and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³ They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” ¹⁴ When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher).

Mary’s grief speaks to my own on this date this year.  Mary weeps outside of the tomb, looking to see where he is and I am transported to an ICU bedside….machines quieted and removed, his bed facing the bright morning sun and Mt. Rainier/Tahoma gleaming and my own weeping. 

Of course I am not Mary of Magdala and Bruce was not Jesus (he would laugh at this obvious sentence) but grief is grief is grief.  And it needs room and space and it just needs what it needs. 

And Mary knew Jesus when he spoke her name.  And I can still hear Bruce speak mine.  Jewels. 

And on this date, twenty luminous, life giving, terrible, challenging, wondrous, magnificent, years ago, God called my name, just as God first did in baptism, to say “I have things I need you to do.  Will you go?”

 I will.  I still will.