I have seen water move rocks. I have seen thistles break through boulders.If water and flowers can move stones, surely love can.Becca Stevens, from Funeral for a StrangerIn this meditation on living and dying, Becca Stevens shares moving and hilarious stories about her life, love, friends, and our many families. This delicately formed narrative is also a window into the soul of a priest. I loved it and will hold it in my heart with gratitude for years to come.-Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why Loneliness finds connections, depair meets celebration, and fear discovers faith. Join Becca on her journey to a funeral for a stranger. God will be there.-Don Schlitz, Hall of Fame songwriter of The Gambler With elegant simplicity Becca Stevens escorts the reader to the banks of the deepest spiritual wellspring. Surely she ranks among our most gifted teachers on the things that matter most of all.-Stephen Bauman, author of Simple Truths: On Values, Civility, and Our Common Good

Funeral for a Stranger

Thoughts on Life and LoveBy Becca Stevens

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2009 The United Methodist Publishing House
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4267-0244-0

Chapter One

the call

I was the minister for her funeral because I hate to say no. As an Episcopal priest, I'm not obligated to bury people who are not part of my congregation. I had received a message from the family asking me to bury their mother. I had planned to call them back and make a polite excuse, saying I was sorry I couldn't help. Then I was going to give them the number of a United Methodist minister who helps me when I get busy. Before I had time to call them back, though, the minister called me and said he wasn't available. I hate the idea of someone getting left out, especially in crisis, so when the family called again, I just said, "I would love to help."

Less than twenty-four hours later, I was driving to the visitation to meet the daughter and regretting my openness to the whole thing. I knew how much energy I had to invest to be present pastorally, and I was feeling the weight of a congregation that needed tending and charitable organizations to manage. I also thought about how the trip across town was going to ruin any hope of seeing my family that night. A wave of guilt washed over me. I wanted to be a good priest and a good mom. Most of the time the two roles complement and inform each other, but sometimes they are in direct conflict.

"Okay," I thought resolutely, "I will get there, take some notes on this person whose name I have now totally forgotten, and try to get back home in time for the end of dinner." I am not sure how conversations happen inside my head. They seem to bubble up with possible solutions presenting themselves in the midst of all the information. Then, once I figure out a way to move forward, the conversations rest in peace for awhile.

I get that ability from my mom. She raised five children as a single parent while directing a community center. She must have had thousands of conversations in her head while driving between meetings at the office and running children around town. My mom would walk through the front door after work and tell us what was going to happen that evening or the next day. There were never any real discussions or attempts to work out problems as a group. By the time the words came out of her mouth, it was a done deal. Our job was to get in line and carry out the plan so that everything could get done in the shortest amount of time.

This is a great example of how I didn't want to be like my mom. Even as I was driving, though, I could see myself running into the house, just as my family was beginning to relax, and delivering the list of orders: begin homework, let the dogs out, turn off the TV "for the love of God," and head toward the dirty dishes in the sink. I hope someday my children, when they have children of their own and are behind at work and late getting home, will realize that my head conversations helped me feel as if I still had control over my life. I hope they will know that in those conversations, they were the central characters, and they were loved the whole time I was figuring out how we could make our family work.

The person who gets the worst of it is my husband, Marcus. After my head conversations, I forget I never actually told him what was planned. His life is already full, so it's hard for him when I change things to make it all work for me. Thank God he is used to this after twenty years. He knows that if he waits it out, another conversation will follow in my head and plans will change again to accommodate him.

Sometimes I count these head conversations as prayers. I don't think they should count, but I count them anyway because I don't pray enough. Sometimes God is a part of my silent discussions, even though I don't give God an actual voice. God feels present when there is some clarity of thought or when I feel a little peace after struggling with an issue.

To be honest, I am not sure how people have conversations with God, where God has an actual voice. I'm not saying it isn't possible, but it's always awkward for me to listen as people report these conversations. I once heard a woman from Honduras talk about a conversation with God in which she spoke and then God said, "Va," which means "Go." It struck me that God, as reported by the woman, spoke Spanish with a perfect accent, which made it sound like "Ba," kind of a sheep sound. I knew that God would never say "Ba" to me because I would giggle and not listen. There have been beautiful and faithful people who have said God tells them what to get at the grocery store, whom to date, and what to wear. That God has a voice different from theirs is hard for me to grasp. The God of their understanding is much more detailed than the God of my understanding. Sometimes the stories leave me feeling as though God is less than God and not the author of life and love. I am a little cynical and skeptical about it all.

So I'm usually content to leave God as the force of love pulling all the millions of silent conversations all over the world toward love. God needs to keep pulling my conversations toward love, especially in motherhood. I love my kids so much, and I hate that sometimes I bark orders tersely instead of saying, "I am sorry that I missed dinner and now it's too late to make up that time: What's on TV?"

The private conversation in the car that day took place before I even arrived at the funeral home to meet the family. Just the idea of a funeral can get my mind going full throttle. Funerals startle our minds from the lull of living. When all of a sudden we are made to think about death, close range, we come to ourselves. A funeral takes precedence in our day as other, routine events get changed to make room. This mirrors what happens internally when we are going to a funeral. All the other thoughts move to the side to make room for thoughts like, Oh my God, we are all mortal, life is a gift, and someday there will be a funeral for me.

The journey toward a funeral begins with thoughts about those we love who have died, those we love who are still with us, and I think, "what we think we would want if we died now." It's natural and makes life come into focus a little more clearly as our minds and bodies and spirits jolt into consciousness. The goal is to try to sift through most of these thoughts before we arrive at the funeral so we may be present for those grieving who were closest to the person who died.

What I didn't realize before the drive was that all this quickening of thought happens whether or not we know the person. Already thoughts are flooding my mind about my mother, who has been dead for over a decade; about Uncle John, who died twenty years ago; about my husband and children, who I pray will outlive me; and about how to avoid a funeral home when I die. Just the act of anticipating the funeral and getting ready to meet a grieving daughter has undone me a bit. I can feel my heart and mind opening and the most basic and important questions of faith rising in me. Presiding at this funeral has already reminded me to think about my priorities and my family. Already this funeral is a gift, and I haven't even walked through the door.

Chapter Two

cups of coffee

I arrived before the visitation began so I could plan the service with the daughter of the stranger who had died. When I walked in, the grieving daughter was sitting close to a friend who ended up doing most of the talking. The two women said they were best friends and that they had lived together for more than a decade. They were the caregivers for the mother who had died, and when she was too sick to care for herself, both the daughter and the best friend had moved to the mother's home to care for her.

Within fifteen minutes of my meeting these two wonderful and compassionate women, new thoughts were born in my head. Now my thoughts were about how I could help them get through this with as much grace and dignity as possible. I wanted to help them make a really fine funeral for the mother.

It was during that initial meeting that I started trying to piece together the family history. It occurred to me that maybe they were strangers to every minister in the region because some time ago their family had been estranged from the church. Maybe someone had been a freethinker and just couldn't accept the Christianity that was preached at them. Maybe years and years ago a pastor had abused someone. Maybe someone had grown sick of hearing pastors who had forgotten that the biggest moral issue facing the church is the suffering of others. Maybe God, in a private conversation, had told someone, "Va."

They told me the mother had been a Methodist but hadn't been inside a church in decades. While the daughter and her friend related the story of the mother's faithful life as a worker, wife, and mother, I was compelled to create an under-story for myself. I still didn't know much about the story of their lives. It may have had something to do with these two beautiful women sitting beside me. Churches are masters at estranging people. They have excommunicated, ostracized, shunned, labeled, and damned people to hell since they started organizing in Antioch. Some time ago, the mother must have slowly broken the last thin ties she may once have had with the church. I wonder if the members of her church ever talked to her about why she left. I wonder if she left that last Sunday service over twenty years ago without words. I wonder if she had grown to be a stranger in that community, or if she had always felt like one. I wonder if anyone had called her and said they missed her. I wonder if she felt close to God and knew God loved her. I hope so.

Our communities are broken. That is why the prayer of community always includes a request to mend the brokenness among us as well as within ourselves. The problem occurs when relationships are severed permanently. That is when strangers are born. After years and generations, we no longer recognize one another or mourn our broken past.

Once I went through the door and met the only daughter who was burying her only surviving parent, I was reminded of the great harm that comes with cutting ourselves off from one another. It's hard to reconnect. It's impossible to make up for all the lost time. We didn't start out as strangers in our faith; we began as family. But now we are estranged from most of the people we encounter in our daily routines or on the news. From a distance, there seems

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Funeral for a Strangerby Becca Stevens Copyright © 2009 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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