My friend Valerie died on a Friday.
I had been sitting in the grass by a pond around the time she passed, next to a dear friend. I had a sense that Val was crossing a river, in a boat. When the oarsman pulled back his hood, it was all light and peaceful.
Michael row the boat ashore, Hallelujah

Val died on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a feast in the Roman Catholic tradition that celebrates the unending love and mercy of God. Many were touched by the particular resonance of this day with the life of Val, who gave shelter to the homeless, sandwiches (and blueberries!) to the hungry, and shared her own heart with all who crossed her path.

When it came time to sing and pray and remember Val, the first song at her funeral was simply
Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for them springing, fresh from the world

I’ve never been one to enjoy this song but suddenly it lodged in my heart like never before. Morning has broken for Val. The song of her life has fully and mysteriously joined God’s song. As other friends and family have remarked, Val lived from of a joy of living, not from a fear of death. Told she had only months to live 13 years ago, Val neither froze nor crumbled in the face of her mortality. In her supple strength, she committed evermore to prayer and kind communion with all around her. Her grace was that to laugh and smile and be earnestly human– all the presence and absence of God that we find ourselves– in death’s face.

For what it is, I am reminded of the conclusion of John’s gospel when I think of the stories of Val’s generous spirit:
“And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that were written.” (John 21:25)
In the sense that it is the heart of Christ who animates each of us, I would dare to say that Val lived from the kind of deep trust in God’s love that there really is enough to go around. Stories of kindness and grace, lived and given and shared throughout her life, were the loaves and fish that fed all whom she touched.

In the chilly hours and minutes
Of uncertainty
I want to be
In the warm hold of your loving mind

To feel you all around me
And to take your hand
Along the sand
Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind

So of all the stories and blessings that Val bestowed on me:
(days at the lake/days at the beach/visits to waterfalls/countless dinners/eating berries on the floor when she was too sick to go out for dinner/driving much farther than we had to for food we could have gotten 20 minutes away, arriving after the restaurant closed, and eating burgers at a pub/taking the detours that make the journey long and sweet/singing and drumming along to jams at the Dream Away Lodge /coaxing and baby-talking her headstrong printer into printing/taking the informal diner tour of upstate New York/laughing ad nauseam)
…
there is something I take away from all of it.

Val always invited my brittleness, my bitterness, to the table. And she always invited me to relax. “Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind.”
In Val’s presence, those moments we try and fail to catch the wind are welcome. They are given love and attention. They are given respect and admiration. They are honored.

And then she just quietly suggests that I not try to so hard to catch it. The wind, in the end, the wind of God’s Spirit, catches us.

Val wrote to me when I was in an anxious place:
“There are gifts everywhere, we just have to embrace the possibility that we are safe and what is real and important will make itself clear to us.
Have faith that there is plenty, we don’t have to rush, grab or worry that if we don’t act now it will be gone.
Trust that you will know when and how to act.
Relax in the truth that God does have a plan for you.”

I have faced many challenges in the past two years as I consider what I feel called to. Many are self-imposed. I have spent many hours seeking “God’s plan” for my life. On a 30-Day Silent Retreat I experienced, I sought and sought the voice of God. It was not in the wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire, but in this still small voice:
There is an essential giftedness at the heart of all things. Bear witness to this, was what I heard.

I came home from a time of service at Hautecombe Abbey in France this past February, five months earlier than I expected. I had again been seeking the voice of God, but had met various challenges of physical and mental health. Hautecombe gave me a profound encounter with God, but I realized I wasn’t called to the Chemin Neuf Community and I returned to Massachusetts, feeling oddly prodigal in the way I had squandered to search.

Val, who was on rounds of chemotherapy at that time, invited me to come and help her out around the house. I picked up groceries and medicine, organized supplies, watered the plants.

As brutal as the cancer and chemotherapy had been on her body, Val took my healing in her hands. She offered me prayers and stories and refills on her special virgin pina colada. She welcomed me with open arms, her signature smile, and her listening. In the last five and a half months of her life, upheld by God’s grace, Val held me in the light. She rejoiced with each victory on my journey back to health, though her condition was gradually worsening.

Val, I will never be able to thank you enough. I know you are back now in the ocean of God. Your drop left the sea for one moment in eternity, to learn how to love. And now you are back in that land without borders. All thanks be to God for all we shared.

As I went down in the river to pray, studyin about that good old way
And who shall wear the robe and crown, good Lord show me the way

Song references:
“Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” African-American spiritual
“Morning Has Broken,” lyrics by Eleanor Farjeon, to tune “Bunessan”
“Catch the Wind,” by Donovan
“Down in the River to Pray,” origin unknown