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\nTheological Reflection: Day of Remembrance, Nov. 1, 2009
\nJanet Holladay, MTS, ALM
\nChilmark Community Church, United Methodist
\nGood morning! First I would like to say that I am not standing
\nhere in front of you as an ordained minister. Although it is true
\nthat I have been lucky in my life to have had some special learning
\nsituations — both formal and informal — but today I stand here
\nsimply as a member of our collective Vineyard community.
\nI grew up in a nondenominational Protestant church, and am now
\nactive in the Unitarian church; so my theology may differ from yours
\nin some ways. But like many of you, I have lived here for a long time.
\nLike many of you, I have known illness and loss, have been unlucky in
\nlove, but also have laughed and danced and sang. like many of you, I
\nhave been happy to see friends marry and watch their children grow,
\nbeen sad to see some friends leave for other places, mourned the
\nfriends who died. I feel lucky to be part of small-town living, and am
\ngrateful to be here, to share this time with you. What I would like
\nto offer today is a theological reflection, because that is what my
\ntraining and experience has been.
\nLast week took my mother for a drive. I wanted to show her the fall
\nfoliage up-Island where it was particularly spectacular on the North
\nRoad. I prefer, myself, to ooh-and-aah fall foliage like some show of
\nfireworks — the next maple even more brilliant than the one before —
\non a cloudy day, a misty gray day, when the colors are saturated and
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\nit feels as if you are entering a paint box. Last Sunday, however, was
\nglorious and sunny — a fabulous day — and to me the colors of the
\nfoliage seemed washed out. But my mother was happy with the display
\nand she exclaimed several times over the glittery, shining sunlight
\nthat bounced throughout the trees in the woodlands as we drove by. It
\nwas as if she was seeing that light for the very first time.
\nBut also I could see on her face another unspoken question, a
\nquestion that colors her life right now as surely as the diminishing
\nchlorophyll and the cooling temperatures at night color the trees on
\nthe lovely rural roads of Chilmark: it may be the first time she drove
\nthese roads with such pleasure in autumn; might it also be the last
\ntime?
\nMy mother is 87 and 11\/12 years old — her birthday is about a
\nmonth away, although she has been telling people all year that she
\nis 88. She operates a little bit like the Steamship Authority\u2019s Woods
\nHole parking lot which uses the calendar day. She goes by the calendar
\nyear. Do the math, 2009 minus 1921 is 88, so come January first she
\nwill feel 89, even though she just had her 88th birthday.
\nMy mother moved to assisted living on the Island 3 1\/2 months ago,
\nby my invitation. It had become clear to her and the family that she
\ncould no longer live alone in the house in Ohio where she had been for
\n46 years, the town where she had spent most of her adult life. She was
\nwilling and even eager to come live near me, but life can be confusing
\nto her now, and she never realized until she really got here, that
\nliving here meant she no longer lived there.
\nThe reality of getting old, and perhaps, I don\u2019t know for sure,
\nthe shadow of death, are ever present on her mind. That sudden loss
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\nof light from death\u2019s shadow visited our family 11 years ago when my
\nfather, her husband of 50 years, died; at the same time that I, her
\nonly daughter, was undergoing intensive treatment for a cancer which
\nhad returned less than a year after it was first diagnosed and treated.
\nI always wondered if my father exquisitely timed his passing to free
\nmy mother to come to my side, and not have to choose between caring
\nfor him and caring for me.
\nLast Sunday when I saw on my mother\u2019s face, both the wonder at
\nthe beauty of the world and at the same time the fear of losing it —
\nlike a tomato whose green is inexorably ripening to red as it prepares
\nto fall from the living vine — I felt surprised, and a little
\nafraid, too. Suddenly, like her, I felt vulnerable, and an incredible
\ntenderness for the beauty and fragility of the world seized me. I
\ncould taste how sad and lonely I will be when she does die and how
\nI won\u2019t really understand what it means when she goes there, and so
\ncannot be here anymore.
\nHow grateful I felt last Sunday to have my hands on the steering
\nwheel of her car, and that she was still right there in the seat
\nbeside me, drinking in the golden, flashing sunlight, the colors of the
\nautumn trees.
\nFor it is the ripening time of year. All around us we can see it.
\nTomatoes\u2019 lush redness and smooth texture entice us to pluck and eat
\nthem, which serves the plant well in its need to disperse the tiny
\nseeds neatly protected within the fleshy fruit. Everywhere we see
\nberries red and attractive, on the viburnum, the holly, the sumac.
\nMilkweed pods are splitting open, releasing white, fluffy, spinning,
\nyouthful flyers into the air. The chestnuts send their young off in
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\nprickly, spiny capsules, well protected and able to catch a ride. What
\ndo any of these seeds know of the world that is opening up to them?
\nI am stunned by fall\u2019s fullness yet know winter\u2019s icy grip will
\ncome that much closer in tomorrow\u2019s bare branches. What is it I need
\nwhen I see life\u2019s light emboldened by death\u2019s shadow in my mother\u2019s
\neyes? As I remember the intense preparation that goes into the fireworks
\nof the fall of the year, the time of abundant harvest; as I remember
\nthe nurturance involved and the predictable, dependable orderliness
\nfrom blossom to seed pod; I long to participate in that generativity,
\nin that productivity of life becoming more life. I long to participate
\nsomehow, in seeing the potential of life being realized, life that
\ngoes on in the face of the winter to come.
\nSo, as my mother nurtured me; now, I will nurture her. I do what
\nI can, as she did when I was young, even though it may not seem like
\nmuch, may not seem like enough. Last week we drove the hills of
\nChilmark in search of the seasonal display of fall foliage, grateful
\nfor each other, though we spoke it not in words.
\nIt was a memorable ride, but after an hour — that was all the time
\nI had, obligations elsewhere (always, it seems, though I would never
\nhad made the ride in the first place except for her!) — after our
\nunexpectedly rich pilgrimage we found ourselves joining more and more
\ncars until gradually the woodlands were replaced by buildings, and we
\nwere back in town. I turned to her and said: \u201cDo you know where we
\nare?\u201d \u201cVineyard Haven,\u201d she said…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
1 Theological Reflection: Day of Remembrance, Nov. 1, 2009 Janet Holladay, MTS, ALM Chilmark Community Church, United Methodist Good morning! First I would like to say that I am not standing here in front of you as an ordained minister. Although it is true that I have been lucky in my life to have had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-worship-and-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1091,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions\/1091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}