My Wandering Mind

We just said goodbye to our dear friend, Debbie Tunick. She spent the weekend with us and it was so fun to catch up with her. I know that she is exhausted now and probably needs to rest from our weekend together but it never seems long enough when it is an good friend. We watched Debbie grow up and felt very attached to her during that process. She is now an amazing young woman with an important job and she loves Jesus. We are proud of her and it is fun to know her as an adult. Debbie, you are welcome to come back to visit anytime and stay as long as you like...we have missed you.
I commented last night on Mike's blog about Jim Morrison and his words yesterday. Jim's words were powerful and convicting. What does it mean to us once we truly get it? Do we sell our houses and downsize? Do we stop spending our money frivolously? Do we open our eyes and see what and who are around us? Do we now put our money where are hearts are or where God is pushing our hearts? Do we need to break down some boundaries that we have set? Do we continue to "do" church as we always have? What has the Spirit been whispering to you (or possibly screaming)?

A little excerpt from Mudhouse Sabbath by Lauren Winner:
from the chapter avelut/mourning

Church funerals, when they tell the truth, not only remember lovingly the lives of the departed, they also preach the gospel- they proclaim that Jesus is risen, and insist that those who died in Him shall be risen too.
What churches often do less well is grieve. We lack a ritual for the long and tiring process that is sorrow and loss. A friend of mine whose husband recently died put it like this: "For about two weeks the church was really the church-really awesomely, wonderfully the church. Everyone came to the house, baked casseroles, carried Kleenex. But then the two weeks ended, and so did the consolation calls." While you the mourner are still bawling your eyes out and slamming fists into the wall, everyone else, understandably, forgets and goes back to their normal lives and you find, after all those crowds of people, that you are left alone. You are without the church, and without a church vocabulary for what happens to the living after the dead are dead.
Mourning, maybe, is never easy, but it is better done inside a communal grammar of bereavement. Christianity has a hopeful and true vocabulary for death-and-resurrection. It is Judaism that offers the grammar for in between, for the mourning after death and before Easter.

I am on my way to a funeral for the wife of a very dear friend. I didn't know this wife very well. I have only had one long conversation with her but I love the man and loved his other wife...so, I will go and grieve with Bill and our community of faith. I believe that I am still mourning my sweet friend, Kerri, and miss her terribly and I am not ready to give that up yet...nor do I think that I should be. Read more of Lauren Winner's words about grieving...I think that the Jewish community gets it. We want people to be over it too soon...it is a long journey and a part of us will never be the same after some losses....not bad just reality.