Advent 3 Meditation

by Carrie Eikler
December 15, 2013
Isaiah 35:1-10, Luke 1:46-55, James 5:7-10, Matthew 11:2-11

The journalist, Kate Braestrup, had an experience none of us ever hope to face.  Her husband died, leaving her a young widow with four small children.  Her husband, Drew, was a police officer and was killed in a car accident.  No one but his wife knew that Drew had a secret ambition.  A bit avant garde for your commonplace police officer (he had long hair, an earring.  He was a Unitarian Universalist) Drew had dreams of going to seminary and becoming a pastor.  He dreamed of being a chaplain in law enforcement.  A chaplain who accompanies police officers to homes where bad news is delivered.  News that ultimately was delivered about him.  To his wife.  And four children.

A year after Drew’s passing, his wife, Kate, decided to follow in his “footstep dreams.”  She went to seminary and became a pastor.  Now she is one of the first chaplains to the Warden Service of the state of Maine.  Kate joins search-and-rescue workers in the cold snowy Maine wilderness. She is the chaplain to the game wardens, to the injured, and to those who wait and grieve for news of their loved ones who may or may not return to them.

She writes about this experience in her memoir “Here if You Need Me.”  Snow mobile accidents, ice fishing tragedies, foul play, missing persons.  Kate is there to be a witness to the sacred.  Someone sent into the wilderness, not in soft robes, or as a prophet as spoken of in Matthew’s gospel, but in the Game Service standard issue bottle green sweater, cargo pants, and stocking cap.

The memoir begins by Kate recounting a story of a little girl, Alison, who went missing from a family picnic.  Alison chased after her dog into the woods.  The dog came back to the picnic site.  Alison didn’t.  The search-and-rescue team was called out, in varying degrees of hopefulness for a live return.  And Kate was called to be with the desperate family.  The family quickly tells Kate that they are atheists.  But they hold her hand to the point of pain for a long time, anyway.  Kate sits with them for hours , holding their hand…in mutual pain.

“Little kids who get lost in the woods do something really smart” [Kate tells Marian, the missing girl’s mother] “When the realize they’re lost, they find a snug place—like under a bush—curl up, and go to sleep.  Adults tend to keep moving; they keep trying to find their own way out.  They think they have to solve the problem themselves.  Little kids conk out and wait for the grown-ups to solve it.  If Alison is under a bush asleep, she probably can’t hear us hollering.”

“And this is how the Maine Warden Service found her…” says Kate.  “At about three o-clock in the morning, a few miles almost due west of the PLS [meaning, Place Last Seen], Warden Ron Dunham’s K-9 [dog named] Grace, found a little girl in an Elmo sweatshirt curled up under some brush.

“Warden Dunham and Alison come walking out of the woods hand in hand, past the Salvation Army food wagon, and into the parking lot, with K-9 Grace trotting proudly ahead.” [And Kate says] … my whole, lovely job at that moment was to bear witness to rejoicing and to join in the gladness of the coming day.”

“Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.  The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.  You also must be patient.  Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.”

This is what the reading from James says.  Patience.
Can you imagine if Kate simply told this family to be patient?  How do you think they would hear that?

How would you hear that?

But she didn’t tell them to be patient.  Rather, she joined them in their waiting.  She held their hands.  She embodied patience,. She talked with them.  Listened to them.  Let them tell the same story over and over: how Alison went bounding into the woods, how the dog came back, how they called out for her.  And Kate’s job was to be presence, a witness to the sacred.

[pause]

Shortly after we moved here, now over seven years ago, Torin and I had the late night craving for Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Rather, he wanted the chicken, I wanted the fake, neon orange macaroni and cheese.  It was 9:30 at night and we really didn’t know the Morgantown roads well, and that, my friends is a recipe for disaster.  Wasn’t there a KFC down on that one road?  What is it?  Patteson?  OK, I’ll go get it, says he.

A half hour passes.

Then an hour.

Panic has ratcheted up sky high.

Of course, he didn’t take the cell phone.

I was picturing a car accident.

I called the hospital.

I called the other hospital.

Two hours.

I call Lois Harder, the interim pastor here, feeling embarrassed that as the new pastor I was exhibiting some sort of fear or vulnerability, losing her mind, picturing what it would look like to be a young widow with a small child.  She was kind and calm.  We talked.  She told me she could come wait with me.  No, no, I’ll call you back when I find out something.

Why did I want that macaroni?????!!!

I call my mother-in-law, Bev. She says the cool, soothing things that I hope I would if in the similar situation with a panicking person.  She says she is picturing Torin, wherever he is, surrounded with light that is protecting him. 

While we were talking, two and a half hours after Torin left at the PLS (that is, Place Last Seen), the car pulls up. I quickly get off the phone with Bev, run down the steps to the driveway, and, like a scene from a movie, simultaneously kiss Torin… and hit him.  Where were you?  I’ve been worried sick!  How hard is it to find Kentucky Fried Chicken?!?!

He looked at me desperately and says “I had to go to a town called…Sabraton?” [pause]

I don’t know if that was the best tasting or worst tasting macaroni and cheese of my life.

But later, as I was talking to Bev about it, she reflected on my panic.  She said it was clear that nothing she could say would help take away the anxiety. So she just had to be patient for me.  She had to hold my panic, because it was clear that words weren’t going to calm me down.

She didn’t tell me to be patient.  She helped me picture God surrounding Torin.

Lois didn’t tell me to wait it out.  She told me she would come wait with me.

When faced with the crises, decisions, and possibilities in our lives, it can seem like there are two choices, both perhaps looking a bit like patience.  Run around like adults do in the wilderness, trying to figure it out ourselves, solve the problem, and try to take control.  The perception of patience comes in the logical steps we think we are taking.

Or we can be like children.  Curl up cozy under a bush, wait it out, become oblivious to the reality, and let someone else take charge.  The perception of patience comes in the giving up, the passing out, the “wake me up when it is all over.”

But that isn’t the sense of patience I get from Mary and Elizabeth, or Jesus, or John, or James, or Isaiah.

What I notice about the scriptural calls to patience this day—all the talk the glorious day in the future—is that it is not a platitude given to an individual.  It’s an invitation given in the midst of relationships: Elizabeth and Mary, a community of early Christians, John being drawn into a community of people who have been healed-lepers, lame, deaf. 

Platitudes of patience is not what this is about.

It’s about being the bearers of God’s love for those who find it impossible to wait by themselves.  A place none of us should ever be.

The community born of love is one where, as Chaplain Kate says, we bear witness to one another.  In rejoicing, and in pain. 

So we don’t say “just wait it out” to someone in pain.  We say “let me wait with you.”

We don’t say “it’s God’s plan.”  We say “God is here in my love for you.”

We don’t say “well it’s all for the best.”  We say “I know it hurts.  And I will be here with you.”

We don’t say “just be patient.”  We say, as James said “I will hold you, so your heart can be strengthened.”

May you be doing the heart-work of strengthening this season work of waiting with others, of being present when patience might otherwise be lost in the wilderness. 

[silence]

 

Good friends, rejoice!  For Christ is coming to bear witness to the Sacred in our midst

Good friends, rejoice! For until that time, we are empowered-and called-to bear witness to the Christ is waits with us, strengthens us, and loves us.

Please join in the sending hymn “Good Christian friends rejoice #210