Saying Goodbye

A dozen of us gathered on what passes as a hill just west of Stafford. It was one of those deceptive days at the Stafford Cemetery - bright sunshine but a December chill in the air in a location not sheltered by trees, only gravestones.

There was no green mortuary tent. No shiny hearse. No extra mourners. No minister.

It was a memorial service like many other families have opted for during this global pandemic - just a few relatives gathered around the family plot. 

 Randy's brother, Lyle, died on September 17. A niece's birthday will now be a death day, too.

Randy and his sister, Kathy, decided to wait until all our family members could gather.  So December 5 it was.

The family - plus me as a shadow!

 Kathy wrote this on her Facebook page later that night:

A mixture of emotions today as we laid my brother's ashes to rest next to my parents in Stafford this morning. Lyle was the younger of my two older brothers and he passed away in September. Today was the opportunity for my oldest brother, Randy, and I to place our loved ones together where they can rest in peace. While this was sad, we also took advantage of being together to celebrate an early Christmas and reminisce a bit. I'm thankful for family, time together, good health, happiness, and an act of kindness for which I will be forever grateful. My heart is full.

Lyle was a guy who would prefer an outside gathering rather than a stuffy, traditional service in a church sanctuary anyway. Kathy had asked our local florist to capture an outdoor, woodsy mood with the grave decorations. 

Thanks to Freund's Crafts 'n' Flowers for the beautiful grave decor.

After their dad died, Lyle had left the flat Plains of Kansas and purchased a small motel in Cascade, Idaho. The mountains and abundant waters were his happy place.

Warm Lake near Cascade, Idaho

Even after a health scare a couple of years ago, Lyle preferred to stay at Deadwood, S.D., where he was nestled in the Black Hills, rather than moving closer to family back home.

So the cool, outdoor gathering was just as much about what Lyle would have wanted as a response to Covid-19 concerns.

Afterward, we gathered as a family in the church basement where we could spread out a bit more. We shared a lunch of homemade pizza and fixings. It was a nod to my late mother-in-law, Marie. Just a week before, a cousin had mailed us a copy of Marie's pizza recipe. She'd found it among some family photos while cleaning out memorabilia. (I guess that's one positive of Covid - a bunch of us have undertaken some deep cleaning!)

I knew the pizza recipe had been part of a column I wrote for The Hutchinson News, At Home With Kim, so I dug through those columns to find the whole thing. 

It was just another way to honor family ties. So was the banana cream pie Kathy brought as one of the dessert selections. Kathy remembers sliding her mom's freshly-made meringue topping off of the hot banana pudding filling onto Lyle's plate. Marie protested that she should eat it herself because meringue was hard to make. 

Snippets of memories like that filled the day. Randy said the burial was harder than he thought it would be. But he's grateful for the time together with family.

 

Who Has Seen the Wind?

Pastor Ben and Arlene spent a lot of time transforming the sanctuary at the Stafford United Methodist Church for Pentecost on Sunday. We have a gorgeous and historic sanctuary anyway. It was even more beautiful.

But the transformation truly isn't just about sewing together fabric and dangling precariously from a ladder to hang it from fishing line.

It's about discovering the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in my life today - not just in Bible times. Today.

When the Holy Spirit comes (as told in Acts 2: 1-21), it comes with a sound like the rush of a violent wind and in tongues of fire.

Our other Scripture lesson for the day was John 7: 37-39:

³⁷ On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. ³⁸ Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” ³⁹ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

Living water ... rushing wind ... tongues of fire. Those aren't exactly stagnant images, as they?

As Pastor Ben said, "God's presence and the Holy Spirit change us."

It can happen slowly. Sometimes it's in an instant. But it's moving, not stagnant.

Living, moving water shapes canyons, moves boulders and changes the landscape.

Fire can be contained in a backyard fire pit, but its flames still reach up toward the night sky. Or it can race through a burning building.

We Kansans know wind. It can be a pleasant breeze on a hot summer day or a howling gale that thunders through trees and brings down heavy branches during a storm. It can be a dove kite gently rustling in air-conditioned breeze in a Kansas sanctuary.

As Pastor Ben shared, Pentecost isn't just a "story" that happened long ago. God isn't finished "moving" us and doing new things even today. The Holy Spirit comes to open our eyes and show us how to be more connected, have mercy, offer forgiveness and transform the world with justice and love.

But it requires movement. I have to leave a beautifully appointed sanctuary and go out into a messy, noisy, complicated world. As Pastor Ben says, "We have inherited the work."

The wind theme continued past church for me yesterday. At 2 PM,  the wind was blowing through a small Kansas cemetery as two young soldiers from Fort Riley honored a World War II veteran and his family. It was the service for my Great Uncle Oric Neelly, my Grandpa Shelby Neelly's youngest brother. Oric was the final one of the 10 children to be laid to rest.

Oric died on June 5, one day before the 70th anniversary of D-Day. He served for 36 months in the European Theatre in Africa, Italy, France and Germany. As a member of the Signal Corp in the First Armored Signal Battalion, he was aboard the SS Bliss when it was torpedoed off the coast of France prior to the invasion. He was rescued by a Frenchman in a small fishing boat. He rejoined his Army unit and went on to serve in the Invasion of Sicily. He was in Germany at the end of the war and helped liberate a concentration camp 40 miles from Berlin.

In the service bulletin, his family shared one of his favorite poems, "Who Has Seen the Wind?" by Christina Rossetti. It was one he recited often:

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves hang trembling,

The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by. 

Yesterday afternoon, the breeze picked up the mournful notes of "Taps" as another soldier was laid to rest. The final note gave me goosebumps as it softly drifted away into an overcast sky.

Whether being moved by the Holy Spirit or moved by the story of one of our nation's heroes, the challenge is there to live - not stagnate - and to make a difference.

At Rainbow's End

It rained from 4:30 to 8 Friday evening where we were. That was the good news.

The bad news? We were 4 hours from home in Oklahoma City.

The wedding we were attending was supposed to be outside in Coles Gardens. Brennan and Caitlin's Plan B inside the building was beautiful. It rained on Randy and my wedding day, too, which we always thought was a good omen for a couple of country kids. Brennan, our neighbors' son, and his new bride took it in stride, too.

After it quit raining, we wandered in the gardens at dusk. From looking at the radar, we knew we weren't getting the rain at home. It had been awhile since we'd smelled that unmistakable fragrance of rain-soaked earth.

Some fellow Staffordites were in front of the Coles Garden building and saw the remnants of a rainbow. We hurried around to get a glimpse, too.

It was a rainbow of another sort as the lights were reflected in the puddles on the garden patio. Raindrops glistened like diamonds on trees and flowers.

We finally got about 0.80" of rain Sunday morning here at our house. Our Rattlesnake Pasture that needs rain so badly got 0.50." We're thankful for every drop.

We did the "cemetery tour" after church with my family. As we were coming back home, we stopped at the Stafford Cemetery to decorate the graves of Randy's folks and other family members.

And we got our rainbow at home. It seemed fitting.