wit

I have had to watch the film "Wit" on two occasions as an assignment for classes in seminary. This is such a well done film, and yet brutal to watch. It is an important film, though, on many levels. Emma Thompson plays an academic whose has given her life to the study of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. The short of it....She gets cancer. Weaved throughout the film is John Donne's poem, "Death be not proud, though have called thee mighty and dreadfull"....It is beautiful and harsh and poetic and sad. i digress. You should watch this movie, but this is not why I write.

Josh and I stopped by Griffin, Ga on our way home from the thanksgiving holiday. It was early in the morning and a stop I didn't want to make. My great uncle Clarence is dying, quite literally, of cancer. Clarence is quite legendary in our family, a surrogate grandfather to many, including myself. Such an interesting man, so broad in knowledge, and smart...really smart. He blows the small town southern sterotype to peices. His mind was always bigger than the South. As a man in his late 80's, he was taken with the internet. He said he could fly around the world with the touch of a finger. He loves to know.

When I walked into his room this past Saturday morning, it was as i had imagined. "Wit" prepared me for this. No hair, thin, pain, absence. He looked at me once, I told him that I loved him, that he was brave. I kept thinking of John Donne and the end of that great poem...
"One short sleepe past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die."

We are taught in this world that death is normal. And I suppose on the surface it is. that is, normative to human life as we know it. We die. But, anyone who has seen death, or seen my uncle can see how ugly death really is. It is broken and unnatural, this is why we hate it so much.

I think John Donne gets this. He knows the reality of death...but our death is not final. one short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more; death thou shalt die

This past Sunday was the first Sunday of advent. The season of waiting in the church. waiting for Jesus. Josh once said to me that advent is the season when you are able to admit that some tears don't get wiped away until heaven....and i add, where death shall be no more.

all my love to uncle clarence and mary jean (his wife of 65 years)

r.s. thomas: priest and poet

In Church

Often I try
To analyse the quality
Of its silences. Is this where God hides
from my searching? I have stopped to listen,
After the few people have gone,
To the air recomposing itself
For vigil. It has waited like this
Since the stones grouped themselves about it.
These are the hard ribs
Of a body that our prayers have failed
To animate. Shadows advance
From their corners to take possession
Of places the light held
Their business. The uneasiness of the pews
Ceases. There is no other sound
In the darkness but the sound of a man
Breathing, testing his faith
On emptiness, nailing his questions
One by one to an untenanted cross.

family photo

josh's mom recently came for a visit. here is a pic from the weekend....