A Homily for Julie

I came across a series of emails the other day between Julie and my wife, Sheri written back in 2007. Sheri died a few months after these emails and the two of them were swapping stories of their various struggles and cancer treatments. In response to one of these descriptions by Julie, Sheri said, “It sounds like it’s been a horrible few months.” To which Julie responded with the following:

“Oh no, it has not been horrible! There is a humbling, faith-building love to this adventure I'm on, and a certainty (always with me) that no matter what, I am fully in God's hands. What a release that is!”

In one of the last conversations I had with Julie, just after she entered hospice she spoke about the same confidence she had in God who would soon welcome her home. But what I was most struck with was the way she described herself. Said she, “I can already sense myself in transition, moving into a dream state.”

Julie had an ability to see the world as it really is. She peeked into what lies behind or beyond, or what exists in and through all things. This glimpse is something we get in the thin times and places, like at the moment of death, when the lines between time and eternity are blurred and something else appears to us as if in a dream, breaking through. But I think that all of Julie’s life was lived in this holy place of vision, as a poet, as a woman of faith, as someone who loved deeply. She blessed us all with her particular vision. She definitely gifted me with her sight.

For me it was her ability to see things in potential as though they had already happened here and now.

Years ago when I worked at the Stockton Emergency Food Bank, Julie nominated me for the Land Utilization Alliance award for Urban Affairs. I had just begun my work at the Food Bank, and it seemed to me that I had done nothing really compared to many others in the community who had worked for years. But she was adamant that I deserved it and lobbied for me to get the award. All I could say then was “You haven’t seen anything yet!” But she saw something in me that I could not see myself. For Julie my potential was a present reality.

And now, over the last year I have been emailing her my sermons. I am a postulant for ordination to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. It has been a long journey for me having graduated from seminary over 20 years ago, and there are still a couple of years left in the process. But I preach once a month now in my congregation back in Washington and Julie already began calling herself a member of my far flung congregation. I am deeply honored by her request to have me be a part of this service, but once again I feel like I am standing here because of Julie’s ability to see in me what I do not yet necessarily see in myself. I am certainly potentially a priest, but I am already Julie’s pastor. This is the gift she has given me.

It is a gift of hope and faith in new life, resurrection, not as something far off or distant in the future, but a current reality. Julie saw us as we truly are, in all the fullness of the glory of the gifts God has given us. That is a pretty amazing gift. We might think that she was dreaming . . . but that is exactly what she was doing. Julie existed in her suffering in that thin space between life and death for some time, the liminal space between waking and sleeping when you aren’t sure whether you are dreaming or not. It is a sacred space in which we encounter the holy. And she saw into her suffering the potential for life. This life of hers is a sign for all of us, of a way to be in the world, and Julie wrote poetry about it for all us to catch a glimpse of the dream she saw.

In one of her poems, All Heal A Circus At the Beach, she says, “I came today resolved to do nothing, but the sun has become a circus mirror” and she contrasts all the activity and playfulness of all the people on the beach with her own sick, dry self covered in layers to protect herself. She writes,

But I am not sick, certainly not at this moment of this day:
As the stark October sun shifts on my chilled fall bones,
I sense this is like no other month’s sun -
Its warmth like memories of so many loved ones’ smiles.

In one noisy imprecise moment I know
I will see those smiles again, know it
with the same certainty that within each exposed heart exists
a collection of dried tears for each life lived with others.

In more words written to my wife, Julie speaks about her own sense of “being healed (whether it was for a minute, a day, or a long time).” And she was healed. In later emails besides work, she spoke of playing golf, taking a cruise, editing poetry journals. But whether in sickness or health, in all her strength and weakness, whether her blood count was up or down, I believe she was able to see the potential of all life realized. She knew she was in God’s hands. “What a release that was!”

Julie comforted my wife in her last days with these words. “You too Sheri,” you are in God’s hands as well,” she said, “You are also one who has helped to build my faith, so what an irony, or something like that.” The irony that Julie sensed was that she was being priest to this pastor, my wife, at that moment. She may not have thought of herself as priest, anymore than I do, anymore than any of us do at times. But she was a priest, as much as I am, as much as all of us are. Though it may seem ironical, it is the truth. We are all priests to one another, we stand in the in between space accompanying one another on the journey.

Bill Countryman, one of my seminary professors wrote a book called Living on the Border of the Holy, Renewing the Priesthood of all, in which he says that what it means to be a human being is to be a priest. All the other kinds of priesthoods are merely reflections of this underlying reality of what it means to be human. This is the kind of vision that Julie had. She stood in the place of transition, on the border, and saw the holy in all things, and she shared that with all of us. She looked into all of our lives and saw the potential there realized, all our hopes and dreams come true, in her ability to see things as they really are.

Laura and Katie, all of the potential of your lives as well, your mother really has already seen. It is your smiles, and all those she has loved, that she has already seen again, just as she saw her Creator welcoming her home in that last dream of hers. You may imagine all the places and times of your life that your mother will not be there for as you grow up, but just as I know she saw my potential, she has already seen yours. She has already been with you where you will go and has seen all that you are and will be. She has already been there with you in all of your lives.

Julie has gone before us. As certainly as Christ has gone before us, Christ, who is our great high priest, whom we all represent in our lives. Julie has caught a glimpse of the whole, the unity of all things, the life that comes from death, in a dream, in the transition time, on the border land. That is a really good thing. She is a witness for all of us. And that life is open to all of us, as we claim our own priesthood, as we see the world the way she saw the world, in all its fullness, and follow her there. We will say with her, “What a release that is!” Praise be to God. AMEN.