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Back in the early 90s, a man named John was a member of our church. He was a professional man, with a wife and two sons. Sam was in high school, and Teddy was in middle school. Both boys played football. His wife Allison was beautiful and very involved with a number of local civic organizations. This was the life they had imagined. Things were working out just as they had planned.

And then a doctor told John that he had a large, inoperable tumor in his abdomen. Chemotherapy and radiation were options, but the doctor was not overly optimistic.

We who were his church were shocked and saddened. We prayed with John and Allison, hoping that the treatments would work and that God would grant them some kind of miracle. But as time went by, it became clear that the treatments were not working. The tumor did not decrease in size.

The people of our church are committed to prayer. Prayer is a sacred part of our spiritual tradition, and it is an important part of our covenant with each other. Even when do not understand what is happening, we give ourselves to the discipline of prayer. We put the best we have into it.

We are also aware that most of the time God allows things to take their natural course. When last I checked, the death rate was holding steady at 100%. So no matter how many miracles you name and claim, at some point your prayers for healing will be answered with a no.

John continued his treatments. We prayed and waited with them. At the suggestion of a friend, he and his family visited another church in a nearby city. This church, they were told, believed very strongly in healing. In fact, they believed in healing so much that they would claim their miracles ahead of time. Their idea was that God promises health and healing in the Bible. So if your faith is strong enough, you can claim your miracle before you even receive it. This claiming was thought by the people of that church to be evidence of strong faith. Doubt, on the other hand, was evidence of a lack of faith.

I will admit that there are places in the Bible that say that having faith is an important part of praying. I will also tell you that these few passages ought to be read along with the rest of the Bible's witness on prayer and not read in isolation and improperly emphasized.

John and Allison were fairly desperate, as you can imagine, so they left our church and joined the church that emphasized claiming miracles and healing. They weren’t angry with us. But this other church was saying things that were giving them hope. And I’m sure that after all the bad news, any kind of hope felt good to them.

A few weeks after they joined the other church, John announced that a miracle had happened. He had been healed of his cancer. Their church celebrated, and there was even an article about it in the local newspaper. The title of the article was, “I Am Healed!” The only catch was, their doctor was still feeling the tumor when he palpated John’s abdomen. He tried to tell John that the tumor was still there, but John would hear nothing of it. At the encouragement of his church, neither John or Allison would even talk about the tumor. Nor were their boys allowed to speak of it. Even admitting the presence of the tumor might be seen by God as a lack of faith. If they wanted to receive a miracle from God, it was critical that they have no doubts whatsoever.

As far as I know, John boldly claimed that he had been healed right up until the day the tumor killed him.

I attended the funeral, which was held at their new church. Everyone seemed very upbeat. They celebrated John’s life, as of course they should have. Then the pastor rose to speak. He looked down from his pulpit at John’s family, and he had this to say:

“Allison, Sam, and Teddy, don’t cry for John. You have no reason to cry because he’s not dead. I know the doctors say he is dead. I know that everyone thinks he is dead, but he’s not.”

This got everyone’s attention. I know I sat up a little straighter when I heard it. Then the pastor continued:

“John is alive right now in heaven with Jesus. And because he is in heaven, he's happier now than ever before. You have no reason to cry. Smile and be happy. You’ll see John again one day in heaven.”

Oh, alive in heaven. You could feel the people settling back into their seats. Well, yeah, he’s alive with Jesus, but he's still dead here on earth. That’s why they put him in that fancy box at the front of the church.

Being with Jesus in heaven is also a part of our theology, and it has a proper place in a Christian funeral, certainly. But heaven should never be used to talk people out of their grief.

I thought to myself, “My God, these boys were not allowed to talk about their father’s cancer. They were not allowed even to admit the reality of it. They were allowed no preparation for his death. And now that their father is dead, they aren't allowed to cry. Even crying is seen as a lack of faith."

Before the service ended, Allison, Sam, and Teddy rose and walked down the aisle to the back of the church. When Sam went by me, I saw that his teeth were clinched and his face was rigid. His eyes were moist, but his chin was held high, and his face was so hard. You can tell a lot about the state of a person’s soul if you look at the way his jaw is set in his face.

I’m not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but some wisdom is given me. I think I can tell you what happened to Sam in the months and years that followed. Sam swallowed his own grief. He squeezed it down his gullet and into his abdomen, which is the place where men often store their sorrows. He swallowed his pain because men do that and because he was told that denying his grief was a Godly thing to do. And there, in the pit of his stomach, his grief became an emotional bezoar, knotted and tortured and matted with undigested sorrow.

Religion that denies the body becomes sick and cancerous. Sam will have hard grief work to do because his church would not help him with it. Grief will not be denied. Sam's sorrow will not go away but will remain in his belly, a tumor that no doctor can feel.

And someday he will have to cough that fucker up.

rlp

What the heck is a bezoar and how do you pronounce it?

I found out yesterday that my college roommate died last week. His name was Kenny Cameron. I wish I could have gone to the funeral, but it was over before I knew about it.

My father was the associate pastor of Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston in the 1970s. I spent a lot of time at church, as you can imagine. Two of my closest friends also went to Tallowood - Kenny Cameron and Mark Carter. Mark sent me an email yesterday and told me about Kenny’s death. I hadn’t heard from Mark in years either, maybe not since I officiated at his wedding close to 20 years ago.

Kenny and Mark. Kenny Cameron and Mark Carter. If I say those names, I can almost feel the 70s. I can feel the heat of Houston; I can hear the Doobie Brothers; I can feel my stomach fluttering when I tried talking to a girl. I can remember the church stuff - the youth camps, the revivals, and youth choir on Sunday nights. The memories are right inside me and also far behind me. Near and far.

So that you can have a feel for what Kenny meant to me, I’m going to break a sacred trust I have with myself. I’m going to tell you the truth about one of the Foy Davis stories. There are six Foy stories so far. Most of them are fictional. But one of the stories is true. “Freckles and Blue” is my best and most faithful recounting of some things that actually happened to me in middle school. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the heartbreak of losing “Emma,” but over the years that memory has become tender. It brings a smile to my face when I remember what a little boy I was and how deeply I felt the things that wounded me.

Kenny and Mark were on the bus from that story. I left for camp a stranger, and I came home a week later, having had my first romance and with Kenny and Mark as my best friends.

That was quite a summer.

Kenny Cameron is dead. I have to keep saying it because I can’t feel it. Kenny was funny. He laughed a lot and had a killer smile with perfect white teeth. He was handsome and smooth with girls. I tried my best to imitate him in this regard, but I was not smooth. Honestly, girls scared me to death until I was halfway through high school. After that they only made me nervous, but after being scared to death, nervous feels pretty damn good. But Kenny was never scared around girls or anything else, or so it seemed to me at the time. That's how I remember him.

Kenny wanted to be a doctor, and we went off to Baylor University together, along with “Emma” from the story and a few others from our church. Kenny and I lived in a tiny dorm room for one year. We hung everything on our walls upside down, for some reason. We thought it was funny. Believe it or not, they used to have an organized panty raid for freshmen at Baylor. The boys would wear their freshmen beanies and sing outside the girls’ dorms. The girls would toss panties out of their windows – specially purchased for this event, one hopes – with their phone numbers written on them. I have seen a thousand boys crowded around a tall dormitory and the air filled with panties. I have seen this. I bear witness to it.

Being very athletic at the time and rather determined, I snagged 13 pair, which was pretty impressive. We hung them all on our wall, upside down, and left them there for the entire year. But I never called a single phone number. You know, that whole nervous around girls thing.

Yeah, Supertramp playing on Kenny’s 8-track tape player, drinking Cokes and sitting in our dorm room, surrounded by upside down posters and panties. Those were the days, right?

But then Kenny joined a fraternity, and I got very serious about philosophy and my religious studies, so I made the cocky decision that fraternities were ridiculous - and I passed up no opportunity to say so. We drifted apart and by the end of college, we were saying hello if we happened to pass each other on the campus.

Life moved on, as it does. I heard that Kenny never made it to medical school and that he had a daughter. Then at some point I heard that he had multiple sclerosis. I never called him. I didn’t know his number, and his friendship was long gone by then. And I missed his funeral. That’s the last chapter I have for Kenny, and now that I write it in that way, I suddenly feel very sad.

Mark Carter lives in Austin now, with his wife and two daughters. We've agreed that it has been too long. We’re going to meet soon for Mexican food, cold beer, and about four hours of long overdue conversation. I’m sorry that it took the death of an old friend to remind us of how precious these early friendships are, but that’s the way it often happens.

Precious things pass quickly. Life and living wrap themselves around you and hold you fast to the present. Years fly by, and you find new friends and new ways of being. But the truth is, new friends are an infinite possibility, but old friends are fixed in stone. There are only a few of them, and no more will be added to their ranks. Some will be taken away.

So I’m coming to Austin, Mark. I want to see what 25 years has done to you and for you. I want to hear about your life. I want to talk about Kenny and the old days. I’m coming to Austin because there were only two of you, Kenny and Mark. And now there is only one.

rlp

Being a rambling account of nausea, preaching, mother's day, evil, and a few other subjects. It's too long, covers too many subjects, would be rejected if I submitted it to any decent publication, and is probably very self-indulgent, blah blah blah.

I was strangely ill last week. I say strangely because any illness seems strange to me. I'm one of those people who rarely get sick. I will admit I've been pretty smug about that over the years, though I don't know why. It's not like I have anything to do with being sick or not being sick. I just sit here in my skin and take whatever comes to me. I guess we all do that.

So anyway Tuesday, out of the blue, I got severely nauseous. I don't have a lot of experience with nausea. I haven't thrown up since I was a small child. They tell me I threw up on my teddy bear when I was three. Apparently, it was so disgusting that teddy had to be thrown away. I'm sure it was traumatic as hell, though I don't remember anything about it. Maybe after that I just decided to opt out of the whole throwing up thing. However it happened, I don't throw up. I can't. I don't even know how to get started with it. It looks to me like some sort of heaving of the chest precedes the event itself, but I couldn't tell you for sure. I will tell you this - by Tuesday afternoon, I wanted to throw up badly. I wanted to, but I never did. Instead I just rolled around in bed for about 7 hours, trying to find a comfortable position.

Did you know that there is no position that is comfortable when you are nauseous? None. I tried them all.

I was plagued by this strange, unexpected nausea all week long. Wednesday wasn't so bad. Thursday was another rolling around in bed day. Having lost two complete days, I was nowhere near ready for the sermon on Sunday morning. I got to church early with a page of scribbled notes and a general idea of where I was going. I had to throw the entire sermon together in a couple of hours. You can get away with that kind of thing if it's an emergency and if you normally do your work. But if you try it too often, you will not survive. Preaching every week is something you can't fake your way through. Fakers have a few years of sermons, and then they move on to another church. That's how you spot fake preachers, in case you were wondering. Lot's of shuckin, jivin, and movin on.

I got the sermon together, I guess, but I was anxious and uptight all morning. Somewhere in the middle of the delivery I sort of lost the sense of what I was doing. I can follow my notes and plod through a sermon, but I like to be emotionally connected to what I'm talking about. That emotional connection is critical to preaching. And it's another thing you can't fake unless you just give up and become completely evil. And I'm trying to adopt Google's motto for my preaching - "Don't be evil."

I figure it's the least I can do.

Anyway, while I was speaking and looking at my friends out there in the chairs, the sermon began to feel heavy and disconnected. The paragraphs, transitions, and various sections became isolated and alone in my mind. They felt like slabs of heavy beef coming down a conveyor belt. I unloaded each one in turn, but the whole thing never came together for me. I assume I made reasonable sense. I hope so. But if not, I've probably earned an off Sunday.

Look, if one of my sermons is good or if it meant something to you, then I'm happy about that. If my sermon was bad or boring, just consider it penance. We all probably need penance now and then. So you can endure my sermon or crawl up some stairs on your knees like they do in Rome. Your choice.

Oh, Sunday was also Mother's Day. I was over at Spidey's blog and read about what happened at her church. That got me thinking about Mother's Day and churches. I have mixed feelings about recognizing this holiday during worship. I've been to churches that go way overboard with this. All the mothers get corsages, and sometimes they all stand up in the worship service. Then the preacher says, "If you've been a mother less than 10 years, sit down." A bunch of young women sit down. Then he says, "Okay, less than 20 years sit down." They keep doing this until only one woman is standing, the woman who has been a mother longer than anyone else. She gets some flowers or maybe just everyone claps for her and looks real happy. I don't know, that kind of thing seems surreal to me. And it can lead to the awkward situation where you have some woman praying that another woman will finally die so that SHE can be the oldest mother in the church next year.

You laugh, but that kind of thing happens.

In the short history of our church, there have been two women among us who were unable to have children and were deeply grieved about it. Maybe in larger churches you can get busy and caught up in the day and forget about that kind of thing. But in a small spiritual community, it's rather hard to miss. So I've always been aware that Mother's Day is a very sad day for many women. Some never had children and that grief has dominated their adult lives. Others have lost children or perhaps never married and have no reasonable hope for having a child. I don't know, to me it has always seemed like a day when the mothers get yet another blessing, while the heart-broken woman on the back row of the church dies inside one more time. The whole thing reminds me of the kind of person who goes on and on and on about how great her children are and how they have straight A's and are perfect and all that stuff. Of course, she's talking to her friend whose children are making horrible grades and have all sorts of problems, but she just prattles on, either unaware or unconcerned about how this is making her friend feel.

Have you ever known someone like that? I have. And I'm sad to say it, but churches are often like that. All the shiny happy people are handing out awards and celebrating this or that. You can make the broken people feel even more broken if you're not careful. That would be bad enough, but it's even worse if you consider that the basic message of Christianity is that we're ALL broken and need help.

Mother's Day isn't a Christian holiday anyway, so in my mind it deserves at most a quick mention and perhaps a prayer. And the prayer had better be the most inclusive prayer you can come up with. A prayer for mothers, and for the women who have been like mothers to children in need, and also some kind of careful and solemn recognition that every joy, even the joy of being a mother, has its dark side. For every joyous heart, there is someone crying and alone.

So I did my Mother's Day prayer on Sunday like I do every year. I tried to say everything that needed to be said, but you can never pull that off. You can never get that prayer worded right. There really aren't words that can speak for the joy and the sorrow of mothers. And I wasn't at my best anyway, coming off a week spent mostly in a nauseous haze. I kind of stumbled through the whole service, if you want to know the truth. I can't remember what I said during the Mother's Day prayer. It was probably okay.

When the service was over I retreated quickly to my office and didn't come out until everyone was gone. Wow, it's been a long time since I did that. In the old days, sometimes I would close the door to my office after church and pray that no one would come knocking. It's okay. I needed to retreat, so I did. I doubt anyone noticed. And hey, I'll be back next Sunday. I'm in this for the long haul, not for the quick fix.

Well, Sunday is over and gone. And I can now look at it with a new perspective, almost as if Sunday was preserved in a jar. Looking closely at it, I can see that last Sunday is a clear reminder to me that the Church must be a place of both joy and sorrow. It has to be a place where friends celebrate but never forget each other's pain. It has to be a place where you can shake hands and laugh, or retreat to a back room and cry. Joy and sorrow. They are never very far apart.

You know you are a part of an authentic, spiritual community when you can hide and you can't hide. You can run to a back room or sob on the back row, and people will give you the space and privacy you need. But at the same time you hear the Word of the Lord. Amazingly, you hear this Word in the voice of your very imperfect and even comical minister. And in his or her shaky voice, you are reminded that nothing is forgotten, neither your joy or your sorrow. Neither are forgotten because they are both somehow packed into a single hour of worship.

rlp

Part Two:

Note: Click here to read part one.

God love me, I was so young and ignorant. My awareness of myself and of the world was almost completely limited to the sphere of words. I was good with words, and words mattered to me more than anything else. God bless Mrs. Davis for putting up with me and the people at Baylor Medical Center for letting me stumble through my internship like a bull in a china closet.

The good news is that there is a certain grace to ministry that happens when the humanity of the minister collides with the humanity of the bereaved. It’s a comfort to know that God can work both with us and in spite of us. Sometimes God makes use of even our rawest materials.

After Mrs. Davis was finished, I began my much quieter prayer in a calm voice that sounded something like Mr. Rogers. I carefully countered each of her theological points with words that I addressed to God but were meant to teach her a thing or two.

“There is no need to be afraid for Billy, for he is in the hands of his maker.”

“Of course we KNOW, dear Heavenly Father, that death is no longer our enemy.”

“Not our will but yours, not our desire, but your kingdom.”

You know what I’m talking about. Highfalutin, seminary-boy words. Very theologically correct and, in my case, very flat. Very much without passion.

After my prayer I opened my eyes, expecting to find her greatly relieved and comforted, and perhaps happy to have learned something in this hard time. After all, one never knows when the Lord has a thing or two to teach us.

Instead I found her staring at me with her mouth open.

“So he’s died? He’s dead?” she asked.

“No, he’s still alive, as far as I know. We have to wait for the doctor to come and give us the news about that.”

Mrs. Davis seemed confused, as if she didn’t know what to make of me or my prayer.

“So he’s not dead?”

“No.”

“You were praying like he was already dead.”

I had no response for this. Not even a somber nod. I just looked back at her. I had no idea what she was talking about.

Her brow furrowed as if she was trying to figure out what kind of a chaplain she was dealing with here. Unable to comprehend me, she bowed her head and commenced her passionate pleas that God save Billy from the hounds of hell and the demonic hosts of the nether regions. This time she never stopped to give me a chance to pray. She kept going right up until the moment the doctor came in and gave her the bad news. Billy fought hard, but he was dead.

I braced myself for what was coming. In her mind and according to her stated theology, the hounds of hell had won the day. The devil and his demons were even now dragging Billy away. I wondered what she would do now that the battle was lost.

To my surprise she clasped her hands together just under her chin, raised her eyes to heaven and said, “Thank you, Jesus.” She gave me a hug and told me again what a wonderful man he had been. “We will miss him dearly,” said she, “but he’s in a better place. He’s gone to his reward.” She quietly signed the necessary forms to start the funeral process and went on her way, leaving me completely befuddled and unable to comprehend what I had just seen.

She made a complete and very sudden 180 degree turnaround. Suddenly his death was a victory and a reward. I puzzled over this for weeks, wondering what caused the change.

Some years later I finally figured it out. Here is the answer to the riddle of Mrs. Davis’ prayer:

Sometimes people don’t mean what they say. They mean what they mean. And never so much as in the prayers we blurt out in times of grief. Prayer is not simply a communication of words. It is a full-bodied expression of the soul. People weave their history, their theology, their brokenness, their buzz words, their ignorance, and what wisdom they have into a very private and intimate conversation with God.

Perhaps grieving is a kind of speaking in tongues. How can you know what people are talking about? They might not even know themselves.

Young ministers would do well to let people have their say and not worry too much about exactly what they say when the chips are down, the awful moment has come, and they are staring into the great unknown. It may be that the only one who can make sense of our grief is the one to whom we speak in those dreaded times.

When last I heard, Mrs. Davis was still alive, in her 80s, and running a cowboy camp meeting named after her husband.

Dear Mrs. Davis, thank you for letting me bear witness to your intimate conversation with your beloved Creator. God understood you just fine, even if I didn’t. And I must say that it was an honor to be there when the littlest cowboy preacher exited stage left.

I think of you and Billy sometimes. And I always smile.

rlp

note: The names in this essay have been changed