They say that fish and houseguests are similar because they stink after 3 days, and you should get rid of them at that point. With a guest minister, it might just take just one time at the pulpit before you want to toss them out. So I’m going do my best up here. God, however known, help us all.

I want to first tell you a story. About 10 years ago, I lived in Manhattan. I moved there with my lifelong best friend, Amy. We’d been friends since we were 3, so the Big Apple was a big move from our time at Westminster Day School over off 16th Avenue here in Gainesville. There’s a moment with her during that season that I love to recall because it encapsulates her. I remember exactly where I was, walking south down 3rd Avenue in New York. I always knew I could call her spontaneously to do something fun. So I asked her to meet me for dinner and she said she couldn’t because she had to go pick up her laundry.

I said what? Why are you acting responsible today? Why don’t you just wear what you have on?

And she said well I’m super uncomfortable — I don’t have any underwear left.

And I said What? are you not wearing underwear? Were you not wearing underwear to work!? I bet you are uncomfortable!

And she laughed and said no……..it’s just that when I ran out of underwear, I then wore all of my bikini bottoms so they’re at the laundromat too……so I have been wearing a one piece bathing suit under my work clothes all day.

(Is this the beginning of the sermon that you’d expected??)

If you’re wondering, we went to dinner. And this is the sort of free-wheelin’ spirit she was. (Show with hands) Impractical and arguably irresponsible but equally as resourceful, adventurous – and above all things, easy to let things go. People knew Amy for her positive motto, “Oh it’s all good girlfriend.” She could LET. THINGS. GO.

I just didn’t know I’d have to let her go, too.

A year and a half ago, Amy died in Los Angeles in her home, suddenly and unexpectedly. Something was wrong with her heart, but she didn’t know. In fact, no one knew, and we wouldn’t have, even if Amy ever went to a doctor, which she didn’t. (The doctor is something you have to schedule which requires one to have a calendar, which she didn’t.) But – Everyone knew immediately how ironic it was that it was her heart that had her leave. The thing that she always led with.

Now let me back up to complain a little bit. In the 18 months prior to Amy’s death, I’d had chronic insomnia as we waded through the long slog of a divorce. Two months before she left, I’d had fairly major abdominal surgery that resulted in 2 dozen staples in my abdominal wall and accidentally turned into (almost) a septic situation that closed my throat. I was the kind of tired that people say you can feel in your bones. It was the kind of exhaustion that has you blink without actually refreshing your vision. So when Amy left, my goodness. It was that kind of season of grief in life where things are piling on, and it starts to just not make sense any more.

Now – at this point, I entertained the possibility of throwing myself a pity party, but the way things were going – with my recent track record – all of the party balloons would have deflated, the clowns wouldn’t have shown up, and I’d forget the bag of ice for the cooler. So I skipped the pity party and I suppose I just tried to remember that slowly, time marches on. And it did.

I eventually had a dream about Amy that changed everything for me. Amy and I were at the foot of a brownstone building, presumably in New York. She had a haircut that I recognized from years prior. She fumbled around in a huge purse, giggling and searching for her house keys, which she would have had to do in real life. Eventually, she found them, and she started to walk up the steps. I began to follow. She said, “No, Pumpkin – I’m good. You don’t have to walk me up – you can go on now. And you can tell everyone they can go, too,” and she gestured towards the crowd that had gathered at the bottom of the brownstone steps. I didn’t know any of them, all strangers with bright faces: some happy and talking, others more serious and anxious, all waiting for her.

Now I’m no Isaiah or Ezekiel, or even Jeremy Taylor – and I don’t believe I was some prophet friend channeling Amy’s wishes. But as they say about dreams, every aspect is a reflection of yourself, so I believe she was giving me the permission to move on. To move on from losing her, from other losses, from sickness, whatever.

Frederick Buechner said that “If God speaks to us at all in this world, if God speaks anywhere, it is into our personal lives that he speaks.” And I think I chalk the dream – this permission to change – up to that. Permission to LET GO. It’s all good, girlfriend.

I have loved this worship team of HUBS and all of its interpretations. When I think about the make-up of the wheel, I’m struck with the actual spokes of the wheel that spray out from the center and connect to the rubber, as it hits the road, as it were. When I was a little girl I used to love how some people would put beads on the spokes of their bike wheel. I loved how the beads – even though they served no real purpose, there was something so satisfying about the sound of the beads sliding and hitting the center…then the outer metal by the rubber…then the center……and the outer. If you close your eyes, maybe you can imagine what that pattern sounds like….back and forth, back and forth.

Pepper learned to ride her bike this summer – and claims she’s 100% self-taught of course, but talk about a marking of time in a child’s life.

Depending on how fast or how slow the rider pedals, the beads are reporting back with the click and the clack. Applied to our lives, It’s like a form of keeping track. The counting of the way of things in this wheel within, that’s always turning, even when everything seems still around us. Sometimes the clicking and clacking of how time passes is loud — and sometimes just a part of the whole experience and it just blends into the background. But it’s like the HUB is the heart and the arteries stretch out from it, like the spokes – keeping track of time and experience.

Grief, specifically, is such a strange emotion and process, isn’t it? I’ve heard it referred to as an “ambiguous” emotion. Brene Brown, (blessed be her name,) describes grief amongst other emotions and values – like vulnerability and empathy and shame as ambiguous emotions. They are hard to understand but just as valuable and influential in our lives as the more obvious ones of anger or sadness or joy. And you know what I think is a lot like those other ambiguous concepts? Faith. Isn’t faith kind of like that?

Have you ever tried to describe faith to someone? Recently I was trying to describe it to my kids…..again.

I said, “It’s something that you can’t necessarily feel or see or touch or taste but it’s just as real and it’s there and you believe in it.”

Pepper said, “you mean like Santa?”
And I said “Yes like Santa………or God.”
And Kirk said wait, is Santa God? IS GOD SANTA?!!
See, it’s confusing.

Beuchner also said that “Faith is homesickness. Faith is a lump in the throat. Faith is less a position on than a movement toward, less a sure thing than a hunch. Faith is waiting. Faith is journeying through space and through time.” If you were in Peter’s closing session a week ago Sunday, you know that we all defined faith in a really broad way. That was beautiful.

Regardless of how long we experience a loss or something lonely, or how we then experience the brightness and beauty of recovery and faith…….it’s a marking of time. Sometimes the beads on the spokes of the wheel take a long time to hit the other side, and sometimes they’re pinging around like bees swarming in a hive. We help each other by being there and bearing witness to the marking of time.

Brene Brown says, Together we will cry and face fear and grief. I will want to take away your pain, but instead I will sit with you and teach you how to feel it. Maybe we can encourage each other in faith that way, too. Those painful 18 months before and including Amy’s death, those months of loss, also included joy and victory. And the people around me loved on me and reminded me of that.

Grief and loss are change. Resilience and growth are change. Some people really hate change. Other people love it! And guess what? It doesn’t matter, does it. Change is going to happen. I guess I just keep hoping as my life kind of ticks on here but I learn to see it and manage it better all the time. (Yikes.)

I’ve read that despair is “going to sleep thinking that when you wake up the next day, things will be the same.” Hmm. That’s easy to think I guess when you’re sick or someone you love leaves you in various forms, or when things seem otherwise bleak. But when I keep Amy’s kind of spirit close, waking up the next day to things “being the same” (mysterious and fun and who-knows-what and maybe-I’ll-wear-a-full-bathing suit-as underwear kind of days) – it all looks pretty good to me. Maybe faith is also that way: the who-knows-what-but-it’ll all be OK. And the wheels keep turning. And the beads keep on clicking and clacking. All on their own time.

The last thing Amy said to me before she died was on Christmas Eve, when she came over for a drink. There were lots of people there, so I didn’t get to see her all that much. As she left, I said, “Sorry we didn’t get to see each other very long, Pumpkin.” And she said, “Oh don’t you worry girlfriend! It was perfect, it was just right.”

I considered, while writing this talk, that maybe we’ve – maybe I’ve – been looking at fish and houseguests and other things through the wrong light. What about all the GOOD things that come in 3s?
• A 3-day weekend
• Third time’s a charm
• the band, Three Dog Night??
• And, resurrection.

Sometimes, we have to reframe the time. Watch our grief resurrect into joy and faith. And keep pedaling.

Amen.

Taylor Williams – September 22, 2019