Ordination – September 2007
Shalom Alechem—Peace be with you.
At the hospice where I have worked for several years, we have a yearly celebration called "Light Up a Life", where we remember the patients and families whom we have known and cared for during the year. As I was contemplating what I wanted to say today, the phrase ‘Lift Up a Life’ kept coming to me. So I sat and mulled the phrase over in my mind to see what meanings it held.
I was taken back to one of my earliest recollections, as a small child growing up in the Midwest. On hot Kansas summer nights, right around twilight time, with crickets chirping at full volume, the lightning bugs would come out. What a glorious sight! Hundreds of flickering, floating, magical lights! We would run after them and catch them in our hands, cupping them together to see the momentary flash before they flew away.
One night I got the idea to put my bugs in a glass jar. I’d peer through the clear glass and see them so closely, their bodies iridescent and glowing soft bright orange. I remember trying to go to sleep with my jar nearby, bringing it under the covers and pulling the covers over my head to make a dark canopy. The radiance from the bugs was nearly bright enough to cast a shadow. They were my new secret flickering friends. The mystery and wonder of their light was as sweet as the pungent smells of a Kansas summer.
The morning after I collected my first bugs in a jar, I was so excited. “I’ll take these bugs to school, to show and tell!” I thought. I peered into the jar, but none of the bugs were moving. They were all in a heap on the bottom. I grabbed the jar and ran into my darkened closet to see if the light was still there. Only one bug had the faintest (almost imperceptible) glow, but that bug wasn’t moving either. No one needed to tell me they were dead. I was mystified by the one whose light still faintly glowed; even it soon dimmed completely.
As I recall, I do not think I cried. I took the jar outside and poured the lightning bugs out into he dirt by the bushes. I thought that this was where they would want to be. After that day, I didn’t stop chasing after lightning bugs. But I never put them in jars again. What those lightning bugs gave me and what has persisted over the years was a sense of awe, wonder and mystery about light and life, about where it comes from and where it goes.
It was just such a light that my first home hospice patient, Julie, had in her eyes. I dare say that without Julie’s trust and faith in me as her physician, I don’t think I would be standing here today, feeling this calling to do the work that I do. She was a single working mom, working in a social service agency helping new immigrants and folks who were down on their luck…all the while raising her four children on her own. Sadly, she had contracted AIDS in the days before we had effective drug therapy. At a certain point in her illness, she was clear she no longer wanted to have treatment in the hospital, and she asked me if I would care for her at home.
The most amazing thing was that as Julie grew physically more ill and frail, it seemed that her spirit grew more incandescent. She had beautiful clear blue eyes that shone like the sun reflecting the sky off of deep, clear water. Julie somehow passed on to others this light that shone so brightly in her. Everyone wanted to be near her because of how loved and special she made them feel. She and her family showed us that along with profound sorrow and loss, a deep joy and intimacy could also exist.
Julie was not an especially religious person, although she had her own spirituality, which she expressed through a deep faith and trust in others and in life. Knowing her as I did, I know that she would appreciate a good spiritual story, regardless of its origin. And so in closing, to honor Julie and all of those whose lives we are privileged to touch and be touched by, I offer the following words from Papaji, a much-beloved Hindu teacher, commenting on the phenomenon of light passing from one person to another:
"Isn’t it amazing to see grace working, when a flame that is burning brightly lights another? What a mystery and a joy. But the candle that lights other candles that then light other candles—now that is something else again!!!”