Reading with New Eyes

© Imelda Maurer, cdp

Not long ago during a conversation with another Sister, she mentioned a Congregational meeting she had recently attended. The agenda was around aging and retirement needs. Included in the meeting were statements from her Congregation’s Constitutions. Her comment to me was, “I never realized there was so much in our documents that was so relevant to the topics we were discussing.”

That observation brought one of my own learnings to mind:  If we read our Congregational documents – our Constitutions, Chapter statements, and mission statements – with new eyes, we will find riches there never before imagined.  When we read our Congregational documents through the lens of serving our elders, we will discover a new world of meaning in the work to which our own and every Congregation is called.  Such a re-reading has the potential to stir a new vision of what life could be like in our “infirmaries”.  The subsequent new vision and new understanding of this ministry to our own, through the lens of our Congregational documents and values has the potential to shift our mindset about aging, aging services and retirement needs. When the subsequent insights that such a shift in mindset brings, with its mandate for a new intentionality in how things are done, there is born the potential of our being  led to a new place of prophetic witness, a witness to which we are called to be and to provide today in an aging and ageist society.

I was reminded of all of this earlier today as I read the first reading for today’s Eucharistic liturgy. The reading is an exhortation about ministry and the attitudes we should bring to it. Be aware of the new understandings of the ministry of service to our own possible when we read this Scripture through that lens?

                                                    

(The translation I use here is from The Inclusive Bible. That translation uses the word ‘elder’ in place of ‘presbyter’, but perhaps apt for us.)

1 Peter 5:1-4

I send a word of advice to the elders among you. I, too, am an elder, as well as a witness to the sufferings of Christ and a partaker of the glory that will be revealed. Shepherd the flock entrusted to you. Shepherd it, not just out of duty, but eagerly, as God would have. Don't do it for money, but do it freely. Don't be pompous or domineering, but set an example for the whole community to follow. Then when the chief Shepherd comes, you will receive the crown of unfading glory. Let the young among you respect the leadership of the elders. Let all of you clothe yourselves in humility toward each other, for "God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble."

"Tell me your name again."

© Imelda Maurer, cdp

News of my mother’s death came by way of a long distance call from my brother early Wednesday evening, February 13^th, 1985.  I was living in South Carolina at the time, organizing Hanes factory workers in the Carolinas and Virginia. The following day I flew to be with the rest of my family, in shock over a death I was not expecting. 

My first morning back in Texas I made my way to the Episcopal-sponsored Bishop Davies Nursing Center where Mother had moved a year earlier. Through my three or four visits during that year, I had benefitted from a warm relationship with Dorothy, the daughter of Mother’s roommate and with the warm and gracious administrator, Helen Wesley.

As I walked into the entrance of the nursing home I saw Dorothy. She had seen me at about the same moment and came with her arms open to greet me.  “There’s someone I want you to meet,” she told me.  I was introduced to a woman probably in her 40s.  “I sang to your mother on Wednesday.” 

While this woman was explaining why she had done this, I was engulfed in memory upon memory of music in my mother’s life. Mother sang while she swept the kitchen floor; she sang as she washed the dishes and as she ironed our clothes there with the ironing board close to the radio. She sang in our parish choir. How many cool summer evenings did we spend on the front porch naming song after song that we children wanted her to lead us in. And my next thought was knowing how comforting music must have been for my mother, and realizing that had I been physically present I would not have had the emotional strength to sing without unmeasured weeping.  This woman, this stranger, had been there and offered this gift to my mother. I expressed that conviction to this kind woman. Nothing could have comforted my mother more than songs being sung to her in her last hours.

This woman, whose name had already escaped me, told me that her own mother had just moved into this nursing home a month or so earlier.  The daughter had joined a church group on death and dying. One of the things she had learned was that hearing is the most tenacious sense, and is probably the last to leave us.  And so she sang to my mother!  Expressing my gratitude again, I asked her, “Please, tell me your name again”

“Grace”, she said.

Indeed.

-----

 Here is a link to a three-minute video featuring a Sister of St Joseph in Los Angeles. It reflects the role of music for persons in hospice care.