|
2005 in Memoriam A Worship Service by the Reverends Mark W. Christian & Jonalu Johnstone First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday January 1, 2006
Reading When Death Comes Mary Oliver When death comes
Prayer and Meditation By Marta Flanagan
Holy One, known by many names -- Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer -- you make your presence known to us in the sunshine of winter, in the dance of the flame, and in the lingering embrace of a trusted one.
Fill us this day with your warmth, your power, your strength. Help us to see our lives with a freshness born of the spirit. Lift up the blessings: the loved ones, the ones we treasure for simply being themselves, -- the ones we laugh with, the ones who teach us to trust ourselves. Hold close the ones who are ill this day, those who feel the discouragement of the body. Stand by those who know their time is limited. Fill them and us with courage, with peace.
Gracious One, release us from our burdens. We bring the memories of the past, times when we fell short, times when we were hurt. We have fear: worries of what will be and how we will make do. We get carried away with small concerns: the daily issues that press upon us. Help us to let go. Free us from inner bonds.
We look at ourselves: the advantages we have been given, the opportunities we have seized. Fill us, O God, with a sense of gratitude for the gifts that are ours: knowledge, skills, and hard won insights. Nudge us to give back, to reach out -- sharing our talents, our riches, and ourselves with those who are discouraged, disheartened, or simply unaware; with the young, the dispossessed, the elderly.
Gracious God, grab our attention, seize us with the brightness of the day, with the miracles of life itself, that we might be filled with new passion, new resolve, heeding your quiet call to take the next step. Amen.
2005 in Memoriam A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday January 1, 2006
We gather this day in the presence of death But we gather neither in fear nor praise of death We gather the Spirit and things of the Spirit As revealed to us in the lives of those who are dead but not forgotten. In the presence of Life we say “No” to Death In the presence of Death we say “Yes” to Life.
The popular depiction of this time of turning calendars is Old Man Time and Baby New Year. The old giving way to the new which with the passage of days will become the old that will give way to the new. The way I have come to mark this change in years is to look upon the lives of those who died this last year. I look to these lives in the hope of discerning something of the Spirit of Life and Living that is incarnate in the world. I look to these lives in order to note the passage of time—but more than that I look to the deaths the year brought in its wake to discover something real and eternal about Life. Our task today is very similar to the task I undertake when doing a memorial service. So today’s service will also let those who are a bit new to us discern something of the way we acknowledge the passage of life. To begin with I would say that Life is Life and Death is Death and to pretend otherwise seems, to me, a fools task. I don’t speculate on anything that may or may not happen after we die. As to what happens—in any metaphysical way—I am profoundly agnostic. Not only do I not know—I don’t believe it is knowable. It is for this very reason that life and living are so very precious to us. I came across this poem by Jim Moore recently. I added it to my memorial service file because it captures a piece of why we approach death and dying the way we do.
It Is Not the Fact That I Will Die That
I Mind No one will ever live or love exactly the way you do. Still, there is enough common to the human experience that we may assess each other’s lives in the hopes of touching that which is too large for a single life, that which transcends individual lives and connects us to all that is our life—all that is life. In this spirit, then, with the assistance of the Associated Press, I share with you something of just a few of the notables and notorious who died in calendar year 2005. The first black woman elected to congress—Shirley Chisolm died one year ago today. She was first elected to Congress in 1969 and was a tireless champion for equal rights. Chisolm was 80. Rose Mary Woods—secretary to Richard Nixon—died at 87. Woods claimed responsibility for the erasure of several minutes of a key audiotape needed by Watergate prosecutors. Oooohhh Hooooa…Johnny Carson died January 23 at age 79. Carson manned the Tonight Show desk for three decades and redefined late night television as a genre. Carson was the rare celebrity to retire in his prime—and stay fully retired eschewing nearly all public appearances/ Boxer Max Schmeling died at 99. Schmeling defeated Joe Louis in the 12th round of their non-title bout in New York in 1936. That victory was used extensively in Nazi propaganda proclaiming an Arian master race. Schmeling decried that use of his boxing prowess right to the end. Ossie Davis, remembered for roles dealing with racial injustice on stage, screen and in real life, died on Feb. 4. He was 87. He was a central figure among black performers for more than five decades. Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller died on Feb. 10. He was 89. Miller was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for "Death of a Salesman" in 1949, when he was just 33 years old. Auto Innovator John DeLorean died in March at 80. Only 9000 of his stainless steel, gull-winged, sports cars were built. He is remembered for trying to finance his car company with proceeds from Cocaine deals and for the car that allowed actor Michael J. Fox to go “Back to the Future.” Johnnie Cochran, known as an advocate for victims of police abuse died on March 29. He was 67. Cochran’s achieved worldwide fame for successfully defending O.J. Simpson against murder charges. Her name is now well known…although I think everyone…friends, family and the general public wishes it wasn’t—Terry Schaivo died March 13. Schaivo, who was connected to the feeding tube for 15 years. Her case became a political football thanks to manipulation by the White House and Congress. Pope John Paul II, who led the Roman Catholic Church for 26 years and helped topple communism in Europe while becoming the most-traveled pope, died on April 2. Following his surprise election as Pope in 1978, John Paul traveled the world, inspiring a revolt against communism in his native Poland and across the Soviet bloc. Canadian Bob Hunter, who co-founded Greenpeace and used his journalistic savvy to turn the environmental group's fight to an international cause, died on May 2 after a battle with prostate cancer. Hunter first came to prominence in 1971 with the launch of Greenpeace and its protests against nuclear testing. He also brought public attention to the plight of sea mammals and the dumping of toxic waste into the oceans, “It’s me. It’s me. It’s me—it’s Earnest T!” Howie Morris, best known as Ernest T. Bass on the "Andy Griffith Show," died May 21 at the age of 85. Morris was a bar mitzvah band drummer, a radio performer and a Shakespearean actor before joining Sid Caesar’s ensemble casts in the 1950s. “Green acres is the place to be. Farm living is the life for me…” Actor Eddie Albert died at age 99 May 26. Albert was a versatile actor with numerous movie and Broadway credits as well as his role opposite Zsa Zsa as Oliver Wendell Douglas. Jack Kilby, the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the integrated circuit that laid the foundation for the computer and electronics industries died June 21. He was 81. Kilby the inventor of the first monolithic integrated circuit which laid the foundation for modern microelectronics. You may have heard of the company he founded—Texas Instruments. "T-I-double grrrr-R." Paul Winchell, best known for creating the lispy voice of Winnie the Pooh's animated friend Tigger, died on June 24 at 82. Winchell was a master ventriloquist and an inventor who held 30 patents, including one for an artificial heart he built in 1963. Wal-Mart heir John T. Walton, who threw his considerable financial support behind efforts to educate low-income children, died in the crash of a homemade, experimental aircraft on June 27. Walton, of Jackson, Wyo., crashed shortly after takeoff from Jackson Hole Airport in Grand Teton National Park. He was 58. Former Wisconsin governor and U.S. senator, Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day, died on July 3. He was 89. Admiral James Stockdale, who ran for vice president with Ross Perot in 1992, died July 5 at the age of 81. Stockdale, who endured 7 1/2 years in a North Vietnamese prison and earned the Medal of Honor for valor, is commonly remembered for beginning a Vice Presidential Debate with the line “Who and I? Why am I here?” Edward Heath who served as British prime minister from 1970 to ‘74 and was his country's strongest advocate for European economic integration, died on July 17. Heath was one of the most controversial statesmen in modern British history. A staunch internationalist, his main political triumph was engineering the UK entry into what is now the European Union. His tenure P.M. was marred by rage over economic crises and the "Bloody Sunday" attacks in Northern Ireland. Gen. William C. Westmoreland, vilified for his leadership of the United States' failed war in Vietnam, died July 18 in Charleston, S.C. He was 91. “Beam me up, Scotty.” James Doohan, the chief engineer of the original Starship Enterprise died early on July 20. He was 85. Peter Jennings, the face of ABC News and a household name in the United States, died of lung cancer on Aug. 7 at his home in New York. He was 67. Jennings announced his illness on air on April 5. John H. Johnson, whose Ebony and Jet magazines countered stereotypical coverage of blacks after World War II and turned him into one of the most influential black leaders in America, died on Aug. 8. He was 87. Synthesizer pioneer Robert A. Moog, whose self-named synthesizers opened the musical wave that became electronica, died on Aug. 21 at his home in Asheville, N.C. He was 71. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a one-time maverick who built a precarious conservative majority on cases touching everything from schools to the presidency, fought his final struggle away from the public square. Rehnquist labored over months of declining health to stay at his job, gaunt yet stoic. He died on Sept. 3 at age 80. Simon Wiesenthal, who survived a dozen concentration camps, then spent his life bringing Nazi war criminals to justice and searing the Holocaust into the conscience of the world, died on Sept. 20. He was 96. Wiesenthal, who helped find one-time SS leader Adolf Eichmann died in his sleep at his home in Vienna. “Would you believe?” Don Adams, the wry-voiced comedian who starred as the fumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart in the 1960s television spoof of James Bond movies, "Get Smart," died on Sept. 25. He was 82. As the inept Agent 86 of the super-secret federal agency C.O.N.T.R.O.L., Adams captured TV viewers with his antics in combating the evil agents of C.H.A.O.S. When his explanations failed to convince the villains or his boss, he tried another tack: "Would you believe ...?" Vivian Malone Jones, one of two black students whose effort to enroll at the University of Alabama led to George Wallace's infamous "stand in the schoolhouse door" in 1963, died at 63. Rosa Parks, the Alabama seamstress whose act of defiance on a segregated Montgomery bus in 1955 stirred the nonviolent protests of the modern civil rights movement died on Oct. 24 of natural causes at her home in Detroit. She was 92. Actor Pat Morita, whose portrayal of the wise and dry-witted Mr. Miyagi in "The Karate Kid" earned him an Oscar nomination, died on Nov. 24. He was 73. Morita, who rose to fame on the hit television series "Happy Days" after years as a stand-up comic, died in Las Vegas. Stan Berenstain, who with his wife created the Berenstain Bears and the popular children's book series, died in Pennsylvania on Nov. 26. He was 82. Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take the Vietnam War seriously, died on Dec. 10. He was 89. McCarthy challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination during growing debate over the Vietnam War. The challenge led to Johnson's withdrawal from the race. Richard Pryor, whose comedic confrontations tackled what many stand-ups before him deemed too shocking to broach, died on Dec. 10. He was 65. Pryor's body of work was steeped in race, class and social commentary, and encompassed the stage, screen, records and television. He won five Grammys and one Emmy. Those are but a few of the notable individuals who died last year. The list is partial and highly subjective. Three events claimed lives on a scale that need to be remembered as well. The Indonesian Tsunami—while technically occurring in 2004—continued to claim lives well into 2005. The other two overwhelming natural disasters of 2005 were hurricane Katrina that ravished the Gulf Coast and the Earthquake that devastated Pakistan. As part of this time of remembrance I would also like to recall a number of the members and friends of this community who died in 2005. Elaine Moore Lois Rhodes Ilene Younghein John Fleming Wesley Rabatine Jo Bulla Jim Rice Carol Moore Roberta Brown Carl Beyrer Robert Jones Marie Hisaw As I draw near the close of this time of remembrance—I recall the words of John Haynes Holmes. Death this year has taken (them) Whose kind we shall not see again. Pride and skill and friendliness, Wrath and wisdom and delight, Are shining still, but shining less, And clouded to the common sight. Time will show them clear again. Time will give us other(s then) With names to write in burning gold When they are great and we are old, But these were royal-hearted, rare. Memory keeps with loving care Deeds they did and tales they told. But (the) living (they) are hard to spare. We gather this day in the presence of death But we gather neither in fear nor praise of death We gather the Spirit and things of the Spirit As revealed to us in the lives of those who are dead but not forgotten. In the presence of Life we say “No” to Death In the presence of Death we say “Yes” to Life. AMEN
|
