"What I Would Have Said" by Rev. Thomas Schade

[Memos from Rev. Barbara Merritt and Rev. Tom Schade]

M I N I S T E R S’ S   M E M O

“What I Would Have Said”

Continental Airlines graciously offers their passengers a chance to receive
updates on the status of their flights via text messages to their mobile
phones. So, in the middle of the day on Saturday, while I was at the
Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship Revival in Cleveland, I got a
terse little note saying that my flight back to Providence for that evening
was cancelled. Not delayed, not running behind schedule, but cancelled. I
checked with the airline and no flights were available until mid-afternoon
on Sunday.

I wasn’t going to make it in time for the All Souls Sunday service. I could
not turn to Rev. Merritt in the emergency, since I knew she was preaching in
Memphis. The far-flung ministry of First Unitarian had been flung too far to
get home on Sunday morning.

It took about an hour of phone calls and emails to make all the
arrangements: a reservation on a different flight, extending my hotel stay,
letting Will Sherwood know that I would not be there, and asking Jay Lavelle
to step into the pulpit to fulfill my role in the annual All Souls service.
I knew that Jay would bring the appropriate focus and seriousness to a
solemn service such as the one we had planned. I hope that everyone
expressed their appreciation to Jay, and I offer my thanks.

>From every account I have heard, the music was extraordinary and moving.
Will works very hard on a Music Sunday: choosing the music, assembling the
special musicians, (including Matthew Vera, this rare talent) and preparing
the choir. I look forward to listening to it on the recorded version of the
service.

And I am sorry that I was not there to hear your expressions of remembrance
for friends, family and other loved ones that you had lost. We grow stronger
as a community as we share our sorrows and bear each other’s burdens,
especially the heavy burden of grief.

I had been gathering my thoughts for a homily for All Souls’ Sunday, and had
set aside some time on Saturday evening, and on the plane, to write them
down. What I would have said was this:
*         That All Souls Day is another step in the delicate dance of grief,
a step of both holding close and letting go.

*         That in the beginning of grief, one does not need a special
occasion to remember the one who has been lost to death. Their memory is
inescapable; the smallest things can trigger floods of recollections that
can even seem intrusive and unwelcome at times.

*         That time moves on, and changes us and our grieving, and when
enough days have passed not spent in yearning, All Souls Day becomes a
welcome ritual.

*         That it is comforting to know that we do not grieve alone, but
that almost everyone we know has their own broken heart, their own losses,
their own memories of love.

It is a part of letting go that we become less fiercely attached to the
uniqueness of our love and loss, and see it as a part of a great web of
humanity, now here, now gone, now yet to come.

I would have closed with the benediction that I use at every memorial
service, from Rabindranath Tagore:

Peace, my heart,
Let this time of parting be sweet.
Let it not be a death,
      but a completeness.
Let love melt into memory
      and pain into song.
Let each stand still, for a moment
And say your last words in silence.








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